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Apple Mac App Store: 100 million downloads and a model to emulate

By | December 12, 2011, 6:10am PST

Summary: Apple certainly is allowed to thump its chest over the Mac App Store, but the far larger experiment will the Microsoft’s Windows 8 store.

Software distribution is soon going to look a lot like Apple’s Mac App Store. The company said that more than 100 million apps have been downloaded in less than a year.

Overall, the Mac App Store has emulated the iTunes App Store.

Apple certainly is allowed to thump its chest over the Mac App Store, but the far larger experiment will the Microsoft’s Windows store. With the launch of Windows 8, Microsoft will feature a store for its so-called “Metro-style” apps. In a nutshell, apps that use the tile themes will be on the store.
Also see:

Microsoft has a much larger market share footprint for Windows. Assuming Windows 8 takes off, the app store model common in the mobile industry is likely to take over traditional computing as well.

The beta for the Windows 8 app store launches in February. The only real wild-card for the Windows effort is whether Metro apps take off. Windows 7-like applications won’t be included in the store.

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Topics

Apple Macintosh, Apple Inc., Microsoft Windows 8, Microsoft Windows, Operating Systems, Desktops, Software, Hardware, Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic.

Disclosure

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan has nothing to disclose. He doesn’t hold investments in the technology companies he covers.

Biography

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic. He was most recently Executive Editor of News and Blogs at ZDNet. Prior to that he was executive news editor at eWeek and news editor at Baseline. He also served as the East Coast news editor and finance editor at CNET News.com. Larry has covered the technology and financial services industry since 1995, publishing articles in WallStreetWeek.com, Inter@ctive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning magazine. He's a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and the University of Delaware.

For daily updates, follow Larry on Twitter.

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RE: Apple Mac App Store: 100 million downloads and a model to emulate
Philb3 13th Dec
Most of those 100 million downloads will be for rubbish. Anyway Apple will work out a way to sue MS for emulating 'their' app store. No way do they take competition lying down.
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Translation time
Mikael_z Updated - 12th Dec
"Apple can boast about all they want over their huge success. You just wait, and wait, and wait.. Our store will be bigger, better and much more popular! You'll see!"

It sounds like the usual vaporware to me.
To instead watch the trends, what people actually have wanted this far, and how bad Microsoft's alternative has been this far, is Microsoft toast.
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Apple is MS's R&D Dept once again
jaypeg 12th Dec
@Mikael_z

What will be most interesting is watching the rate of customer complaints as they pour in over bad installs caused by driver and registry errors. There's a reason the Apple App stores work so well.
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RE: Apple Mac App Store: 100 million downloads and a model to emulate
DJK2 12th Dec
Can't wait for the Win App store!
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RE: Apple Mac App Store: 100 million downloads and a model to emulate
lorenzosjb 12th Dec
What I like about apps stores is that they can control piracy and lower prices.
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At least you've got one for two
voyager529 12th Dec
@lorenzosjb

Sure, they'll curb piracy...but you're delusional if you think that big-time software houses would rather pass their savings on to their customers as opposed to executive bonuses.

Go ahead. Prove me wrong.

Joey
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You are wrong! Of course...
adornoe@... 12th Dec
Look, you fail to understand the free market system.

The free market is about "what the market will bear" and, if a corporation prices its products out of the reach of most consumers, or out of the reach of their particular market, then that corporation will fail. If a corporation is more worried about executive salaries and executive bonuses than about making or keeping their consumers happy, then it's going to fail there too. If a consumer finds a product to be overly expensive, then that consumer will go elsewhere for that product, or will skip that kind of product completely. It doesn't matter what the cause, whether corporate greed or wrongheaded product/service decisions.

So, did you thing that, playing the class card was going to go unchallenged or that it would make you sound so knowledgeable about economic matters?

Good thing you aren't in a big corporate responsibility anywhere.
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RE: Apple Mac App Store: 100 million downloads and a model to emulate
ScorpioBlue 12th Dec
@voyager529

Only in an idealized, trickle down free-enterprise world would @adornoe@... spew such fantasized horsesh!t.
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Let's hope it is not a model to emulate
veit@... Updated - 12th Dec
Remember: In the Mac AppStore, once you updated to a newer version of a product, you can never go back. E.g., Apple "fixed" Keynote and removed the "Export-with-transparent-background" feature in version 5.1 (and has not brought it back in 5.1.1). If you rely on this feature (as we do), there's no way back to an earlier version, unless you bought the software from a non-AppStore source and you kept copies of previous updates, so you can reinstall everything.
I know I oversimplify here, but consumerization is (considered to be) good for everyone except for production professionals (such as us) and super-users...
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A model to oppose violently
johnfenjackson@... Updated - 12th Dec
... you want to pay a 30% tax?

The 30% tax is pure greed. I think Intel should charge Apple and M$ 30% for using their CPU platform. I think disk vendors should charge Apple and M$ 30% for using their platform. I think W3 should charge Apple and M$ 30% for using their standards.

I have no intention whatsoever of paying the 30% tax.
I can't understand why the whole world is not up in arms against the idea.
If the Government proposed such a measure there would be a revolution!

I'm hoping there will be a vendor-independent store funded by minimal ads.
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RE: Apple Mac App Store: 100 million downloads and a model to emulate
mjardeen@... Updated - 12th Dec
@johnfenjackson@... Wow, could you be any more inane than this? Seriously think for a minute -- does Apple have no cost? Every company builds in a margin and the 30% is not the margin. It is also no where near the highest. Do you actually think that milk cost $3.75 a gallon, that the shirt you wear really cost $24.99? Do you think that Intel doesn't have margin built in? Apple charges what it can charge. You have the right to buy elsewhere and buy different products. So did you enjoy the MS monopoly and the Windows tax they inflicted on the entire industry? Apple does not have a monopoly. The whole world isn't up in arms because it's what people call doing business, welcome to reality.

The irony is that for your so called 30% tax, you get software at a lower price, easier access to that software, and more profits for software creators -- perhaps that's why they couldn't care less. In the end those who adapt survive and thrive, the rest just die.
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RE: Apple Mac App Store: 100 million downloads and a model to emulate
jokila 12th Dec
@mjardeen@... +1 However, @johnfenjackson@... is probably too busy at the Occupy base camp convincing people to eschew capitalism to see your response.
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RE: Apple Mac App Store: 100 million downloads and a model to emulate
deusexmachina  13th Dec
@jokila
In NO way shape or form is the occupy movement anti-capitalism. Well, no more so than Adam Smith was. In fact, the main thrust of the movement is to support common-sense regulations that Adam Smith himself championed in "Wealth of Nations".
You know who Adam Smith is, right?
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RE: Apple Mac App Store: 100 million downloads and a model to emulate
nick@... 12th Dec
@johnfenjackson@... I am not up in arms because the cost of apps in the app stores is considerably less than what I used to pay at retail and I am guessing retail stores had at least 30% markup on most titles. Markup is nothing new.

Like brick and morter stores that provide a retail presence and salesmen, app stores have servers for storage, staff that evaluates every app and marketing staff that promote apps. They deserve to get their cut for performing these services.

I do disagree with them getting a cut from in-app purchases. I don't see where they provide any value in that transaction in the case of Amazon books/magazines.
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RE: Apple Mac App Store: 100 million downloads and a model to emulate
global.philosopher 12th Dec
@nick@... "cut from in-ap purchases"....isn't that a iOS App Store issue...not a Mac App Store issue?
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RE: Apple Mac App Store: 100 million downloads and a model to emulate
mjardeen@... 12th Dec
@nick@... Simple, I will just give my software away for free and then make the purchase in-app -- now that money is all mine. It's a simple way for Apple to stop people from abusing it. If other companies can't deal with it, then they need to find a way to adapt to it.

Does Walmart allow me to go into their store, set up a stand and then sell my goods with no money going to them? It really is that simple.
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OPPOSE VIOLENTLY? so don't buy from ANYBODY because everyone takes a cut!
Davewrite Updated - 12th Dec
@johnfenjackson@...

LOL!

you think brick and mortar stores don't take a percentage? They provide their stores for free?

Big retail chains not only take a margin from sales they also often charge manufacturers a rate for 'renting' shelf space!! i.e if you want to sell cereal not only do you sell it at $1.00 (or whatever to the chain store) and they sell it at 3.75 but you also have to pay Chain Store extra for the privilege i.e you sell it at 75 cents ( minus say 25 cents for shelf rental). But then again if the big Chain sells your stuff in thousands of stores you might make millions of bucks. Bidding for shelf space is cut throat (some suppliers bid millions of dollars before a single sale) . Suppliers bid $$ for shelf space.

After everybody pissed on Apple for 30% now Google etc is ALSO charging 30 % ...

Even most CHARITIES take a cut from donations for Administration costs!

jeez..
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30% is actually very reasonable. If you go through a distributer, you
baggins_z 12th Dec
generally have to do a 40-10-10 discount (which works out to about 55%). If sell direct to retail, you generally have to do between a 40 and 50% discount depending on the size and purchasing power of the retail outlet.
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RE: Apple Mac App Store: 100 million downloads and a model to emulate
jt59 12th Dec
windows 8 is wrong it is made to spy on us the usa people that have do wrong they get all we do on the computer and on our cell phones that is wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong
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Wrong, wrong, wrong!
adornoe@... 12th Dec
Look, stay away from computers and from the internet and anything that is even remotely electronic and that could be spying on you. In fact, stay inside your home, or cave, and don't wander outside, where satellites might be spying on everything you do. See that black SUV over there? Well, it could be full of "men in black" watching your every step. Go hide! Quick!
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RE: Apple Mac App Store: 100 million downloads and a model to emulate
NotPaidToSayThis 12th Dec
30% is a low take for a distributor of packaged software but high for electronic distribution.

In the packaged software era, most mass market software developers had to spend time and money designing and producing DVD's, unread manuals, and eye-catching boxes. Then they had to distribute through outfits that would take a long time or forever to pay them because of the theoretical possibility of consumer returns. Piracy was rampant in some product categories. Good riddance to physical distribution.

Developers have long had access to services like Kagi and PayPal that handle aspects of electronic distribution. Their fees are low. But they distribute license codes, not applications and installers. And they don't offer customers a uniform rating and review service, a product catalog or an automatic update service.

Many developers distribute both ways: through their own website with the help of a payment service, and through the Mac App Store.
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RE: Apple Mac App Store: 100 million downloads and a model to emulate
arminw 12th Dec
In almost all commerce it is usually better to sell 100,000 copies of a product for $10 than 1000 copies for $1000 each. This is especially true for digital distribution of software, where duplication costs are essentially zero. Someone who really wants to have a particular piece of software, is much more likely to pirate $1000 software, but will very likely spend $10 for a legitimate copy from a safe app store. Someone about to invest a substantial sum of money has to be reasonably sure that the product will be suitable. If after having spent a considerable sum of money for a nonreturnable product that doesn't do the job, the company that sold that product will have lost a customer for life. However, if the product only cost $10 and turns out to be unsuitable, most people won't be too upset. Low App Store prices allow customers to experiment with various solutions, without losing a big pile of money for a wrong purchase. I sincerely hope that Microsoft is better at copying Apple in this than it has been in the past.
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RE: Apple Mac App Store: 100 million downloads and a model to emulate
UrNotPayingAttention 12th Dec
Apple certainly is allowed to thump its chest over the Mac App Store, but the far larger experiment will the Microsoft???s Windows 8 store.

I'm sorry, I stopped reading after this ill constructed Summary sentence at the beginning of the article.
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RE: Apple Mac App Store: 100 million downloads and a model to emulate
dazzlingd 13th Dec
60M Mac users download 100M Mac Apps.

With a ratio of 1.67 apps per user, sounds like a real success to me...
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RE: Apple Mac App Store: 100 million downloads and a model to emulate
Philb3 13th Dec
Most of those 100 million downloads will be for rubbish. Anyway Apple will work out a way to sue MS for emulating 'their' app store. No way do they take competition lying down.

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