Is Apple turning its back on photographers?

[Walter Soyka]

[Bill Davis] “I actually think that with 20/20 hindsight, it was the early iTunes “micro-payments for IP” play that was Apple’s single most revolutionary move. (That Word, Photoshop et al, are all now available via on-line subscription acknowledges that reality.) So I’d bet that there’s actually vastly more overall profit at selling a LOT of stuff at $79 – than there is in selling a smaller number of boxes at $999 ea and having to share those generated profits with a legion of truckers, warehousemen, and shelf stockers in stores around the country.”

I agree with your premise (iTunes pricing was revolutionary) and your conclusions (electronic delivery may be more profitable for developers, and lower unit prices can increase unit sales), but not the arguments that connect them.

iTunes matched the unit of sale to the unit of consumption for music. We used to think about selling albums, even if we only listened to songs. iTunes broke the mold in offering individual songs for sale, so you could spend $1 to get the one track you wanted from an album, instead of spending $15 to get the one song you wanted plus 14 others you didn’t.

Subscription pricing or software as a service is about changing the revenue model for software developers. Instead of charging a high price for the initial perpetual license and reduced prices for upgrades thereafter, many developers are now looking to flatten their revenue curves by leasing access to the software and upgrades on an on-going basis.

iTunes set the stage (and value model) for the one-time purchases of $1 apps for your iPhone, not ongoing monthly payments for access to software. SaaS is a much older concept than the iTMS.

That aside, I actually question whether this new low, low pricing is good for our industry over the long term. How many developers (aside from Apple) can afford to sell “professional” tools with limited general market appeal at such low prices? Shouldn’t a professional photographer’s primary application be worth more to them than 5 or 6 music albums, or an hour or two of work?

Good for Apple if they can do this and make money at it, but it may be bad for the rest of us in the long run if it hurts competition or discourages innovation — we’d have fewer and/or lower-quality choices for the tools we use.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
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