More Napkin Numbers? (FCPX Units)

[Franz Bieberkopf]

[Chris Kenny] “The fact that we don’t know the exact ranking algorithm doesn’t mean we can’t establish some things about it (like what sort of time period it reflects) with a fair degree of accuracy.”

[Chris Kenny] “Mountain Lion has brought in more revenue than FCP X over the last couple of days …”

Chris,

I think you mean “speculate” when you say “establish”, and “broad claim” when you say “degree of accuracy”.

Franz.

[Chris Kenny]

[Franz Bieberkopf] “I think you mean “speculate” when you say “establish”, and “broad claim” when you say “degree of accuracy”.”

It’s simply not that hard to establish things like the fact that App Store rankings are highly weighted toward recent purchases. Pretending we can’t know things like this because we don’t know the complete ranking algorithm is silly. There are many fields in which we have woefully incomplete knowledge, but nonetheless have been able to establish certain particular facts to a high degree of certainty. Physics still hasn’t figured out what gravity is, but we don’t stand around waffling over whether things will fall when we drop them.

—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.

You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.

[Franz Bieberkopf]

[Chris Kenny] “There are many fields in which we have woefully incomplete knowledge, but nonetheless have been able to establish certain particular facts to a high degree of certainty. Physics still hasn’t figured out what gravity is, but we don’t stand around waffling over whether things will fall when we drop them.”

Chris,

I think you’re talking about articulating theories.

Scientists show their work and submit to peer review. It generally takes quite a bit of work before theories get accepted. You seem to be using this as a model for “establishing” a claim but the dictionary offers a simpler definition (probably more useful in this case):

to show something to be true by determining the facts

Franz.

[Craig Seeman]

One simple example is watch the ranking of a new program
7toX was a good example since one could immediately compare in the various listed categories after the first day and follow it through as other programs were introduced. Without knowing exact number one can plainly track trends.

[Franz Bieberkopf]

[Craig Seeman] “Without knowing exact number one can plainly track trends.”

Craig,

Agreed. (Though, absent a known methodology, we don’t know what the trends express.)

This is quite another thing from calculting 600K.

Franz.

[Tim Wilson]

I’m honored and humbled that you would take the trouble to link to my very, very napkiny numbers. I saw an article from a paid app developer who said that it took a million-ish downloads to stay on top of the paid apps list and napkined from there.

I’m going to assume that your numbers are much better than mine. LOL They HAVE to be. However, if you multiply 2 million by $300, you get $600,000,000.

Compare this to FCP/Studio, which took a dozen years to get to 2 million paid licenses. (At least that’s the last number I heard Apple mention publicly.) That’s 2.4 billion. FCPX is 25% of the way there in ONE year, and didn’t have to share any of the money with dealers, no manufacturing and distribution costs, etc.

So $600 million is quite a bit lower than my original napkin numbers, but you can buy a lot of napkins for $600 million.

It also underscores my basic point, that FCPX is a financial success on a scale that The Legend of FCP never was, and never would have been.

Tim Wilson
Vice President, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine
Twitter: timdoubleyou

The typos here are most likely because I’m, a) typing this on my phone; and b) an idiot.

[Franz Bieberkopf]

Tim,

Thanks for joining in – your perspective may be just what is needed.

But where are you getting 2 million from?

My calculations (based on Craig’s method) are 134K.

I don’t think they’re right.

[Tim Wilson] “I saw an article from a paid app developer who said that it took a million-ish downloads to stay on top of the paid apps list …”

Link?

… also there is a second issue here which is sort of a subtext to the issue.

You are assuming that the App store rankings adhere to some sort of blind algorithm. It’s good to remember that the App Store is a marketing tool. It certainly uses the language of “blind ranking”, and maybe a large part of it is so. I’m not making the claim that Apple features its products in rankings without regard to numbers, I just don’t think anyone can make the claim they don’t. I haven’t found any such claim by Apple – I’ve asked before if anyone has read what Apple claims the rankings mean – perhaps part of development information that I don’t have.

Franz.

[Chris Kenny]

[Franz Bieberkopf] “My calculations (based on Craig’s method) are 134K.

I don’t think they’re right.”

Again, your calculations rely on the premise that the top-ranking lists are based on all-time total downloads. We know for certain this isn’t true, or it would be essentially impossible for new apps to quickly rise on these lists, which is something that happens all the time.

At best your numbers are establishing an upper limit on how many copies of FCP X could have possibly been sold over the last few days. But that upper limit is very high — if we assume the rankings look at four days of data, your 134K implies annual sales of ~12M. That’s not very interesting — if we could establish a low upper limit it would be evidence FCP X wasn’t doing well, but an unrealistically high upper limit provides no real information.

—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.

You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.

[Franz Bieberkopf]

Or, in summary, we don’t have any good estimate on the number of downloads / installs of FCPX.

Franz.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Gary Huff] “They were probably holding out for eleventy billion dollars!”

Clearly.

I have a sneaking suspicion that even if “Keanu” was right and eleventy billion was achieved, it probably would have been labeled a miss.