Topic: Apps
Apple Says Affiliate Fee Cut Will Now Only Apply to In-App Purchases (May 8, 2017)
I’m seeing this change generally being reported as a clarification (including in the piece I link to here) but this is a change from the original wording here, which explicitly said the cut in affiliate fees announced a couple of weeks ago applied to both “app and in-app content” and didn’t include apps in the list of content types to which the change would not apply. Unless that was just really terrible wording, it does seem as though there has been a change in policy here. Applying the change just to in-app purchases again makes me wonder whether there might be some change to Apple’s cut of App Store revenue in this category, announced at WWDC in a few weeks. We don’t know quite how much of Apple’s App Store revenue comes from IAP, but games dominate total revenues, and IAP is the dominant model for games, so there’s a good chance that it’s 30% or more. As such, any cut to Apple’s share of revenues would dent overall App Store growth and Apple’s ambitions to double its overall Services revenues over four years from 2016 to 2020. So I’m somewhat skeptical, but changing the cut for IAPs would certainly go a long way to addressing the long-standing complaint from content companies like Spotify that Apple takes too much of their fees, given that those are charged through IAPs. And it would potentially open the door to Amazon’s arrival on the Apple TV too.
via MacStories
Amazon Video App May Finally Come to Apple TV in Q3 (May 5, 2017)
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App Annie Reports People Spend More Time in Apps, Use 10/Day, 30/Month (May 5, 2017)
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Apple Provides Better Source Insights to App Developers (May 4, 2017)
Apple has been criticized for not giving developers good enough insights on how their apps perform and especially for not allowing developers to know where new users come from. That’s now changing with an update to Apple’s analytics platform for developers, which will be particularly useful in light of the paid ads which now run in Apple’s App Store search function. Developers need to know whether those ads are being effective in gaining new users and downloads, and how they measure up relative to other lead generation methods. The incremental steps Apple has taken to expand the range of business models open to developers, to share more of the revenue with those developers, and to improve analytics over the past couple of years are all checking important boxes in the wish lists of developers and cementing the status of iOS as the platform to develop for, despite Android’s larger user numbers.
via TechCrunch
Facebook Rolls Out Instant Games and Other Features from F8 on Messenger (May 2, 2017)
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Apple Watch Loses Google Maps, Amazon, eBay Apps (May 1, 2017)
This piece does a good job digging up the news that several iPhone apps from high-profile names have quietly ditched their Apple Watch companion apps. I’m seeing some spin this as a sign that the Apple Watch isn’t working for people, but the reality is that we’re seeing two rather different things at play here. Firstly, apps on the Apple Watch were one of the big misjudgments on Apple’s part: as a group, they really haven’t taken off, not least because in their first couple of iterations they were painfully slow to use. Performance of apps has improved markedly in watchOS 3 and on the Series 2 hardware, but that leaves us with problem number two: many of the apps launched for the Watch simply don’t provide enough utility either on a standalone basis or as alternatives to the iOS versions to be worthwhile. And what we’re seeing now is some of those failed experiments going by the wayside.
We’re still figuring out what works and what doesn’t on the Watch, although a glance at the official App Store for the Watch gives you some idea of what Apple thinks: health and fitness apps dominate the first screen, followed by games, news, sports, and finally utilities. Apple obviously has its own play for navigation, which works particularly well for walking directions, and the Amazon and eBay apps were always a bit of a stretch. The eBay app is a great example of a use case that doesn’t actually need its own app but can work perfectly fine with interactive notifications or a widget on the iPhone. So we’re likely to continue to see apps come and go from the Watch, not least because developers now have many possible areas of investment around iOS apps, including watchOS, tvOS, iPad support, support for the unique hardware features on the iPad Pro line, and so on. As such, some are likely very wise to prioritize other features and platforms over the Apple Watch, while others will do well putting their investment on people’s wrists.
via Apple Insider
Apple Partners with Musical.ly, Supplying Songs and Promoting Apple Music (Apr 28, 2017)
Musical.ly is one of the few big app hits in recent years that didn’t come from one of the big established players and isn’t a game, while also being that rare example of a Chinese tech company that’s done well in the West. It’s popular with teenagers, who use the app to create short music videos using original songs, and Apple will now be the supplier of those songs, replacing a small UK-based provider. It will also therefore be able to promote Apple Music within the service, and will integrate with Apple Music for paying subscribers. Recode notes that the app has declined in popularity recently as measured by App Store rankings, but the reality is that its ranking has been extremely volatile, rising as high as 11th and as low as 92nd over the past six months. That volatility is driven almost entirely by the day of the week, with the app peaking over the weekend and dropping during the week – had Recode written its piece last Saturday, for example, the app would have been ranked #41. Given Musical.ly’s popularity within its target segment, Apple is smart to strike a partnership that allows it both to drive additional revenue and market to the app’s users. I’m almost surprised Apple didn’t just acquire the company and app outright, given Apple’s recent investment in creative and content apps with News, Music, and Clips.
via Recode
Facebook Expands Messenger Lite to 150 More Countries (Apr 27, 2017)
Facebook Lite has been a critical element of Facebook’s recent growth, so pushing the Lite version of Messenger to more countries is a key priority too, since it’s only been in a handful of countries so far. Some of these 150 new countries are the emerging markets where the product is particularly useful because of bandwidth constraints and costs, but also included are mature markets like Germany, Japan, and the Netherlands, though not the US as far as I can tell. This should help keep the growth in Messenger going for a good while longer, because emerging markets are going to make up an increasingly proportion of user growth at Facebook going forward.
via TechCrunch
Instagram Announces 100m New Users in 4 Months on Day Twitter Announces 9m in Three (Apr 26, 2017)
It’s hard to avoid the sense that Facebook is trying to rain on Twitter’s parade here. It’s announced that Instagram now has 700 million monthly active users, up from 600 million in December, which means it’s added 100 million users in just a little over the time it took Twitter to add nine million. It previously announced that Instagram Stories has 200 million users, up from the 150 million it had shared earlier, and attributed the growth in the core Instagram user base in part to an improved signup flow. But Instagram has also benefited from strong adoption in emerging markets, including Brazil, which is its second largest market after the US, with 45 million users. That’s in marked contrast to Snapchat, which has emphasized primarily mature markets on the basis that emerging markets users have more constrained and expensive bandwidth and would be less likely to use a visually intensive app like Snapchat. And of course Facebook’s other apps continue to grow rapidly too: Messenger and WhatsApp are now both over 1.2 billion, while the core app will likely hit 2 billion in the next quarter or two.
via TechCrunch
Apple Reduces App Affiliate Fees from 7% to 2.5% With a Week’s Notice (Apr 24, 2017)
I noted this change myself this morning as I’m part of the affiliate program at Apple (we’ve very occasionally linked to the App Store and iTunes Store from the Beyond Devices Podcast site). The change affects app and in-app purchases, and represents both a short notice and significant reduction to the commissions affiliates have been paid in the past, without any kind of explanation or justification from Apple. There are several possible explanations: Apple could be adjusting this cut downward ahead of a reduction in its cut on apps and in-app purchases to be announced at WWDC in just over a month; it could have decided that too many companies are gaming the system, e.g. by linking to their own apps on the store and taking a bigger cut; it may have decided that it would rather foster better discoverability on the App Store than have third parties do it; or it could be something else entirely. Hopefully the other shoe will drop at WWDC – whether in the way I’ve suggested above or in some other way – but it’s entirely possible that we’ll never know. This isn’t a great signal to send people trying to build a business around the App Store, though, because it suggests capriciousness and unpredictability. And especially because it hurts those businesses which – like Apple – have eschewed advertising as a business model largely or entirely because of the tradeoffs it entails.
via MacStories
Apple Makes iMovie, GarageBand, and iWork Apps for Mac and iOS Free for All Users (Apr 18, 2017)
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Tumblr Launches Social Video App With No Connection to Tumblr (Apr 18, 2017)
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Facebook Messenger now has 1.2 billion users, its second messaging app to hit the milestone (Apr 12, 2017)
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Microsoft’s Minecraft Set to Launch its Own Currency – Bloomberg (Apr 10, 2017)
On the face of it, this could look like the in-app purchase model that so many other games have used so successfully over the last few years, which would look like capitulation on the part of Microsoft to the prevailing model. However, even though the article implies towards the end that that’s what’s happening here, this is actually something different. Whereas the classic IAP model often holds progress in the game hostage to the purchase of various items through the medium of in-app currency, Minecraft has always eschewed that model, instead charging a high up-front fee to purchase the game in the first place, with a small number of in-app purchases for specific items. It is now opening up that latter model to a small number of third parties, and while the use of in-game currency as the medium may carry echoes of the classic IAP model, this is something very different. Given the addictive qualities of the IAP model, that’s a very good thing, given that the game’s audience is largely children. The last thing Microsoft wants is for Minecraft to get a reputation for being a sort of Candy Crush for kids, whereas it’s currently known as a game that has at least some educational qualities.
via Bloomberg
Snapchat adds goal-based bidding for app install ads to rival Facebook – Business Insider (Apr 6, 2017)
App-install ads can be a pretty lucrative source of revenue for online advertising platforms, because at least some ads pay out at a high rate for a successful ad-driven installation. Given Snapchat’s lock on a particular demographic, app-install ads could provide useful new revenue and boost its relatively low ARPU. There was a time when app-install ads were thought to account for a pretty significant chunk of Facebook’s overall revenue, though that’s long since passed (and was likely exaggerated even at the time). App-install ads remain a small minority of overall online advertising, so we shouldn’t expect Snapchat’s ad revenue trajectory to change dramatically off the back of this, but it should be useful new revenue nonetheless.
via Business Insider
Apple’s Clips app offers promising & fun editing features, but confusing & difficult UI – 9to5Mac (Apr 6, 2017)
Apple announced the Clips app a couple of weeks ago along with the new iPad and other announcements, and when I commented on that announcement I said the proof would be in the pudding with regard to how well the app performed. We now have reviews (and the app itself is out now too), and it looks like a bit of a mixed bag. The app looks clever, with some nifty new features, but it looks like it may suffer from the same problem as some other Cook-era Apple product releases, in that it seems like it may try to do too much, and therefore can be confusing to use. Here, as with the Apple Watch, Apple Music, and other recent efforts from Apple, it looks like it may have been better served by starting simpler and adding functionality over time. The real test will be whether we start seeing Clips-generated videos showing up in a big way on Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook, because since this app lacks its own social features the output needs to be shared elsewhere. I still suspect, as I said in my first comment, that this is a better fit for the older Facebook generations than the Snapchat and Instagram generation, but we’ll see.
via 9to5Mac
Microsoft launches Sprinkles, a silly camera app powered by machine learning – TechCrunch (Apr 4, 2017)
As I mentioned recently in the context of Microsoft’s Indian AI chatbot, the company appears to be in an experimental mood as regards AI, trying lots of things in lots of separate spaces, without pushing all that hard in any particular direction. There’s nothing wrong with experimentation, but there is a worry that Microsoft both spreads itself a little thin and risks diluting its brand, which has become more focused of late around productivity. There’s an argument to be made that this Sprinkles app fits its other, newer focus on creativity, but it’s probably a bit of a stretch given the minimal ties into any of its other offerings. On the consumer side, Microsoft’s biggest challenge continues to be not just producing compelling offerings but finding ways to monetize them.
via TechCrunch
Facebook will launch group chatbots at F8 – TechCrunch (Mar 29, 2017)
This is yet another sign that Facebook feels its initial bot strategy from last year isn’t panning out (something I predicted at the time) and that it needs to try alternative approaches. It’s iterated fairly rapidly since then and added some functions to make interacting with bots easier, and it now sounds like it’s trying another different tack, allowing developers to integrate bots into group conversations. But those bots won’t be interactive AI-type creatures, but instead will provide updates on events or processes, such as sporting matches or food orders. Like earlier pivots, this seems more modest in its ambitions but also more likely to be successful. But Facebook’s direction here stands in marked contrast to Microsoft’s, which continues to work on AI-based chatbots.
via TechCrunch
App Annie: Android to top iOS in app store revenue this year – TechCrunch (Mar 29, 2017)
This App Annie analysis is interesting for two reasons. Firstly, it’s one of the first times I’ve seen anyone attempt to quantify the whole Android app ecosystem including the third party app stores, which are a factor globally but particularly important in markets like China, where Google Play basically doesn’t exist. That provides a much better view of the whole ecosystem, but of course Google only benefits directly from the part it controls, which is Play. Secondly, though, the forecast that this ecosystem combined will surpass Apple’s app ecosystem by the end of the year is striking because the Android user base has been much larger than the iOS user base for years, and only now is the app ecosystem (on this more inclusive basis) starting to rival Apple’s. That, in turn, is a symptom of just how completely Apple has dominated the premium users within the smartphone market, those who are more likely to pay for content and apps. But all of this is also a great refutation of the idea that apps are somehow dying or about to be replaced with something else – the sheer growth numbers here are astonishing.
via TechCrunch
Google details Talk transition, SMS removal for Hangouts, other G Suite changes – 9to5Google (Mar 24, 2017)
This has been a heck of a long time coming – Google’s various messaging apps have been a confusing mess for ages now, and it’s good to see some rationalization of the portfolio and a bit more clarity about which bits will survive and what they’ll be used for. SMS-style messaging now belongs in the Messages app, which doesn’t have an equivalent on the desktop, while the ages-old Google Talk will finally be retired in favor of Hangouts, which will carry over some but not all of its functionality, with the rest going away. Some users will no doubt be annoyed at some of the lost functionality, but on the whole this should be a good thing for users. Of course, there is still Google Voice, which combines elements of services also found in Hangouts and Messages, so this doesn’t clear things up completely.
via 9to5Google