[clug] Android in the Business Press

[Hal]

On 05/14/2010 12:12 PM, Alex Satrapa wrote:
>
> As for profit share: ask a farmer how much of the Woolworths/Coles shelf price they're getting for their pork or beef. It's a lot less than 70%. There's nothing stopping disgruntled developers porting their applications to Android and selling them on that platform. What's the profit share for Android apps? 30%, just like the Apple store. Not only can the Android market remove your app from the Market, they can also remotely remove that app from Android customers who've previously purchased your app.
>    
I don't know much about android. I'd assume that since it has multiple 
vendors it would be able to have multiple sales channels for apps. Pick 
a phone vendor that supports it?

Farmers do not have to re-do >50% of their efforts to switch sales 
channels.  (More than 50% of any mobile app is the UI.) The same vegies 
can be sold to coles and woolworths and the local green grocer. There is 
competition and farmers can switch to anyone offering a better deal. I 
can buy my fruit from coles or from woolworths or from a truck on the 
side of the road or a collective or from a green grocer and all are 
compatible with each other, with my pots, my stove and my plates and 
stomach. No one of these channels has exclusive control of the supply to 
me. Anyone with the right insight, desire, motivation and talent can 
crate a new supply channel that includes me.

Iphone tethering, iphone mobile wireless hotspot. Is that working out in 
the interests of Apple's customers or in the interests of Apple's 
revenue with deals they're doing with carriers for their profit at their 
cusomers' additional expense? (Yes and aren't rhetorical questions are 
awesome as well as a cheap debating technique? Sorry :P)

*I* do my editorial control, thank you very much. It's a bullsh**t 
excuse for apple to abuse platform control worse than microsoft. Qt & 
Maemo (gtk) or WX on the ipad, is it going to happen? Same reason. If a 
flash (or qt or whatever) app is better for the money given similar 
marketing, than an iphone native app it will sell better. That decision 
should be a cusomer's choice not a platform vendor's. I can write apps 
for microsoft without microsoft's permission or them taxing my revenue. 
I don't need to explain to this list how far Microsoft are from the 
ideal ;) Some people seem to have missed that Apple are worse from this 
perspective. (This gets lost because they're better technically because 
you get a bash prompt and something unix like and maybe some other 
reasons too.)

I don't care for flash, but this is my choice. Flashblock is my choice too.
Now Flash will be subject to the same problem if it becomes "the" 
platform (unlikely, but possible), adobe (or any other vendor) won't be 
able to resist misbehaving with their control of that platform. Just 
like microsoft & apple do now. And I guess it was this realisation that 
made me into a linux & gtk guy and learn programming a few years ago 
now. (Let me now pause and bow my head in appreciation of the LGPL :P) 
It's not so long ago that I've forgotten how much I hated having to 
fight my tools while they kicked me in the nuts while wearing a tie, 
every damn day.

Real competition to please customers is good. Competition to control 
them not so much.