[OT] Mac App Store

[Colin Holgate]

A few times in the past I've bought these discounted bundles, where you get perhaps a dozen applications for less than the price of the most expensive of them. It's generally a good deal, especially if there's just one of them that you were already thinking about buying at full price. Those economics may seems crazy, the software developers must be getting 1/10th the amount they normally would. But then they are probably selling to more than ten times as many people as normal, so overall they have earned more in the same period that usual.

It doesn't matter anyway, because where they go on to make more money is in upgrades. I have several bits of software that I keep up on the upgrades. The developers may well have made five times the original amount from me. So, in the Mac App Store there will be lots of winners. All the current publishers could sell a lot more copies of their apps by lowering the price as much as is viable, and later they will make money off those buyers when the upgrades come out (I don't think upgrades will be expected to be free like they are with iOS apps). Then there is all of us, people who might not be able to convince a publisher to carry such a niche application. We'll be able to submit applications, and some of those might be as big a hit as Plexxr, for example.

If I took a guess, I'd say that Mac Apps will be typically $9.95. That's not quite as impulse purchase encouraging as $0.99 or $1.99 is, but it's still is a reasonable figure. I dare say there will be tie-ins too, where you create a desktop app that works along with a mobile part. Then you make $10 for one and $2 for the other.