| I doubt apple makes a substantial amount from developers alone. Quoting [1] which is the research I believe rmah is talking about... "Global Apple App Store revenue is set to increase to $4.9 billion in 2012, up from $2.9 billion in 2011, according to an IHS Screen Digest Mobile Analyst Commentary from information and analytics provider IHS (NYSE: IHS). This means that nearly half of the revenue generated by the App Store in its five-year history will be earned this year alone." Those are some pretty strong numbers. Given that the number is projected, even with a generous error rate of +-20%, any revenue from developer fee will be eclipsed by 4.9 billion. While the author's estimate that apple generates 15% of its revenue from developers is inaccurate, it has to be said that the entry fee to get into iphone / ipad development is high. I would know since I'm currently developing a product that works across iphone / android / web. Here are our costs thus far (excluding phone-device prices ). Apple: Mac Air 1200$ Developer account 99$ DUNS number 200$ Server certificate for notifications 175$ Android:
Developer account 25$ <For development - Use the mac or boot an old clunky win
laptop with Win-XP on it> Web:
0$ so far Developing for apple devices is costly. For the same 1200$ that I could spend on mac air, I can get 2 powerful Win-7 laptops - ~ 500-700$ each [2]. Device fragmentation on android does require you to test on more devices, but there are services[3] that allow you to work around that problem. Besides, when netflix can release their app by testing it on a subset of 8 android devices [4], I don't see why that strategy is not good enough for others. The author does have a point, but one that should not have been expressed as a percentage of apple revenues. [1] - http://www.isuppli.com/Media-Research/News/pages/Maps-and-Pa... [2] - http://www.dell.com/us/soho/p/vostro-laptop-deals [3] - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1852248/is-there-an-andro... [4] - http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/03/testing-netflix-on-andro... [EDIT] - Formatting |
There is no requirement to spend 1200 on a mac to begin development.
There is no requirement to get a DUNS number to develop on the App Store.
As far as a server certificate goes, there is no $175 certificate for notifications. However, if you are running a web service it would be sensible for you to acquire a SSL certificate, regardless of what platform you are developing for.