Kevin Drum:

The problem for the app market is that smartphone (and tablet) apps are so cheap that there's no way their makers will ever make substantial amounts of money. A few days ago I bought my most expensive app ever: $9.99 for Photoshop Touch. That's a lot! But Photoshop for a PC or a Mac will set you back about $400. Adobe would have to sell a helluva lot of copies of Touch for it to ever be a serious money spinner for them.

No, Adobe isn't going to make a lot of money on their $9.99 app - not by Adobe's money standards of anyway. But, Adobe does know that cheap - or even free - tools can do a good job of keeping your company's name in front of people. For example, what's that free tool which is constantly updating itself, which I hate, but which I just can't escape? Adobe Flash? No not that one... Adobe Reader! Yeah. That one.

Adobe aside, most app writers are small shops - and a lot are just one developer who does it for fun. And for an enterprise that size, a steady stream of small money is good money - and I know of what I speak.

Developers like me are the people who can make money off small sales. I made a hell of a side income for the last 15 years or so, selling PC apps for $24.95 a shot. For most of that time, I was doing three or four thousand dollars in gross sales per month (my biggest month, Jan 2000, was almost $9K in sales). Yes, I paid taxes on that, and accountant fees, and state fees, and internet hosting fees, etc.. But, even after all that, I had a very very nice chunk of money for doing something I enjoyed. No, it wasn't Adobe money, but I'm not Adobe - my business has one employee, who works part time, who doesn't mind skipping a pay check once in a while, and who doesn't need any benefits: me. No, it wasn't enough money that I could quit my day job. But it sure made a nice supplement! Sales are almost zero, these days, since I haven't come up with anything that people want (apparently), in a while. But, it still brings in enough to keep me in new PCs.

And sure, $24.95 is a lot more than most smartphone apps cost. But, it's a different environment - the piracy threat is lower, the ease of purchase and installation is higher; and most importantly, expectations are different. A smartphone app can get away with doing just one thing well, and there's a huge market for apps that are simply novelties. That app that turns pictures of people into pictures of zombies is essentially useless, but it's instant fun, and will spread like a virus among your phone-holding friends. One person gets it, shows it off at a party, then two other people buy it immediately. No PC app can get instant marketing like that, because people don't carry their PCs to parties.