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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

by HHaan 2y ago

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)

lapcat 2y ago
> 1. That makes up a sizeable share of all apps No, there are literally millions of mobile apps. > 2. Those apps actually over-perform versus the overall app population Citation needed. 3. Can you explain why the majority of your 8 total comments are related to RevenueCat? https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=HHaan https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=HHaan
- HHaan 2y ago
  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)
  - HHaan 2y ago
    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
  - lapcat 2y ago
    > There are 181,000 apps with subscriptions out there, not millions You said "That makes up a sizeable share of all apps", not "That makes up a sizeable share of all subscription apps". Whereas I said, "there are literally millions of mobile apps", not "there are literally millions of subscription apps". So you've offered two red herrings in a row. My original point was that RevenueCat's report covers only subscription apps—a fact that I think nobody is disputing—and thus it's kind of bizarre to suggest, as the article title does, that a report exclusively about subscription apps explains "why devs beg for subscriptions", especially since the report itself says that the majority of those subscription apps are not doing particularly well. To be clear, I was not arguing with RevenueCat's report; rather, I was arguing with the article's spin.
    - HHaan 2y ago
      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
      - lapcat 2y ago
        > It's a super top-heavy industry to be in Yes, and this disparity exists even within the subscription subset of apps.

by HHaan 2y ago

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)

lapcat 2y ago

> 1. That makes up a sizeable share of all apps No, there are literally millions of mobile apps. > 2. Those apps actually over-perform versus the overall app population Citation needed. 3. Can you explain why the majority of your 8 total comments are related to RevenueCat? https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=HHaan https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=HHaan

HHaan 2y ago
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)
- HHaan 2y ago
  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
- lapcat 2y ago
  > There are 181,000 apps with subscriptions out there, not millions You said "That makes up a sizeable share of all apps", not "That makes up a sizeable share of all subscription apps". Whereas I said, "there are literally millions of mobile apps", not "there are literally millions of subscription apps". So you've offered two red herrings in a row. My original point was that RevenueCat's report covers only subscription apps—a fact that I think nobody is disputing—and thus it's kind of bizarre to suggest, as the article title does, that a report exclusively about subscription apps explains "why devs beg for subscriptions", especially since the report itself says that the majority of those subscription apps are not doing particularly well. To be clear, I was not arguing with RevenueCat's report; rather, I was arguing with the article's spin.
  - HHaan 2y ago
    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
    - lapcat 2y ago
      > It's a super top-heavy industry to be in Yes, and this disparity exists even within the subscription subset of apps.