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by mickrobk 4988 days ago
I'm sorry, I certainly didn't mean to say you were actively asking for app developers to collude on price. Rather, that is the conclusion I drew following your arguments about app store issues. To be specific: (note some quotes are abbreviated, but I certainly do not intent to alter their meaning)

Your points about the app store being a race to the bottom

"There’s a tremendously negative pressure on prices … self-inflicted by developers..."

* "Microsoft set the minimum price… to give developers a clean slate on app economics"

I understand you when you say that higher quality apps are needed to get higher prices. What I am missing how higher quality apps in proportion to lower quality apps will happen. The proportion to lower value apps is that part that made me think price control (or curation, but to my knowledge the MS store won't be substantially different than Apple there.) I get the proportion part from your arguments that the app store is a race to the bottom, and has too many apps to make an impact.

I guess I disagree with your premise that the app store is broken, a race to the bottom, or that developers are having trouble making money there. All of the (anecdotal) evidence I've seen points to the opposite of that. I also don't see why the Win8 store would be any less hit driven than iOS, as I argued in the parent post.

I do agree with your articles position that higher quality apps are the key to higher prices, and I think your points about some of the scenarios win8 supports are very interesting. I'd love to read more about what I can do in Win8 versus iOS; that's just not the main point I got from your article (but may have been your intent :)

1 comments

Fair enough - you're not the first person to draw that conclusion, so perhaps I should have been more explicit.

"I'd love to read more about what I can do in Win8 versus iOS; that's just not the main point I got from your article (but may have been your intent :)"

This is a great idea; we'll do that.