Oh, the whole 'begging for subscriptions' line was definitely a bit much
Not to argue the point to death, but subscriptions make up the majority of in-app purchase revenue. If you exclude games, 96% of iap revenue was subscriptions in '23. We saw a definite trend of folks mixing in consumables / one-time purchases, so that revenue split probably shifted quite a bit for 24
The 'elephant in the room' is probably that 2/3 of mobile revenue is made through ads, though a lot of those ads are apps advertising in other apps. Unsure if it's technically a ponzi scheme, but it's close
Thing to also note is that over 2/3 of all mobile iap revenue is made by 200 apps. It's a super top-heavy industry to be in
Probably worth writing about how this data compares to “the whole” at some point, but I’m going to decompress from working on these 263 pages for a bit, first
There are 181,000 apps with subscriptions out there, not millions
That number (as the “in general RevenueCat apps overperform” statement) are based on the data from app performance tracking companies like data.ai, Apptopia, Appfigures, etc - it’s these companies jobs to index apps and their performance. How those work and how that compares to where our data comes from is worth a whole seperate post
I work at RevenueCat (shared that info before, by the way, + this is the same handle I use in most other places)
1. That makes up a sizeable share of all apps
2. Those apps actually over-perform versus the overall app population (if you’d take “all apps” they’d do slightly worse)
Official RC account on Twitter shared this video, and a link to their new case study with ChatGPT, containing this paragraph:
"More recently, to support ChatGPT’s unique direct integration into Apple’s iOS 18 and Apple Intelligence feature, RevenueCat worked with OpenAI to provide users with a seamless experience by building out support for this new subscription path."
Tons of respect for Ben Thompson, but reason for not shipping visionOS apps (or allowing your iPad app to work on them) for these big co's is literally a matter of "Bang for your buck":
> Building a new app from scratch makes zero sense for the size of the install base. Only reason to ever do that would be to get some love back from Apple in the form of features and attention (which, for YouTube / Netflix / Spotify are hardly necessary)
> Allowing YOUR iPad app to function on visionOS means that your customers will hold YOU responsible for its functioning. At the size of customer base of these companies, that's a bunch of risk for no reward
> When your users use a browser that promises 'regular access to all websites' (built by Apple) to access your service, the responsibility for that experience lies with the browser builder, not you
There's 100% no negotiation over fees happening with individual developers, regardless of how big they are, regardless of what type of support for a platform they promise Apple, as that's exactly what has gotten Apple and Google in hot water with regulators worldwide.
Ben worded it well in the article:
"It’s certainly possible that I’m reading too much into these absences" < Yes