Report: Piracy has cost Apple, iPhone devs $450 million

I buy my apps, the developers deserve to get reimbursed for thier time and effort, but I live in an area without Att service and have an ipod touch. I am not happy that they may be selling games I could otherwise have and play but can not because I cant login to a site anytime I want to use the products I paid for.

I understand that 1 pirated copy =/= 1 sold copy, but the fact still remains that these developers have a *job*, and that job is to make games that can be *sold*. Don't these people have a right to earn money so that can live? If these games don't sell, they're out of a job and out in the wild in a very tough job market, thanks to the economy.

I'll say it: pirating is wrong. We shouldn't do it. Yeah, I know companies like Activision et al are evil bastards and all that, but the fact still remains that the developers making the game deserve to make a living for themselves for making the games you love to play.

This is the most disgusting issue which no one will expect even in their nightmare. Theses are the most common things in this arena. But I find no clue that how these half mad clowns have messed it up.

I've paid for every single app I decided to buy for my iPhone, however, this statement is misleading: "Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconagh estimates that the App store has had three billion items downloaded by users since its inception, with only 13 to 21 percent (510 million) of those downloads being paid Apps"

This has been the case since the inception of the app store and the margin between paid apps downloaded and free apps downloaded only grows wider as more apps are added to the store.

One of my good friends was all stoked about putting his programming skills to work to make cheap iPhone goods until he started doing his research about the return on investment he'd see. The numbers were staggering and there is a huge disparity in the number of paid apps sold vs. free apps downloaded. As it was put: There are very few people who will become successful as app developers and make hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, many people who will earn a thousand or two dollars as app developers, and many more people who won't ever see enough money to cover the cost of development.

Why is this gap between free and paid so steep? Here's just a couple of reasons: The app store is clogged with apps and has a clunky interface that doesn't guide users to them very well. There are, perhaps, too many apps on the app store, many of which are either specialized for one limited use with lots of competitors or have free versions which have acceptable levels of use over the paid version, thus giving little incentive to people to pay for any of them. Selling an app for 99 cents or $1.99 is unprofitable to an independent app developer after you factor in Apple's "cut" unless they are lucky enough to make the next Skee-Ball and sell hundreds of thousands, yet most people are turned off as soon as an app from an unknown publisher goes above the 1.99 price point.

Paid apps only account for 13-21%? I believe that completely.
To imply that the margin is solely due to piracy? Misleading.

"When I first got my iPhone I spent $50 on apps that ended up being complete shit" Yeah, but at least it was legal? Don't want this - don't buy an Iphone.

I am an app developer. My app retails for $20 and serves a specific role for filmakers. I too wish there was a "Demo" option in the app store. I know for a fact that more people would buy out app if they could demo it. As for piracy, based on our tracking, we can tell that 55% of the people who have our app installed have pirated versions. That's a fair chuck of our "sales". However, if you look at how many of those people actually USE the app the number drops to 30%. So just because someone installs the app does not mean they would have purchased it in the first place. I would rather someone steal a copy of my software, try it, if it is not what they expected, delete it or whatever, than buy it for $20 be disapointed because it is a specific tool for filmmakers and they have little use for it, then go on the app store and flame it because it does not do what they thought it would do.

Now, 30% of the people who have pirated versions of our software use it. They are not our enemy, they are not basement dwellers. They are most likely savvy film students who have jailbroken their phones and dont have a dime to thier name because they are saving for a piece of hardware we sell. Whatever. These are the demographic who talks, tweets, blogs. So it all works out. They will eventually kick us $20 if they like the app or maybe buy somthing else we sell. No big deal. What bothers me most are the people who think they are getting away with somthing. What they don't know is that we know who they are....

Frankly, if you were "smart" enough to buy into the iphone, you deserve to be ripped off.

Or you could do a little homework and see if the app you want is any good, you know, user reviews, I'm sure there are dedicated sites that cover most of the major apps. Oh, are you one of those ignorant shoppers I see at Best Buy who are too stupid to do any research for themselves (I don't have anything against these Best Buy shoppers, but I'm trying to chose a group that pirates look down on)? Or is it ok to not bother with research when you can download it for free and pretend like it's some kind of herculean trial to spend a minute on the internet seeing if the app is worthwhile.

You know, from reading a few comments on here, it's amazing the kind of things some people will put up with from Apple for no real reason, best I can figure.

I bet you people also like Jay Leno.

It's a bad idea to report on a story that has made up numbers. I wish you folks in the media would actually research things before just posting up whatever someone sends you. You're not monkeys. Do your job correctly.

http://www.tuaw.com/2010/01/13/pirates-make-away-with-450-million-in-app-store-booty/

$200-400+monthly fees for an iPhone/Pod = no problem

$1-10 for a legitimate copy of a game = preposterous

Lol seeing all the hate comments here are funny.

I don't support piracy in case you wondered.

Discussion is clearly getting us nowhere.

theoretical internet dollars do not count as lost money.

I'm against piracy, I support the cracking down on piracy, and I do not pirate games myself, but these statistics are complete bullshit.

Just because a million people pirated your game doesn't mean that all those million people would have paid for it if they couldn't physically pirate it. That's like saying all the physical things that get stolen ever year would be paid for by the thieves who took them if they couldn't physically steal them.

Would sales increase if piracy was nonexistent? Sure. Does that mean that some of these pirates would legitimately be paying for these games then? Sure. But it wouldn't be anywhere remotely close to all of them. Not even close to half for that matter.

In other words, cry me a fucking river Apple.

If you look closely you can read this on every ipod. "Proudly designed by Apple in California, Poorly made by slaves in china" Karma is a bitch.