$ paid to developers - a reward?

[diazj3]

I've alway wondered why in every keynote, Apple makes a point about the amount of money paid out to developers. This is what Tim Cook said this time:

"The appstore continues to exceed our expectations. Now, this is great for customers, they get the choice of some fantantic apps. But is also great for developes. We've now plaid out 6.5 billion dollars to developers. Its great for Apple to be able to reward their creativity and hard work, and their passion."

It draws attention not because of the ammount of money paid, but the way they make it sound - as if this was a gift out of pure generosity for developers, instead of their contractual obligation for their work. And they never mention how much money Apple makes by taking a 30% cut out of every sale, which IMO is a bit excessive, specially when one hears complaints about the vetting process and the way Apple handles some aspects of such relationship.

Any developers care to comment?

 

[mrapplegate]

Obviously you are new to the concept of Public Relations.

 

[diazj3]

Obviously you are new to the concept of Public Relations.

You mean, as a form of douche-baggery?

 

[mrapplegate]

You mean, as a form of douche-baggery?

Just trying to understand. Did you think the company would get on stage and say they paid $1,000 to developers? They need them to make money.
The hurdles of submitting an app to Apple are well known and a small price to pay to sell their products in the Apple store.

 

[diazj3]

Just trying to understand. Did you think the company would get on stage and say they paid $1,000 to developers? They need them to make money.
The hurdles of submitting an app to Apple are well known and a small price to pay to sell their products in the Apple store.

I understand it's all business, and that many developers benefit from the appstore... but I wonder if "reward" the developers is a fair way to put it. In my view, putting it like that is disingenuous. It's not a reward, it's their money...

 

[mrapplegate]

I understand it's all business, and that many developers benefit from the appstore... but I wonder if "reward" the developers is a fair way to put it. In my view, putting it like that is disingenuous. It's not a reward, it's their money...

True. PR is like a magician, it's all about misdirection. Apple wants to make people think developing for them brings in millions for each developer. On average most developers don't make much money but Apple can't tell people that. Of the 700,000 apps how many make real money?

 

[Appleseeds]

Are you friggen serious? Now were gonna knock the choice of words.
This site is really going to *****.

 

[GoCubsGo]

Reward may be a poor choice of words and seems mighty of Apple because their developers cannot simply do it all. They need developers and they need their visions. Not every dev out there (or at Apple) can do everything and some of the apps are genius (and some not so much). I don't think it is douche-baggery to say reward so much as it does come across as though they're directly responsible for the dev's success. All they provide is a platform to code on and a way to understand that platform. The reward is being able to develop apps for Apple devices. Short of that, the rest is purely profit for Apple and hard earned money for devs. I do think that all of this is useless to over-analyze. They used reward and that is that; it doesn't change anything and shouldn't really piss anyone off.

 

[Squid7085]

They put your App in front of 300 million+ iOS devices. They handle all the storage and distribution. You make the App, they do the rest. Try doing that on your own, and I bet it costs more than 30%. 90% of that money likely would not have been made without the App store. You can have your opinions on it, but one can hardly complain about the opportunity that App store offers small developers.

 

[JS82712]

View attachment 371964

I've alway wondered why in every keynote, Apple makes a point about the amount of money paid out to developers. This is what Tim Cook said this time:



It draws attention not because of the ammount of money paid, but the way they make it sound - as if this was a gift out of pure generosity for developers, instead of their contractual obligation for their work. And they never mention how much money Apple makes by taking a 30% cut out of every sale, which IMO is a bit excessive, specially when one hears complaints about the vetting process and the way Apple handles some aspects of such relationship.

Any developers care to comment?

Oh look, someone's whining again
At the end of the day, devs don't care; they got paid 70% as promised, apple used this number to show off the number of devs backing the iOS platform.

The question is this...why does it matter to YOU?

 

[Kukulcan]

Is that for a year? That number sounds so low!

 

[Julien]

Is that for a year? That number sounds so low!

Not sure what league you roll in but $6,500,000,000 is a large number.

$1 bills laid end to end would extend around the earth over 25 times.

Spending at a rate of $1000 ever minute at 24/7/365 it would take over 15 years to spend.

 

[Kukulcan]

Not sure what league you roll in but $6,500,000,000 is a large number.

$1 bills laid end to end would extend around the earth over 25 times.

Spending at a rate of $1000 ever minute at 24/7/365 it would take over 15 years to spend.

I don't think that is such a large number anymore, it is about what some people lose in shares in a day.

And I was under the impression it is a large part of Apple's financial success, but $3 billion isn't really that huge over years. I think Apple makes double that profit in a quarter, right? And it isn't even net profit, as someone said there is a lot of infrastructure to be paid for to run the service.

 

[Menel]

I understand it's all business, and that many developers benefit from the appstore... but I wonder if "reward" the developers is a fair way to put it. In my view, putting it like that is disingenuous. It's not a reward, it's their money...

Yes... their money rewarded to them for publishing on the App Store to Apple created devices.

I don't understand your thought process or why you are feeling hurt.

 

[mrobit]

I understand it's all business, and that many developers benefit from the appstore... but I wonder if "reward" the developers is a fair way to put it. In my view, putting it like that is disingenuous. It's not a reward, it's their money...

Rewards are earned via working towards something. They're not gifts. They didn't win anything.

 

[diazj3]

True. PR is like a magician, it's all about misdirection. Apple wants to make people think developing for them brings in millions for each developer. On average most developers don't make much money but Apple can't tell people that. Of the 700,000 apps how many make real money?

Reward may be a poor choice of words and seems mighty of Apple because their developers cannot simply do it all. They need developers and they need their visions. Not every dev out there (or at Apple) can do everything and some of the apps are genius (and some not so much). I don't think it is douche-baggery to say reward so much as it does come across as though they're directly responsible for the dev's success. All they provide is a platform to code on and a way to understand that platform. The reward is being able to develop apps for Apple devices. Short of that, the rest is purely profit for Apple and hard earned money for devs. I do think that all of this is useless to over-analyze. They used reward and that is that; it doesn't change anything and shouldn't really piss anyone off.

They put your App in front of 300 million+ iOS devices. They handle all the storage and distribution. You make the App, they do the rest. Try doing that on your own, and I bet it costs more than 30%. 90% of that money likely would not have been made without the App store. You can have your opinions on it, but one can hardly complain about the opportunity that App store offers small developers.

Good points.

 

[firewood]

...the way they make it sound - as if this was a gift out of pure generosity for developers, instead of their contractual obligation for their work.

You're both wrong.

It's neither a gift nor a contractual obligation for work.

There is a 70% contractual obligation for paid app sales. But this can be and very often is very different from any work put into an app. Most apps don't sell (more than maybe once per day), even if significant work was put into their development.

For smaller developers, especially those without a significant marketing budget, it's more like a lottery payout. The top couple percent win some fraction of those Billions, the majority get peanuts. A few in the middle get beer/coffee money.

 

[Avatarshark]

Taking a cut of 30% isn't unheard of. If you are gaming you know that Steam takes roughly the same amount of cut for each sale of an item, console makers take the same amount of cut. I believe Amazon is smaller but it is still in that price range. 30% is pretty much an economy-wide number when it comes to digital distribution.

 

[Morrus]

I understand it's all business, and that many developers benefit from the appstore... but I wonder if "reward" the developers is a fair way to put it. In my view, putting it like that is disingenuous. It's not a reward, it's their money...

I'm a developer and I don't give a crap what word they use as long as I get my cut. Feel free to be offended on my behalf, though.

 

[Kashsystems]

I have one comment to add to this.

Before the iPhone how much did Apple pay to developers?

I think the biggest reward here was creating a new opportunity.

 

[Stetrain]

It's just a number to show the size of the ecosystem or the 'App Store economy'. Apple isn't saying that they have graciously bestowed this gift upon their most valued developers.

I think you're reading a lot into some wording choices. Would it be better if it had been phrased as "Its great for Apple to see these developers be rewarded for.."?

Also I think the 30% cut isn't bad at all. Remember that the developers don't have to pay for bandwidth and don't have to pay for payment processing. In the case of free apps Apple is actually losing money because they are paying for bandwidth and not getting anything back.

Apple also maintains the whole app store system, including things like iCloud and push notifications, and gives exposure to apps.

If there were no on-device App Store, developers would have to host their own website for the app, handle their own payment processing, and almost nobody would ever see it unless they advertised it or it was linked to by a prominent website.