John Casasanta from Tap Tap Tap and Macheist has posted an article regarding the sales figures for Convert since its August ‘09 launch. He then analyzes the current situation of Mac development, and how in his opinion the App Store is affecting it by providing higher revenues for developers and a more focused, yet powerful way of distributing applications.
From the post:
“The App Store has proven to be a super-efficient distribution system. In a nutshell, you can earn a lot of money even with 99¢ apps because you can reach so many people. Conversely, the Mac shareware market has always comparatively been very inefficient. Developers depend on services like VersionTracker, MacUpdate, i use this, and even Apple’s own Mac OS X Downloads site, etc for small publicity/sales spikes. But all of these sites (including Apple’s) get far less attention than the App Store.
[…]
Because of the much smaller reach and resulting far lower number of Mac software sales compared to iPhone, developers have had to compensate by keeping prices at a much higher point. But this is also what’s kept the market down and now on a decline, unfortunately.”
Is the Mac market really..dead? Or is it just going through an evolution that might revitalize it with the release of 10.7? No doubt things are going to change, or everyone will start developing iPhone apps. But what will happen when the iPhone market will be saturated?
Oh yeah, there’s the Tablet one.
