One Developer is Putting a Bunch of Garbage in BlackBerry's App Store

Ronen Halevy, over at BerryReview:

As of this article BlackBerry World is reporting that S4BB has over 47,000+ Apps in BlackBerry World. The first 20-30 actually seem like good to decent quality legitimate apps and then it rapidly goes downhill.

Nothing quite like a bunch of spammy apps to ruin your app store's credibility as a place that interests users and developers alike.  Considering that BlackBerry World doesn't have very many apps, relatively speaking, this is a bad sign for the platform's long term viability.

It feels like the BlackBerry 10 event was AGES ago.

Pay for Your Apps, Folks, or We All Suffer the Consequences

Gentlemen! , available on the iTunes App Store and Google Play, is the latest example of how tough the app development business can be. The app has received some very good reviews for its unique style and gameplay. According to Killian Bell at Cult of Android, the developers of Gentlemen! have noted that the game "has over 6,000 players on Android". Sounds great, right? 6,000 players is a nice number for the early days of an app. The problem is that of all those people that have played the game, only 50 people paid for it. 

Let that sink in for a while. Fewer than 1% of the people who downloaded and played the game were paying customers. To put it another way, over 99% of the game's players were freeloaders. 

As I've noted before, creating an app isn't necessarily the path to riches. However, this is ridiculous. The game is priced at roughly $3 in both stores, which isn't a large amount of money by any measure. There really isn't a good reason for this game to be pirated so much when the price is low and the quality is high. By not paying for the game, the message sent to the developers is that it either isn't worth their time to develop the game or that they must employ the sleazy techniques used in many freemium games.

Folks,  we all want to play good games. The best way to ensure that new good games are created is to pay for them.

'Bang with Friends' is No Longer on the App Store

Jennifer Van Grove, over at CNET:​

The application, though eyebrow-raising in name, isn't as offensive as it would seem -- unless the word bang bothers you. BWF is essentially a matching service that connects two Facebook friends who indicate that they are "Down to Bang" each other.

It isn't immediately clear why Apple decided to remove Bang with Friends from the App Store. There are a few App Store app guidelines that might conceivably have been violated by Bang with Friends.​

Objectionable Content: There are a ​couple of guidelines related to rejecting apps that are excessively objectionable or whose primary purpose is to upset users, but these don't seem to necessarily fit the bill. Bang with Friends surely couldn't be more offensive than some of the other 'hook up' apps.

Pornography​: There are some guidelines regarding erotica or user content that is often pornographic, but as far as I know Bang with Friends (despite its crude name) doesn't actually involve this type of material.

Legal Requirements​: There is a guideline that refers to rejecting apps that encourage reckless behavior, but that also does not seem to fit. Sexual promiscuity may not necessarily be advisable, but surely does not fit the requirements necessary to be regarded as 'reckless'.

​After further review, it is still unclear as to why Apple decided to remove Bang with Friends from the App Store. Apple has recently been cracking down on apps for various reasons (many of them good reasons), but as many developers can attest to, Apple's review process can be mercurial​, to say the least.

​Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57585116-93/apple-removes-bang-with-friends-from-app-store/

Creating an App Is Not Necessarily the Path to Riches

Tim Worstall, in an article for Forbes:

Another number we can gain from this is that the average app, over its lifetime, earns around $9,000. That’s the mean though: the median would be much much lower. For we’ve very much got a power law going on here. A few apps are making tens of millions, one or two over $100 million, and most make nothing at all (obviously so for the free ones) or close to it even if they’re trying to charge.

The era of creating an app and instantly striking it rich is largely over. There will of course be exceptions, but it will be increasingly difficult to create an app that rises above the hundreds of thousands of apps available on the App Store. Likewise, the 'race to the bottom' for app prices makes it more difficult to make money.

It's not all gloom and doom, however. The proliferation of better tools, a plethora of open source components, and plenty of backend service providers means that it is easier and quicker than ever to create an app. The key, of course, is to come up with that next great idea and execute on it.

Looks like Japan Has an International App Hit

Michael Fitzpatrick from Fortune writes:

What do you get if you cross emoting, goofy manga characters with free messaging and calls? Japan's only export app hit—called Line—which recently hit its 100 millionth download.

I just so happen to know some folks that use this app. While anecdotal evidence is scant evidence at best, it at least provides a single data point (at least personally).

I'm fairly impressed by how well this app has done in the international (i.e. external to Japan) market. I can think of many apps that have relatively wide global appeal (Facebook and Twitter come immediately to mind), but none that have come from the Land of the Rising Sun. In this case, it looks as if Line has found the right blend of app features.