How many people buy mobile software?

[hacker]

I've been talking to lots of businesses, users, hobbyists and others in many circles over the years, and I'm wondering how many of these people (and that includes YOU reading this), actually buy Palm or other mobile software for their various devices. This includes Palm, PocketPC, Linux and other mobile productivity devices.

I know I've personally bought many more software applications for Palm than I actually use today (some of them don't even work on current Palm devices because the author(s) decided to just quit and work on other things). I've bought applications to help my productivity, save my data, help my wife get organized, and dozens of other applications, conduits and tools over the years. I've also subscribed to many services such as Vindigo, Novatel and others to use with my device.

There seems to be a growing trend moving the other direction, and more and more people are seeking "free" or "cracked" software to use on their Palm devices. I see a number of posts on legitimate mailing lists and usenet newsgroups from people asking for registration codes, keys, key generators and many other things for Palm software.

As I poke around the various Palm software sites, I see applications being sold at higher and higher prices.. but are people actually buying them? Or just downloading them and using them for the trial period and then deleting them? Or are they cracking them and running them illegally?

How about you? What percent of your actual third-party Palm software is software you bought yourself? What percent is "free", and what percent (sure, you can answer anonymously or not) is "questionable"? Are 1% of your applications purchased? 50%? 100%? Some other fraction?

I'd love to hear from everyone..

[Pride Of Lions]

Interesting question.

More than half of my mobile software is purchased, the other portion is freeware. I do use trial software to see if I like the product I'll pay the price.

I know that cracked software is out there, but it doesn't make sense to me to put it on my PDA. I have spent hundreds of dollars over the years on PDA softwware and I don't mind when the software is well-written. I will use a freeware app. when it serves a purpose and is well-written.

I, too, have been "burned" by software writers who either don't have the time to properly update their software or leave the arena altogether. I do understand that they may have other concerns and, if their software isn't selling like they think it should, they may have to make their money elsewhere. Luckily other options seem to appear and I can keep my productivity alive.

I really dig the programs that let us try before we buy. There's nothing worse than having to buy a program to find out it's not what I'm looking for.
POL9A

[dwig]

Based on simply the number of installed apps and not counting that which came with my device, slight less than 50% of my software was purchaced. The same count weighted by how much the software is used, either in number of hours or number of accesses, somewhat less than 5% was purchased.

My most frequently used piece of purchased "Palm" software actually runs on my WinXP machine, its a Word add-in for convertion to/from the PalmDOC eBook format. My most frequently used ture PalmOS app is my eBook reader which was freeware.

[Alexander Turcic]

For my Dell Axim X50v, I recently purchased NetFront and CardExport. There is no similar freeware to substitute those two programs. I am also using iSilo, but didn't have to pay for it because Darren supplied me with a free serial number. Vade Mecum does also a good job as an e-book reader, and is free. I also purchased two Resco products, Resco Explorer and Resco Photo Viewer. Most other apps on my device are freeware. They include:

• GSPlayer (best audio player even compared to commercial alternatives)
• BSPlayer/TCPMP (best audio/video player even compared to commerial alternatives)
• Magic Button (resource-friendly task-switcher; perhaps there are better commercial solutions, but none with so little resource requirements)
• OzVga
• TVGuide
• Vade Mecum
• WordNetCE

I'd say the ratio is 1:3 for commercial:freeware software installed on my PDA.

Today the trend of free, open-source software is towards quality. I remember several years ago open-source was usually considered inferior to commercial solutions. Thanks to the fast emergence of Linux and its communities, this has luckily changed. In fact, nowadays one must be careful not to fall into the trap of purchasing a commercial product, only to discover much later that it was actually a rip-off of a much better free solution (e.g. think about all the commercial DVD-to-DivX products).

I think the ratio is 50:50 on my Palm (T5) and Pocket PC (iPaq) handhelds. Occasionally I do installed cracked software, but only in the case where I want to "extent" the trial period or where trial software is not available at all. If I continue using a product, I buy it. Not only because of moral obligations, but also because it is a) nice to have support, b) a pain to get always the latest version cracked, and c) a strange phenomenon that if you spend some money on something, you actually start using it more!

[Dick Tracy]

When including the bonus software that came with, 70% of what is presently on my device is paid for. Removing bonus software reduces the ratio to around 50%. There is a greater number of freeware/open source apps I have tried but do not suit my needs/interests at this time and thus are uninstalled. Mileage may vary as new apps and updates are continuously available.

[hacker]

There are developers out there who claim that less than 1% of people who download their applications actually complete a purchase. If you look at PalmGear, that figure is pretty depressing, if accurate.

Looking at the "Top 50 Downloads", #2 is Pocket Tunes, with 12,490 downloads this month. That means 125 people who downloaded it, actually purchased it. Yes, this isn't entirely accurate; some software has a higher percentage of purchasers than others. That's a mere $1,868.75 in sales for the month. Subtract PGHQ's commission and that's $1,121.25. That's $6.00/hour if you do it full time for a year. Depressing.

Does anyone really know how close this figure is? If writing software for the purpose of selling it only results in a 1% return on investment, then what is the point? Its probably better to turn to becoming a plumber or some other manual labor vocation with a better turnaround.

[Laurens]

Originally Posted by hacker

Looking at the "Top 50 Downloads", #2 is Pocket Tunes, with 12,490 downloads this month. That means 125 people who downloaded it, actually purchased it. Yes, this isn't entirely accurate; some software has a higher percentage of purchasers than others. That's a mere $1,868.75 in sales for the month. Subtract PGHQ's commission and that's $1,121.25. That's $6.00/hour if you do it full time for a year. Depressing.

Well, I wouldn't trust their statistics. Their system claims more than 15000 downloads this month for Sunrise, but the actual number is 1500-2000. Frankly, I don't see the point in displaying the number of downloads in the first place.

Summer is the worst period in terms of general software sales, so this might not be the best time to take a measurement.

[hacker]

Originally Posted by Laurens

Well, I wouldn't trust their statistics. Their system claims more than 15000 downloads this month for Sunrise, but the actual number is 1500-2000. Frankly, I don't see the point in displaying the number of downloads in the first place.

How do you know? Even if the download references your site directly, those figures can never reflect real downloads. Many (most) general ISPs will have a caching Squid server in front of their users.

If one user downloads Sunrise from PalmGear and 500 others from within that same ISP (such as AOL, SBC, whatever) request the same file, it will come out of squid, not from your site. PalmGear will reflect the download, since that is where the request was initiated, but the actual file itself would come from the provider's Squid cache. Your server logs might only record the first hit, and since Squid never needs to hit your server again for the same file of the same size/type, you won't see the subsequent downloads. I know this from 6+ years of Plucker downloads, many from PalmGear.

I also don't doubt that PalmGear is inflating downloads. That's something that many people have complained about for awhile, but even if they are inflating it, inflating it by 10x the actual number seems quite extreme.

Good information overall though, keep it coming!

Summer is the worst period in terms of general software sales, so this might not be the best time to take a measurement.

Agreed, at least we can hope people are getting out of the house to enjoy the weather! <grin>

[csmith75]

I'd say about 80% of the software on my Axim is software that I purchased with a couple of freeware programs thrown in. I have no problem supporting developers when it comes to PDA software since most times the cost of a program is inexpensive.

[Chaos]

Let's see...
Free - 7
Pay - 3

Not including things that came with the Clie (default Palm apps, NetFront, etc.)

The free are... KsDatebook, KsToDo, Keyring, Plucker, Converter, ChemTable, and OKey (a Clie hack for the jog dial and keyboard).

The paid are... upIRC, Documents to Go, Missing Sync.

Basically, I go for free where I can. Open source if possible. And I don't use cracked software. Downloaded music? I'm fine with that. Downloaded TV? I do that too (almost exclusively subbed anime, though). Downloaded/cracked software? That just doesn't *feel* right to me for some reason, so I just don't touch it...

[Laurens]

Originally Posted by hacker

How do you know? Even if the download references your site directly, those figures can never reflect real downloads. Many (most) general ISPs will have a caching Squid server in front of their users.

I simply divided the number of total downloads (18000) by the number of months (11) that Sunrise has been available. That equals about 1630. The inflated download statistic is simply due to PalmGear not resetting the counter at the start of the month. You can verify this in exactly a week (the 31st).

Anyway, I don't see the point of even showing the download count for the current month. "Downloads last month" would make a whole lot more sense.

[Bob Russell]

Most of my software is purchased. I do look for free first, though. There's some really tremendous stuff like TCPMP for free, as well as very reasonably priced software like DateBk5 or ShadowPlan, etc.

As far as downloads, even though I've purchased a lot of programs (on both palm and PPC, many of which I don't even use), I bet my own downloadurchase ratio is probably at least about 10:1. And that's for someone who's generally really trying to buy, and who buys a lot. It's even worse if you include the programs I download multiple times for version upgrades or because I didn't keep the first copy and want to try it again after I purchased it.

I very,very, very rarely have illegal software on my pda. I can only really think of one time actually, and that was just a different version of software I had already bought. It's not worth the risk and I justify the expense to myself by reminding myself that I like to support the developers, which I do desire to do.

What frustrates me is when software turns out to be useless to me and my money is wasted. Or if the author stops supporting the software and it becomes useless. Especially if I feel I was misled or misunderstood its capabilities. Fortunately that's not too often, and the trial downloads really help. Or even when, like for Pocket Informant, I buy a copy and then 3 mos later there's a new release which I have to pay for if I want to stay current.

I'd have to say that even though developers can and do make some money and even possibly a living on development, I bet that most of them do it for love of the work and because they like offering something to the mobile computing community. I can't believe most developers are in it just for the bucks.

[JLP]

Originally Posted by hacker

There are developers out there who claim that less than 1% of people who download their applications actually complete a purchase. If you look at PalmGear, that figure is pretty depressing, if accurate.

It's been a while since I've been able to sum up all our downloads at all the sites (home sites, free posting sites, ESD's), but when we first started 1% was about right, but that is because we weren't well known and our software was more niche.

After we released Trip Boss in 2004, we have seen a steady increase in the download to sales ratio. For example, on Palm Gear, right now it ranges between 10% - 25% for Trip Boss and Date Wheel. (We get the 'real' monthly stats in the backend--the stats with the software description, are like Laurens said, have not been reset in months (at least since their new site came up).) Handango actually has the better ratio, but not as many downloads. I think our rates are good for these titles because the titles are less general, so only people interested in travel (Trip Boss) or calculating the time between two dates (Date Wheel) actually download the product. FWIW.

Also, FYI, over at All About Palm, Michael Mace, in his forum interview, answered a question on this subject. http://www.allaboutpalm.com/forum/sh...&postcount=120 Scroll down to the question labeled ">>5)".

[Pride Of Lions]

Originally Posted by hacker

If writing software for the purpose of selling it only results in a 1% return on investment, then what is the point? Its probably better to turn to becoming a plumber or some other manual labor vocation with a better turnaround.

People should do what makes them happy. There are plenty of happy plumbers, electricians and car mechanics who happen to be involved in those growth industries. For the money, those are probably going to be jobs that can't be outsourced and will be needed over the next few hundred years (along with doctors and lawyers.) People are always going to need their pipes fixed, their electricity wired, their cars fixed, their boo-boo's bandaged and their disagreements moderated.

As an artist, there are times when my talents are in demand and other times when I wish I had a more in demand profession (not to mention how many GF's I've been through who are uncomfortable with my freelance lifestyle.) On the other hand, when I am working I have the best part-time job available (to me.)

I can't speak from the software developer's perspective, but there do seem to be some challenges to the profession. Outsourcing and lack of demand (or a saturation in developers) would seem to force the remaining developers to identify and concentrate their efforts on their target markets and make better products than their competitors. It's easier said than done, I know, and there's a certain amount of luck in the success of most endeavors, but like the short chick in the "Incredibles" said, "Luck favors the prepared."
POL9A