Several obvious copyright ignoring apps have recently gotten a lot of downloads... For example the "Mario and Friends" soundboard made it to #1 or #2 in top paid apps, and a simple slide Mario to pick up mushrooms game was in the top 10 RPGs for the longest time. Do you think the devs were still paid for all their ill-gotten earnings? If so, I may have a new business plan! <evil grin> Can anyone confirm if they were still paid for an app that was pulled? (I still maintain that my "WoW Dancers" app falls within acceptable use as a parody... I got a complaint from Apple, but the app is still up heheh)
apple is not the judge of ill-gotten earnings. as a developer you will still be paid for any application sales you make. if the copyright holder wants to make a claim, they need to settle with the developer directly, apple is not at all involved. if you have money owed, you need to probably release a new app to get to the $150 threshold that apple has for each region of the apple market place.
I'm not a lawyer, but I'd imagine you are liable for any copyright infringement rulings that go against you.
the majority of companies are quite happy for a cease and desist and do not press for damages, their main focus is protecting their trademark. then again; if you build a business model around something like this and one of them does sue for damages; your "profits" will quickly go away. keep in mind; apple still wins. they get to keep the 30% they took when the payment is made.. talk about a great business model
Yes but you're forgetting that "Mario Walk" had a 12 day run on the RPG charts, which is about 1500 - 2000 sales a day for potential $16,800 profit. "Mario & Friends" soundboard was high on the Top App charts for 10 days before being pulled. Let's say you can get 8000 downloads a day, that is $56,000 profit. When it hit the charts they also did some neat tricks like boasting about their "sale" but actually increasing the price to $1.99 and $2.99... It became painfully obvious that most people don't read the full description, or the large number of 1 star reviews, they just see Mario, see $0.99, click buy... So now will we see a new influx of overseas scammers setting up a $99 dev account to try to pull in these iPhone riches? It's strange that Apple now rejects apps if it contains an image that looks too much like a Polaroid picture, yet they let tons of Mario apps through... But you are right, Apple is the real winner here
maybe at some point - the overseas developers just wont get approved. who knows what will happen. if you are setup to scam, it is bad business for everyone. to make matters worse; if you want to report an infringement; you cannot do it on behalf of someone - the copyright holder must contact apple. so, if you want to report bad dealings or people exploiting something - contact the owners of the trademark/copyright direct and suggest they contact apple and enforce their rights. the Mario guys probably got off well - Nintendo rarely pushes for damages; maybe they should in the most obvious cases. some cases are however, unclear and could end up in court for months at a time. it costs money to prosecute as well.. maybe $20K isn't worth the effort.
Well not exactly. Apple still need to cover transaction fees, hosting costs, bandwidth fees, App store staff wages, and subsidize it with those fees associated with free apps as well. 30% is actually quite low. Most other portals are on a 50/50 basis, or Xbox Arcade is 30/70 in some cases (that's 70% Microsoft gets). If be surprised if Apple are making a huge amount of profit off the App store.
I'm sure Apple is turning profit, simply based on volume of purchases (app store being just one). Apple, at this point, has a larger online purchasing base than XBox, with music sales, etc.... All those serivces are probably sharing bandwidth, etc... That they're not following the game industry standards (or Music for that matter) for profit margins, has more to do with the Apple business model as opposed to the standard for entertainment. Steve Jobs may be many things, but stupid in business isn't one of his faults. Cheers, Galen
i beg to differ around them not making money. i've been in this industry for many years - VISA transactions can be as low as 2%; many websites offer pure payment services for as little as 11% (www.esellerate.net). in the old palm os days; sites used to split 80/20 (80% to dev).. the fact that there is no competition; means that apple doesn't need to spend money on marketing and advertising that they were not already doing with their "product line" apple does perform approval checks; but we all know that most of that has been automated lately - which is why most of the turn around times are much faster. you have to also keep in mind that apple earns $99 a year from every developer that maintains an active itunesconnect account as well.. which, is quite a large chunk of cash if you consider how many developers there are registered.
when apple first announced the 70/30 split - we immediately started to place bets as to when they'll realize they can make it 60/40 or 50/50 and change the agreements in place and screw over the developer. i am surprised it has not happened already - which is a good sign from apple. i think the second they did it - they would lose a lot of developers.. i for one; would focus on other more interesting things - so much more interesting technology is being worked on, most just are not aware of it yet.. in the circles i attend; the iPad is just an overgrown iPod Touch - absolutely no innovation or anything special to get excited about. time to get your apple fan-boy hats off.
Apple is a publicly traded company, and according to their latest earnings report, they are pretty much just breaking even on the AppStore...
