On Sep 2, 12:34 pm, Sean Hodges <[email protected]> wrote: > I guess my arguments are falling on deaf ears. > > On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 5:30 PM, Shane Isbell<[email protected]> wrote: > > A 50% drop in sales is huge. It's an indication that piracy may be a major > > problem for Android apps. But as an individual app provider, I don't see how > > you can stop piracy of your app. > > OK, really. Someone who decides to download a pirate copy of an app as > opposed to paying 99 euros was never intending to give you their > business. There is no way a warez site is going to cause revenue to > drop that dramatically, that quickly. It might be causing you to lose > some sales, but it is not causing ~50% of consumers to shift from > purchasing from the Android Market to using download sites > exclusively. > > PC software has piracy problems, as does the iPhone. In fact, the > majority of people that I know with smartphones have an iPhone, and > out of all of them I only know one person who has not jail broken his > phone - and he has jail broken it in the past as well. > > Anyway, I'm really getting sick of trying to bridge the gap between > the developers who are complaining about low sales/high threat piracy > and the people on the Android Market forums complaining that they > can't buy apps on the market. > > The biggest issue isn't even piracy, or DRM engines, or nice looking > Warez sites. It's that most people don't get to the stage of pirating > apps. They try to buy an app on the Android Market, find they can't, > and go back to the store to swap it for a phone that "works". The > outcome is the whole Android ecosystem loses.
You make a very well-reasoned case, so this being the Internet pretty much guarantees that people will ignore it. :-) I bought my G1 on eBay, so I didn't have the opportunity to return it or I might have, especially the first week I had it. Things have improved over the last few months, though. I understand that eReader is working on an Android version, which is a big deal for me, as I have quite a library of purchased ebooks starting from way back in my Palm days. Add that to the fact that as new models come out, the value of my phone has dropped quite a bit, so I guess I'm keeping it. Doesn't mean that at least 2 or 3 times a week I don't reconsider the wisdom of that decision but that's another post entirely. I don't know what kind of sales the original poster had but isn't it possible that most of the people who wanted such an app bought it when it first became available? (Either in the market or because they just bought a phone?) Also, I don't know if software follows the same kind of sales curve that books and music do, but it's possible that the drop is due more to natural causes than piracy. I'll just weigh in as a consumer but in the past I have used software copies given to me by friends or family as evaluations. If it ends up being something I use, I'll either buy it or find a freeware substitute. If something is free but incredibly useful I will occasionally donate. I've donated to Cyanogen and Donation Coder, for example. I've purchased many .99/1.49 apps from the Market that I end up not liking but it doesn't bother me enough to try and return them. Anything more than $5.00 and I usually want to see a demo or trial first. Reasonable prices (which includes a way to pay, obviously) and perhaps a registration code that inserts your name into the software can be effective anti-piracy measures that work for most honest people. I would be embarrassed to have a computer full of software that has those weird, nasty cracked names or even the name of someone I didn't know. If that kind of thing doesn't bother someone, then they wouldn't have purchased your application anyway. Too much DRM is a hassle that just makes everyone miserable (except the crackers, who thrive on it) and drives honest users away. Most people I know will usually be fine with a similar product that is less comprehensive if they can avoid too much expense or hassle - so in the end it doesn't even matter if you create the greatest widget ever if you then go on to market it in a consumer-unfriendly way. Unfortunately, the quality of a product has never guaranteed that it will win in the marketplace. That has to be depressing for developers but forcing DRM on everyone to level the playing field is kind of insane. Insane mainly because it won't work - it's never worked. (Apple can get away with it somewhat because they control the whole process and even they can't totally.) Terry --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Discuss" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-discuss?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
