Making money in a crowded App Store: it’s dog eat dog and Spy vs Spy: And if you’re Apple? Well, Apple benefits from a crowded App Store marketplace where developers cut prices to the bone in an attempt to stand out from the crowd. Every single app uploaded to the App Store adds value to every iOS device in existence; every single app a customer buys is another reason for them not to migrate away from iOS in the future. Apple is certainly motivated to keep the App…

On Fremium Apps: And that’s exactly what we’ve seen in the App Store. People have no problem paying 99¢ for a gimmick, and don’t mind risking 99¢ on an app whose value is unproven, but trying to make the boxed software model work at 99¢ a pop is a fool’s errand. Sure, gimmicks and mass market apps like Camera+ seem to prove the opposite, but they are the outliers. The vast majority of apps are financial flops even though they deliver tremendous value to their niche.…

Josh Lehman: ‘Stop Using the Cup of Coffee vs. $0.99 App Analogy’: If Starbucks gave out free coffee every day there would be mile-long lines at the drive thru. If the free coffee was anywhere close to as good as their paid stuff people would abandon the paid en masse. Some would pay maybe because they felt bad, as a freeloader. Others would pay because they preferred the options available to them in the paid column vs. the free. Now imagine the free selection at starbucks was nearly as…

Phil Simon: Dream Theater’s Jordan Rudess Talks Music Apps: “There are so many people out there with Android, and I know that it’s a really good system. Personally, I’ve had some problems with it — and that’s why I took so long to get into it and am not anxious to keep working on that platform. First, there’s been an inherent issue with the audio on Android, which has been frustrating to a lot of developers. When you touch the screen to play a sound, there’…

I keep hearing around the web from people I respect that App.net is cool, but that it won’t survive unless it hits critical mass. That social networks in general have to have millions and millions of users, or they don’t work. The reason people believe this is that just about every social network up to this point has been financed by advertising (or not financed at all). If you want to run a service on ads, you need as many eyeballs as possible to cover your nut.…