[mgkimsal]

"I'm a student of thought that the marketplace is becoming so saturated it will only be very high-caliber apps that survive"

I may be bucking the 'everything will be mobile first/mobile only' mindset, but I see the 'successful' apps as those that fit in a larger ecosystem of functionality. For many users, the primary/only point of contact with a system may be the mobile app, but there will be other endpoints of the system with more traditional web interfaces or even other endpoints which will provide other value to other parties.

Yes, the instagrams and yo and such are 'successful', but ultimately, they tend to prove the exception to the rule, I think. Outside of gaming, I'd expect most apps to have other functionality that can be processed and accessed with in other ways beyond solely a mobile interface.

To that end, the mobile app experience doesn't necessarily have to be 'high-caliber' over and above all the other competition, as long as the rest of the supporting functionality provides enough value.

I may entirely wrong though...

[potatolicious]

I don't think it's about the supporting functionality. The caliber your app must be is a function of competition and commoditization.

Just like in the old desktop-PC software days, if you solve a problem important to your customers, and you're the only one around doing it, your software can be as bad and low quality as you want. You're the only game in town for people who need this particular problem solved.

If you however are providing a commodity product in a market filled with competitors, the "quality" of your app (in all the ways we measure quality: stability, responsiveness, design, aesthetics) matters a great deal.

So yeah, if you can own a niche you can get away with some pretty low-caliber development (see: Grubhub's app), but this tends to be temporary. Profitable niches find competitors quickly (see: Seamless, whose mobile app makes Grubhub's look like a child's crayon drawings, and who in the end won and bought Grubhub).

[jkhowland]

I think you are exactly right. The indie devs speaking out are largely Game developers.

The funny thing about the Unread story is that if he keeps on releasing new paid versions (like Tweetie 2 or Tweetbot 2) and then charges for them, he'll just have that much larger of a base to launch on, and will make more money.

I believe it's not just about the caliber of apps, it's about the caliber of business that releases the apps. They need to consider marketing, pricing, launch strategies, and app store optimization. They need to maintain a relationship with their customers, and constantly ask what the customer wants. There is a lot more to a mobile company than the app, and I think the best companies (and their apps) are the ones that will survive.

[calebhicks]

I love what Ben Thompson at Stratechery wrote on this.

Pleco: Building a Business, Not an App http://stratechery.com/2014/pleco-building-business-just-app...

[tannerc]

I'm intrigued by your belief that simply releasing new paid versions of an app leads to more profit. Do you have any evidence that such an approach works?

[jkhowland]

It's a common method for indie Mac developers. Look at anything Panic does, or even someone like Daniel Jalkut with Mars Edit.

[jkhowland]

I just remembered that Tower is releasing a V2 now as well.

I wish I had numbers on the effect of those V2 and V3 and even V4 releases.