According to the strategy of Apple, the advantages of iPad Pro is its opportunities for working with professional software and creative applications. But app developers such a concept is put in the uncomfortable position.
Despite the technical features of the new tablet, it still works with mobile applications. Given the current pricing of the App Store, developers don’t see the point in creating an expensive professional programs. They just don’t believe that users will pay the money that they usually acquire applications for their desktop computers.
This problem concerns not only the iPad Pro, but mobile development in General. With this increasingly small team of developers, setting priorities in work. Especially in cases where the same application should write and for the mobile system, and for PC.
Rasprostranennye complaint is the lack of a free trial period for apps in the App Store and the difficulties in paying for updates to regular users. Sale of applications via the Apple store contributes to the creation of some “walls” between the developers and their customers if they have problems with purchased software.
In other words, the iPad Pro has forced to reconsider the strategy of monetization of programs.
The co-founders of the development team Bohemian Coding of Only Peter and Emanuel Sa, who created a Sketch for graphic designers, openly expressed his reluctance to write a Sketch for the iPad Pro. This program is available for Mac computers and receives praise from designers. It seemed that this is the product that should be ported to the new iPad. But a couple weeks ago, Emanuel Sa left the site Designer News comment that neither he nor Peter Only don’t plan on developing for iPad Pro:
“Yes, the iPad got a perfect display, but still there are many points that should be considered. Apps for iOS are sold at ridiculous prices because of the lack of the trial period. We can’t write a Sketch for the iPad Pro without any guarantees of compensation for our investment”.
The trial version of the app means that the user can have free access to all product functions for a limited period of time. This is a classic option for large and expensive projects, which we usually get directly through a web browser.
“Sketch for Mac costs $99. We never would began to demand from the client such amount, without giving him time to try our product. Thus, we need to drastically reduce the price of your app for the App Store. But our application is designed for a narrow audience, so we will not get the desired number of downloads,” said Ali in an interview with The Verge.
Developer Jared Sinclair spoke frankly about what he sees from the Apple “sustainable” unwillingness of professional development ON iOS. He considers the iPad Pro as the computer because of its technical capacity. But Sinclair, an iOS engineer at Black Pixel Agency, believes that truly make the iPad a professional device with software mainly prevent not technical features, but Apple’s policy.
“In the App Store there is no easy way to get the money back if someone does not like the purchased software. It is also impossible to answer or to figure out what dissatisfied users, assigning the product a low rating,” explained Sinclair.
Another common discontent is that developers cannot offer paid upgrades for its products, forcing to acquire a completely new application to replace the old ones.
“I think a lot of people are worried about the lack of possibility to offer paid major updates, if they want to develop one product for many years,” said Chris Liscio, Creator of the popular music app Capo. His product is sold in the Mac App Store for $29,99, but adapted for iOS version has a price of us $9.99.
Liscio calls himself an optimist and noted that this is just the initial stage for the new tablet. He thinks the iPad Pro and is working on an app for him. But according to him, if the development of desktop and mobile project overlap, the pricing mechanism must be different.
Founder of the Studio FiftyThree who created the popular designers of the app Paper, has described the situation as “the reality of software development”.
“Product support requires large investments than its initial development. The first version of the Paper was written by a team of three people. Now this app do 25 man by testing it on eight or nine platforms in 13 languages. FiftyThree is making money on the sale of equipment: has become very popular stylus for $60. The development Studio also received funding of $45 million from venture capital funds. However, there is something wrong when it comes to monetizing mobile apps,” said FiftyThree CEO Georg Pettnig.
Such giants as Adobe or Microsoft, appeared on stage during the presentation of the iPad Pro in September of this year, do not have to worry about the number of downloads of its free and light versions of major applications. These companies earn through subscriptions to their cloud service. Financial position for small teams of developers have to pay Apple 30% of the cost of the app for every download, is weaker.
Apple has paid developers $10 billion as revenue from the sale of apps in 2014. To date, the total amount of payments from apps and games is us $33 billion In the company emphasize, that the programmers get 70% of the value of its products. Currently in the App Store over a million apps available for iPhone and iPad for 850 000.
But Ben Thomas in his blog Stratechery earlier it was noticed that 95 of the 100 most popular apps in the App Store are free and offer in-app purchases. According to a study Gartner, in 2016, domestic payments will provide for 41% of revenues in the App Store, and the most popular paid downloads will apps cost from $0.99 to $2,99.
At the same time, the developers say that even app price of $0.99 reducing the demand for it. This greatly limits the ability to create professional software high-level. They, first of all, never use the model of free-to-play, and secondly, I don’t want to get such ridiculous money for their work.
Apple refuses to comment on the situation.
To act as developers as long as the company does not change the business model the App Store for manufacturers of professional software? Most of them have no ability to obtain external financing or sell accessories. The most obvious solution — monetization through paid subscriptions or built-in payments for certain tools and functions. Peter Only States that application type Sketch can not work according to this scheme:
“Tools such as Microsoft Office or Adobe Creative Cloud, are quite influential company. People, in some cases reluctantly, still pay for these services. But many of our customers don’t use Sketch on a daily basis, so they will not buy our monthly subscription”.
Some developers are trying to combine paid iOS app c web versions. For example, Animoto works with a 2007 offering from $9.99 to $29.99 for using their online video editor and a free mobile app with a subscription fee of $4.99 per month. Both types of customers get advanced features.
But the founder and CEO brad Jefferson said Animoto continues to work on this financial strategy and is not currently going to adapt your product for the iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil:
“The version for the regular iPad will be used for a large iPad. Let’s see, whether justified the prefix “Pro” for new device”.
