“App Store tops 40 billion downloads” trumpets Apple in a media release curiously timed to coincide with the opening of the Consumer Electronics Show.
While impressive, those figures aren’t great for developers. As writer Ed Bott points out they are getting 17.5 cents per download.
Making things worse, that return is trending downwards. Tech site Giga Om put the return at 20 cents a year earlier.
Giga Om also points out App Store returns are skewed towards the big successful game apps, meaning the majority of app developers are scratching for pennies.
This phenomenon is also happening with online advertising as Google Adsense partners find their income dwindling for pay for click adverts.
On top of declining revenues, there’s the cut that Google and Apple take. In the App Store, Apple’s take is 30% while Google pocket over 50% of Adsense revenue.
Working for pennies has become the norm for for creators like musicians, writers and app developers in the digital economy. The long tail is fine, but it barely pays the bills for all but a few outliers. Everyone else needs a day job.
In some respects this isn’t new – writers, poets, musicians and painters have generally starved in their garrets throughout history – but the Twentieth Century model of intellectual property, record labels and broadcast empires offered at least a decent living to many.
Right now the 21st Century model seems to be that creators can go back to starving, while the big four online conglomerates make the profits previously shared around by the movie studios, record labels and book publishers.
Maybe though the rivers of gold which are making Apple and Google’s managers rich may turn out to be just as vulnerable as those of the newspapers they’ve displaced.
It may well be that the current dominance of the App Store and Adsense are a transition effect as we move to other business models. It’s difficult to see right now, but we can’t rule it out.