Selling apps on the Mac and iOS App Stores can be a huge gamble and often developers have difficulties in deciding how much to charge for their apps, if they decide to charge at all. Another twist in this is the availability of in-app purchases. If you’re a software developer, especially if you sell apps on Apple’s App Stores, Michael Jurewitz’ series of blog posts is well worth a read to help you understand the economics of the application business.
Michael Jurewitz is an Apple developer who left the company in July last year but rejoined One Infinite Loop exactly on Apple’s 37th anniversary, which is today. The fact that he returned to Apple today makes his insights that much more valuable as Apple employees are not allowed to disclose anything regarding their line of work. His five blog posts about App Store pricing strategy were all curiously posted overnight in a rapid fire manner to ensure that they were posted before he officially returned to the company.
His posts were based on a talk that he gave at developer conferences Çingleton and NSConference earlier this year, in which he discussed a very wide range of issues related to publishing applications on the App Store.
The posts are elaborate but they are extremely insightful. It’s almost as if Apple released Jurewitz mainly to publicize all these valuable information before pulling him back inside. His previous role at Apple was as a developer evangelist. As Matthew Panzarino reported for The Next Web last year, “Jury has been a major focal point of Apple’s efforts to maintain relationships with the huge and vibrant developer community that sustains its App Stores”.
Part one of his posts talks about the price differences between the top grossing apps and the top paid apps on the Mac App Store. He revealed that the top grossing apps average about three times the price of the top paid apps.
The second part highlights the kinds of apps that make it as the top grossing apps and he mentioned that “the top grossing list is where you want to be”.
Part three goes into the economics of the app business as he talks about pricing strategies and understanding elasticity, supply, and demand. Yes, it’s back to Economics 101 or basic economics theories if you’re not familiar with the American term.
The fourth part expands on the economics theories in explaining whether app developers should charge a higher price for their apps. His message here is that you should “build software to meet a need and don’t become a commodity or enter a commodity space”, if you intend to build a business and earn a living out of your efforts.
The last part is learning how to maximize revenue from the sale of your apps. He provided Kaleidoscope as an example, which is an app to check for differences between identical documents and folders.
Aside from these posts, Jurewitz also posted a handful of posts earlier which discuss more about application development. Before entering a single line of code, Jurewitz wants developers to think about the user. He said, “focus on their life, their problems, and how you are helping them. Put down that database, put down that web server, put down that Core Data model and think.” Focusing on the user, “frees you from your technical shackles and puts the world in real perspective. Your focus becomes the things that matter, the things that change people’s lives”.
Perhaps most importantly, when developing a product, there needs to be an MVP, a minimum viable product, one that serves as the absolute core of what you’re trying to build which serves to solve the very problem you’re addressing. “What often matters more is solving a problem appropriately for your audience”.
