Presumably whoever wrote an app that sells for $1 to $5 realized that the barrier to entry was low and leveraged that product into a product line. No revenue stream is going to last forever, eventually phones too will commoditize and squeeze the margins out.
As long at the developer retained more revenue than it cost to develop the product then it was a success. I don't care whether my startup is a 'company' or a 'feature' I care whether it makes money. If you can sell to another company just before your product becomes a commodity then that's even better.
Sounds like he's just jealous the IM Sense guys got a pay day for a $1 app.
Money Quote: "Surely their sales would drop to near zero since the feature is now free."
Better let the bottled water industry know they are about to be put out of business by the tap.
Another view, a few smart guys build a small patent portfolio for doing HDR and use an iphone app as a method for marketing their technology and making a few bucks. Big Co finds them and their technology and buys them for a large sum. Mission Accomplished.
First, HDR is not available on the iPhone 3G or 3GS so those who didn't have a 4 would buy the app (and they do). Second, Posterous email-in a blog post is a feature that is available to any blog platform I'm aware of but what they did differently is to focus on it making blogging as simple as can be. It was sort of a reverse engineering of the whole work-flow. That turned into a community and it is that community that is the product. They found a niche within making a company based on a neglected feature. Cute.
Agree, it may even be a good thing for them, because as apple is popularizing HDR picture, friends with 3G phones will want to do the same and find an app. Sometimes it's nice to have the big player do the education of the market.
I consider myself an apple hater (or at least wanna-be hater), but I have to give credit where credit is due. There are some things, like design process, publicity control, and outright valuation where apple is almost undisputably the top dog (right now).
As long at the developer retained more revenue than it cost to develop the product then it was a success. I don't care whether my startup is a 'company' or a 'feature' I care whether it makes money. If you can sell to another company just before your product becomes a commodity then that's even better.
Sounds like he's just jealous the IM Sense guys got a pay day for a $1 app.
Money Quote: "Surely their sales would drop to near zero since the feature is now free."
Better let the bottled water industry know they are about to be put out of business by the tap.