By Apple sticking the app store in the user’s face, it’s effortless to bring this whole new audience into the world of mobile purchasing. If S60 devices did the same as smoothly, there would undoubtedly be a thousand times more buyers for the apps!

Until that stage, the only way for an app to be even vaguely viable as a revenue-yielding product for the developer, is by having a somewhat higher price per unit.

@WaveyDavey: I’m with you on iFart, the clock and all those other amazingly simple apps that made big bucks for their owners. But again, it was sheer volume of sales, not unit price, that made them “rich”. If every single platform could provide app developers with that immense, purchase-happy clientele, people would develop for all platforms as actively.

Also, re: upgrading yearly: Apps like Gravity allow you to carry the license to your new phone. Simply email the developer who’ll update the IMEI to which your license is assigned. It’s a breeze!

I will give the Twitter client you mentioned a try and will buy it if it blows me away UPDATE: just saw the price and I will not spend USD 10 on a twitter client.. I would have spent 3!

“I keep my fingers tightly crossed that…. ..other mobile platforms will release.. ..app stores… ..making it easier than ever for users to get their mitts on interesting applications”
Damn right. In 18 months of owning a Nokia N95 I bought only one app (Quickoffice when it was reduced to a bargain $1). In less than 6 months I’ve spent 20x that. It is the power of a store.

I have to say this in caps I AM NOT A HUGE APPLE FANBOY OK. But if other platforms are so difficult to deal with development and do not have a useful portal to get to customers then they will lose more and more to Apples, controlling, restrictive platform. The average user just wont see it that way

BTW. I predict that many more apps will become cheap or free under Apples 3.0 Firmware, but with mriced upgrades and enhancements. Pretty smart once again.

“no one expects desktop software companies to sell their app for $5, do they?”
No but I don’t expect the average person to upgrade their PC once a year at the end of a contract & if they did they could normally take their software with them with minimal fuss. Desktop apps normally have hours, months maybe years more development and features and sell to businesses. At home much software either comes with the OS, has home/student pricing or increasingly comes free via open source.

“…disposable, silly apps will go for the price of a chocolate bar.” maybe not just those apps, and what is wrong with that. I understand that one disposable silly app (ifart) was making its owner £9K a day. Another £1.49 game app generated approx £500K as did a clock (source Wired May 09 edition). That may be at the extreme end of the market, but looking at Twitter if you could sell an App to eveyone of Stephen Frys followers, let alone the gazillion other users for a $1 you may not be able to retire, but you might do OK.

At the moment there will always be comparisons with Apple iPhone. They have set such a high standard. As you correctly point out in your post, one of the reasons for cheap iPhone apps, is the strength of their app store, which enables a quick and easy route to market.

The Gravity app is of a very high quality, I’m sure everyone who has tried it will agree, most importantly it’s a high quality native app. Sure there are competing web apps and java apps, but no many actual native twitter apps for s60 wich through updates can leverage more processes in the device OS.

The funniest point of all is the fact that, with the latest beta update, there is now support for groups which, if I’m not mistaken, is only offered by desktop app: Tweetdeck. This makes gravity the most powerful mobile Twitter app on the market currently…a snip for £7.