Ever since Apple’s AppStore caught everybody’s attention with their 15 billion app downloads, we have been caught in an exploding frenzy of third party application stores. The concept is really catchy, because it allows third party developers to build applications and sell them without spending too much time on marketing the apps.
However, things are not hunky-dory with most app stores. Other than the iOS appstore, which really helps developers make serious money (at least some of them), the others mostly suck. The Android app store, which is probably the second biggest store after Apple’s appstore, is quite pathetic when it comes to the amount of revenues it can generate (there are a few people who made money there too). Blackberry is almost insignificant, and I wouldn’t even want to talk about the ones from the telecom operators. I have never met a company or a developer who has made money off the other AppStores, and I doubt if many will.
The thing that brought this post on was this post on MediaNama. Now, I usually ignore news which talks about another AppStore, but this one caught my eye. The article said that this was started by Upasana Taku and Bipin Preet Singh, these guys are also behind ZaakPay, which is undoubtedly one of the hottest startups around.
So, I headed over to MobiKwik via the link on HackerStreet and I think I’m a little disappointed. It’s a single page before you sign up, and even though there are 11 points about why one should sign up, there are only a few things which you can’t see in most places. These are some of them – You can withdraw your payments anytime, a security mechanism to prevent piracy and that the developer has full control over the look and feel of the app pages.
I’m sure there are a ton of things I still don’t know about the MobiKwik AppStore and given their history, I’m sure Bipin and Upasana will over time turn it into something worthwhile. I wish them the best of luck.
But at the same time, as a developer, it’s time to define a set of rules based on which we can define if we should be submitting apps to that store or not. So here we go
1. SALES
It is the job of the AppStore to mention HOW and how MANY sales are they making. The HOW defines how the company is marketing their AppStore and what are they doing to promote it. How MANY will define what kind of sales are they already making. If you can’t share exact numbers, you need to tell us how is the top developer doing on your network. I would like to see links and testimonials to people who are using it and are making money there, so that the developers and the bloggers can go and talk to them to see if they are really making money.
2. PAYMENTS
The MobiKwik AppStore makes it quite clear that they allow devs to withdraw payments to bank accounts as soon as possible, however as we all know things are not as simple with the Indian Government. If I’m going to make serious money on an AppStore, I need to know how is Service tax going to handled, and what about TDS. What happens when somebody in the US purchases via the AppStore. Also, if the way we withdraw money will change, how much time notice will we get.
3. PRIVACY
I need to know what exact steps are being taken to prevent piracy because I do not want to spend 3 months building an application which is going to be cracked in 3 days. If the stores targets multiple operating systems, can you ensure that the app won’t be cracked. If you say that it won’t and then it does, can I sue you?
4. LITIGATION
As we have seen with Lodsys, I want to know that if somebody sues me for using a service that the AppStore provides, how exactly will you help us. Many of the patents these days are generic enough to be targeted at any Store. If you’re not going to do anything, tell me before I start selling.
5. POLICY CHANGES
If your policy is going to change, how much notice will I be given so that I can adapt to it. For example, the Amazon AppStore for Android started a Free App A Day promotion, in which there were going to give the app out for free, and pay the developer 20% of the price of the app for the same duration. However, they just changed the policy about paying developers and there were developers who sold 1,00,000 copies of their app, without making a single rupee.
I guess these are good enough to start out with. If you’re selling apps on any AppStore other than iOS and Android, I would love to hear about the kind of issues you face.
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