$99/year Developer Fee to Publish Applications

[samab]

OK, I have ZERO experience with the handset makers like Nokia/Qualcomm, but I don't understand what that has to do with anything. When you buy a game for your phone it comes from the carrier like T-Mobile or Sprint, not Nokia. I'd be hard pressed to believe that when T-Mobile sells Bejewled for $6 the developer is getting anywhere close to 70% of that money. T-Mobile isn't a magic company. Their overhead figures have to be close to the 30% figure too. Given that they state substantial profit comes from selling games and ringtones, that makes me expect the cut to the application developer is much less than 70% for T-Mobile to make any money.

But I haven't dealt with T-Mobile or Sprint, so I don't know. If you have let us know because that would be valuable experience to share!!

I don't have any experience either.

But how much the platform pays to the developers is directly proportional to the number of quality and quantity of apps and games available to the platform.

There are a lot of premium priced games on the Get It Now --- $12 for a mobile phone game.

http://products.vzw.com/index.aspx?id=games_details&appId=6397

 

[specops]

To sum up:

- iTunes App Store to browse, purchase and download iPhone apps
- Developers set the price and get 70% of revenue. Apple keeps 30% for their costs.
- Applications must be approved by Apple and apps are available exclusively through the App Store
- No charge to distribute free applications, but you still have to pay the $99/year fee.



Article Link

I'm not sure if anybody asked this yet but i was watching the SDK conference and jobs said " if the app is free you don't have to pay to host it" (not his exact quote but you get the idea)

So is the $99 to just join the dev club or did one of us misunderstand jobs
regarding the price to publish free apps

 

[aristobrat]

The $99 is a yearly fee to be able to publish your applications. There are no other costs that I've read.

 

[wizard]

I am really excited to see what comes of the SDK but like many others have said, why would you put a free app up if you have to pay money to do so. That makes not sense at all.

Well considering if you self host you will spend nearly as much money I don't think it is a big problem. Sure the cost is right in your face, but it is less than $10 a month and where can you find commercial hosting for that price? If you go with space on one of the consumer accounts you will still be using a good chunk of change.

The smart thing here though is to simply charger a nominal amount, say a buck. Unless you have a totally useless program you should get enough interest out of 10 million users to clear $99.

I understand that it is Apple's servers, bandwidth and all that but it is also making their phone that much better.

Well form many a users point of view a bunch of new half baked apps won't make iPhone that much better. But as you point out there are issues of cost that have to be dealt with. There is no free lunch.

I am sure there will be some killer or much needed app that could lead to someone buy the iPhone.

There is no question in my mind either. The thing is if there is an app that justifies the iPhones costs, then that app also has value.

Do you think there will be a way to get a self developed app on your own phone cause I am sure people will make something that is just for them.

This is something that just isn't clear to me. I could see this as a significant request. I have ideas for both home and work, some you simply would not want to distribute through a third party.

Dave

 

[wizard]

Hi Guys;

I've read through this thread and frankly I'm surprised that many of you are having issues with this program. Frankly I think it is fantastic.

First the $99 cost. Guys there will be close to 10 milliion users by the end of the year, you should be able to find a price point to pay for your outlay and likely some other expenses. If you have an app that costs $2 buck you should be able to easily cover that just in people doing random downloads. The smart operator though will make sure he can cover taxes, wear and tear on his computer and a host of other costs including uncle Sam.

Note too that is just the iPhone half of the equation, if you factor in all the Touch users already out there you have a huge potential market.

Second the 30%, that is a absolute bargain considering what you are getting for it. Sure it means getting out the old pencil and slide rule to figure out the optimal price for your app but hey that is business. Look at ti this way what would happen if you had to pay for all the bandwidth you used, the accounts with the credit card companies, the maintenance of the web store and what ever else. It would be expensive but more so a drain on yourself and a big distraction.

*****************************************************

Now some of you may have seen my handle on here before expressing my dissatisfaction with Apple an MWSF this year. In many ways they debuted a lot of what I consider junk. So it is not like I'm a rabid Apple fan, but this program could very well turn me into one. Apple is giving a lot of people a huge opportunity here. HUGE!!!

Dave

 

[Boghog]

Couldn't you cheat Apple out of their 30% if you offered a free demo app which required the user to enter an activation key to unlock its full functionality and then sold those keys over some web site?
Probably they'll have something in the license agreements to prevent that.

 

[Rodimus Prime]

Looks like apple is getting greedy. Apple does not want free apps to hit the market. They want to collect money off everything made so they charge enough to stop the people who would want to make free apps from doing so but not enough to turn off the people who want to make money.


Apple is turning more and more into Microsoft every day.

 

[dejo]

They want to collect money off everything made so they charge enough to stop the people who would want to make free apps from doing so but not enough to turn off the people who want to make money.

Or perhaps they want to stop many of the people who are just developing lots of "me-too" apps and not really serious about the whole matter by charging the $99? I doubt the SDK-download servers would've been hammered so bad had Apple charged a fee for the SDK or even instituted a more extensive registration/approval process.

 

[boz0]

Or perhaps they want to stop many of the people who are just developing lots of "me-too" apps and not really serious about the whole matter by charging the $99? I doubt the SDK-download servers would've been hammered so bad had Apple charged a fee for the SDK or even instituted a more extensive registration/approval process.

They're a company. They're interested in making money, not "protecting" their consumers from low-grade apps.

Which means, for the time being, that Open Source/Free Software will continue to run only on jailbroken devices.

 

[atropos]

I m thinking to join it... somehow, I live in canada... just wonder will Apple send the check to Canada lol...... because in theory, iPhone is not available in Canada.... so how can people develop it without iPhone?

 

[overanalyzer]

I m thinking to join it... somehow, I live in canada... just wonder will Apple send the check to Canada lol...... because in theory, iPhone is not available in Canada.... so how can people develop it without iPhone?

Didn't they say the App Store was going to be US-only at launch, adding other countries ASAP thereafter?

 

[CommodityFetish]

I wonder if and how easily you can change the price of your app? So if you just wanted to cover your $99 fee, you could drop the price to $0 after you'd made that much from it (for that year...).

It would be great if Apple would use some of their 30% to automate that -- you click a checkbox when you set the price for your app, and then apple does the rest.

And let's be honest, if Apple was really just covering their expenses, they would cap their own take on any given app at some fixed amount -- and/or reduce their percentage cut as sales increase until it reaches the small trickle that it requires to maintain the app on their servers. (And yes, I know that's not how businesses tend to operate, which is my point. I'd bet Apple will be making a lot more than just breaking even/covering costs.)

I wonder what Apple's % of music sales through iTunes is?

Pooling many developer's apps under one developer organization/account sounds like a great idea.

 

[3247]

Well, this means no open source apps for iPhone. At least, no GPL'd open source apps.
And you can't use GPL'd libraries for your apps, either.

 

[boz0]

Well, this means no open source apps for iPhone. At least, no GPL'd open source apps.
And you can't use GPL'd libraries for your apps, either.

No without jailbreaking, that's right.

On the bright side, once jailbroken, you can install Cydia, which is a front-end for APT, and gives you access to a huge open source archive, including many libs.