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| Closed for business |
| By special contributor henderson101 on 2012-07-24 23:42:53 |
| "I read earlier this week about a developer who made their Android version free after the $1 game was extensively pirated. Stories like this come as no surprise, but the industry press rarely deals with the core problem - and nor does Google. [...] Whilst the aforementioned story about the Android game didn't surprise me, it did horrify me. Android is designed to be difficult to make money from, and the core issue is that it's open - with the corrosive mentality that surrounds such openness." |
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| RE[2]: No lost sales |
| By Soulbender on 2012-07-25 07:13:55 |
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> I've always thought that the no-lost-sales-to-piracy argument was pretty weak. As an excuse you could argue that it is weak, that is true. Where this does come into play though is when you try to estimate how many sales are actually lost to piracy and how much money piracy is costing. By counting every pirated application as a lost sale you are in fact inflating the numbers. It can make it look like you lost a load of money while in fact you might only had seen a modest increase in sales if there was no piracy. It is of course rather tricky to know exactly how many of the pirate apps that would have been a sale but the fact that it's tricky is no excuse for inflating the numbers. |
 - Score: 5 |
| RE[2]: No lost sales |
| By dsmogor on 2012-07-25 07:23:23 |
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I agree and think Google seriously dropped the ball here by making Play credit card only.* This opened the flood gates for making installing pirated apps a habit that will be really hard to change. Generally such (potential) customers are lost for good, one can only hope for acquiring new ones. They should also start building partnership network (e.g. integrating carrier payment, mPesa in Africa, offering their own prepaid accounts, etc). Apple can put up with such restrictions bc Apple simply doesn't care about markets where its impractical. Google on the other hand are in for world domination from the start. Making sideloading a little bit harder wouldn't harm as well. If only signed apps could be loaded, (given free service to obtain signatures), google could at least regain some control on illegal software. (Pirated versions could be shut down with simple key revocation). Besides, I don't agree there's much to Open source nature here. Exploiting it to make piracy easier requires rom flashing, a thing that's far from trivial on most embedded devices (harder and more risky that e.g. jailbreaking). I don't believe it could be a major contributor to piracy. * Well, they are not alone being clueless in world wide distribution (pretty much most non deeply international companies are unless they develop local resellers network). Esp. that Android rapid uptake worldwide must have taken them aback. Edited 2012-07-25 07:25 UTC |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE: Comment |
| By daedalus on 2012-07-25 07:34:33 |
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Perhaps they have the same view of apps as you have of music. To me, music is dirt cheap and really easy to get, as a result I'd say I've paid for the majority of my music collection (and it's all DRM-free and in MP3 format). It also results in my music collection actually being music that I want, not with thousands of tracks I copied from a friend's hard drive and have no interest in other than for bulking up numbers. Not saying that's what you're about, but I've seen plenty of people like that... |
| - Score: 2 |
| Non sense. |
| By phoudoin on 2012-07-25 07:36:27 |
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"[Andoid] system is designed for piracy from the ground up" Yeah, right, as is Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, BSD, AIX or any software platform on which your can install an executable without the permission of operating system editor! What would be true is iOS software ecosystem is designed to make Apple control everything and on side-effect is some anti-piracy effectiveness. It cost you 30% of your app price, though. What would be true is that all other software ecosystems are not strong enough or not under one single actor power enough to allow such ecosystem to be fully controlled, and thus get some anti-piracy effectiveness. Plus, even ecosystem that are designed to avoid piracy can fail: see DVD and its DeCSS, BluRay or the music CD's DRM. Does the Audio/visual industry *designed* his market for piracy, really!? As the author said itself : show me the money. People buy stuff with money. No money, no sale. No value, no sale. No will, no sale. Less money means the value or the will must be higher than before. Regarding "Dead trigger", I'll bet that most pirated versions were due to: - no trial version. - 15min to try a paid app is not enough for a game - Google wallet is not available everywhere - too low price tag: 0.99$ translate as poor value app in the user mind. And poor value translates as wont pay for that. Less value, no will, no sale. And, no, it's not "lost" sale, but "no" sale, plain and simple. |
| - Score: 3 |
| RE: Got it all wrong |
| By dsmogor on 2012-07-25 07:38:10 |
| Well, he doesn't and want you to make this choice as well, that's the whole point of the article. |
| - Score: 2 |
| Life is serious |
| By phoudoin on 2012-07-25 07:47:13 |
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By this logic, no wonder that a android game won't sell: life is serious, so no time *and* money to waste on non-serious stuff. Problem solved. I can't count how much his logic seems broken... |
| - Score: 5 |
| RE[2]: Got it all wrong |
| By Soulbender on 2012-07-25 07:55:30 |
| it would appear from another post that he did make an Android app and that it didn't sell. Blaming that failure on Andoid being open is still incredibly lame. |
| - Score: 3 |
| Comment by Radio |
| By Radio on 2012-07-25 07:59:03 |
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Yeah. The closed model. We all saw recently how well it worked with Sparrow *snicker* |
| - Score: 1 |
| Comment by phoudoin |
| By phoudoin on 2012-07-25 08:12:28 |
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> Buying an app on the Android Market is substantially similar to how you buys apps on iOS: you search, find the app, click Buy, confirm, and it downloads. It’s not an unduly onerous process, and certainly not a barrier to the business model. This isn’t piracy due to frustration. Someone think that everybody clicking on "Buy" button is living in same country than him. Reality check: people happened to have an android smartphone *and* live in a country where Google Play payment platform is not supported. For example, in France Google Play payment is working. But not in french Caribbean islands. Go figure. So claiming there can't be frustration motive is a bit short IMHO. |
| - Score: 5 |
| Comment by phoudoin |
| By phoudoin on 2012-07-25 08:24:37 |
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Another pearl: "nerds are such a tiny minority of people that nobody else much cares what the hell they think." Oh yeah. Nobody at NASDAQ cares about what nerds can think these days. Plus, nerds and business hardly matches these days. It's not like they would create a whole new fast-growing industry from their nerdish world... |
| - Score: 5 |
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