App Store pricing is back in the news again. These lines from Florian Kugler, quoted by Vinny Coyne, caught my attention.
We’re in the business of creating products which offer very little value to people. It’s our choice if that’s what we want to pursue.
No. A million times no. This may be merely splitting semantic hairs, but the idea that the product you create offers little value to your customer is not only wrongheaded but cancerously so. If someone goes to the trouble of downloading and using your product then it must have value for them. The problem is that they perceive it as having little value, in a way taking it for granted. I have lost track of the number of people I work with — people who make their living designing, pitching and managing the production of app — acting shocked and outraged when they discover developers charging for apps. These are people who know how much work goes into the creation of an app, both in terms of time and money. And yet they still treat the final result of all this work as being worthless. The problem of app value is one of perception, and it's a problem which the developer community needs to address.
