There should be 1 monthly fee to get unlimited apps

I wouldn't use this.

Sorry, but that would be stupid. From everyone's point of view. Let's say, hypothetically, that lots of people signed up for this. Now, you're a developer and you make a new app. How are the subscription dues divided? Is it per download, or are there greater shares for more expensive apps?

1) Per download: people who make "stupid" little $.99 apps like Koi Pond would get tons of cash because they would see a high number of "I'll check it out just to play with it for 30 seconds" downloads. Apps that are more expensive, say a $199 medical database app where there are a very limited number of potential buyers would get very little money even though their app was costly to create.

2) Shares by cost: if there were a significant number of subscribers I would release lots of gimmicky little programs like Koi Pond but price them at $999. No one would buy them, but the people who subscribe would download them and I would get a large value download.

What makes more sense is for Apple to build a time bomb trialware system into the SDK. Simply let the dev decide to offer a full featured trial version and pick a timeframe between some set values, say 1 hour and 7 days. That would pretty much do the same thing you're talking about but free on the user end and lead to increased sales on the dev side (I know that's one of the reasons I haven't paid for ANYTHING in the App Store yet - lack of good demp versions).

As a developer I wouldn't sign up for this.

Developers would be getting way less money. For example, if everyone downloaded 100 apps...

Apple gives the developers 70%. So each app would technically be 15 cents. 70% of that is about 10 cents. I'm not seeing much profit in that. If the app was a $10 app then it would take 100 downloads to make the amount of one original sale.

Of course, this is all assuming 100 apps per person and that Apple would just evenly split up the money. So many different ways to do it. But mostly what I am saying is this. If there was a subscription the developers would not make as much money.

I was looking for the sarcasm from the OP, but didn't find any.

I wouldn't do that just because it would hideously rip off the developers, it would be like Tesco offering a pay monthly contract with customers, all the food they want, for £24.99 a month, people would go crazy...

This idea would be terrible for the developers.

As a past developer, I would never sign up for something like this. Wouldn't be worth my efforts.

While this might work with music since all music on the iTunes store costs the same, Apps have different prices which the developers set. If you're paying $9.99 for unlimited apps and then go buy an app such as Luminair which costs $79.99 normally, the developers are going to get ripped off.

I've been thinking about this and I think I've come up with a solution: remove the current free option and add a subscription option. All existing free apps become subscription apps. Developers can then choose subscription or a buy price when they upload. This would be much fairer than the free option as it at least gives some chance that the developer might get some of the $99 the paid to get on the store back (yes the developers pay even for free apps).

MuhaaaaHAAAA!!!

Yes. Then the developer of the rubber duck quack app and the people that made supermonkey ball and the guy that did the 1 dollar wikipedia app can ALL live together in a hut in iowa where they can pool their costs and develop together (getting the same share) and sing kumbayah!

robbieduncan said:

I've been thinking about this and I think I've come up with a solution: remove the current free option and add a subscription option. All existing free apps become subscription apps. Developers can then choose subscription or a buy price when they upload. This would be much fairer than the free option as it at least gives some chance that the developer might get some of the $99 the paid to get on the store back (yes the developers pay even for free apps).

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Maybe that would work.

thats a terrible idea, what about the developers that put their hard work and time into their products?

This is a horrible idea, how would developers that put their work into some of the more complex apps get their pay? If this were to be an option, which I hope it is not, it would have to be at least $150/mo just so the developers could actually get what they put their work into. HORRIBLE IDEA!

robbieduncan said:

I've been thinking about this and I think I've come up with a solution: remove the current free option and add a subscription option. All existing free apps become subscription apps. Developers can then choose subscription or a buy price when they upload. This would be much fairer than the free option as it at least gives some chance that the developer might get some of the $99 the paid to get on the store back (yes the developers pay even for free apps).

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Well...except then we wouldn't have any free apps any more, and that would suck.

Yes, developers do a lot of work for their apps, and are required to pay to have them on the App Store -- but they also have the option of offering their apps for free, OR for a price. If they want to recoup some of the money they spent, they should charge for their app. If it doesn't matter to them, or they have other ways of getting money, then they can offer it for free. The app store customers shouldn't have to suddenly pay something for ALL apps, though. There should always be free choices available (and not through subscription) if the developers are willing to offer them.

Oh, and I agree: The subscription model idea for apps is a horrible idea overall.

This is a horrible idea because of the nature of the App store. People download apps to use them. When someone has downloaded all apps they need, they will not download any new ones. I bet if you built a graph of one person's app store downloads by month, you would see that it would ve very high the first month or so, and then decrease dramatically in the subsequent months and stay low.

Nope I wouldn't subscribe to it.

This would limit quality Apps as developers would just put a lot (more) of junk Apps since it would be just as easy to get the same revenue.

Apps are not priced uniformly and Apple has as much as just 30% of command over the Store revenues.... its both a bad idea and possibly not in Apple's power!

I hate subscriptions of any kind, they always end up costing you more.

It would never work. There is too much garbage in the app store, and developers who invest a lot more in their apps will make the same money as those putting up all those fart, flashlight and tip apps. It will guarantee that no one will create truly useful apps, which the app store desperately needs.

lol I would download all the apps I want in one month cancel, and wait for a bunch of apps I want before doing it again. Save so much money and it would screw the hell out of the devs.

App1€ said:

lol I would download all the apps I want in one month cancel, and wait for a bunch of apps I want before doing it again. Save so much money and it would screw the hell out of the devs.

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And that is precisely why this shouldn't happen, and plus, according to the proposal of the OP, canceling the subscription would make the apps unusable.

fastbite said:

I hate subscriptions of any kind, they always end up costing you more.

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Good point.

I guess that is why subscription based models are so popular. Even gyms use them.

No incentive for me to spend a ton of time coding apps if this is done. It's hard enough as is w/ 30% going to Apple (reasonable given their overhead) and ~35-40% of what's left going to federal taxes, let alone state taxes.