I'm going to deploy new paid app to appstore. This app will connect to our server and download some data (pretty big sometimes).
I'd like to know, is there any way I can check (on server side), that request is going from app, which was really paid (not stolen).
I know that anybody can buy app once and then distribute it (and guys with jailbreaked phones/pads can install it easily). It may cause extra traffic from our servers, and we want to protect us from it.
Or may be I can somehow figure out, that request comes from one sold copy of app? In this case, I can restrict numbers of downloads from one copy, so if it will be widely distributed, it just stops works one day.
Any ideas?
I am copying this verbatim from an email I sent to the cocoa-dev mailing list a while back to someone who had your concerns. The numbers have probably changed, but my rationale still applies as to why I think it's a waste of time to even think about this sort of stuff.
Setting aside all the technical issues, do you have evidence that
jailbreak piracy is a large enough problem to justify you doing all this?
For one, while I don't have a percentage I'm quite certain that it is a
minority of phones that are jailbroken. I run with a pretty tech savvy
crowd and I know only one person who has jailbroken their phone, and I
am fairly confident that techies are more likely to go through the
trouble. (How many average users have the faintest idea of what it
means to "jailbreak" a device?)
Jailbreaking is probably more prevalent in countries and cultures with
less of a tradition of paying for software. But this leads to the
second point...
From your standpoint you (presumably) really care about converting
would-be software pirates into paying customers. If they can't use
your app on a jailbroken device yet don't buy it legitimately, you
haven't accomplished anything economically worthwhile. In fact, you may
be worse off because you lose the (admittedly small) possibility that
the would-be pirate will show off your app to others who might in turn
become paying customers.
So, your calculus ought to be something like:
(# users with compatible devices) * (% with jailbroken devices) * (%
interested in your app) * (% unable or unwilling to circumvent your
protection) * (% who will purchase your app when confronted with copy
protection) * ($ price per sale) > (increase in legitimate sales that
could be obtained by devoting development resources to product
enhancement, marketing, support, etc.)
Let's suppose that 250M compatible devices have been sold, with 150M
distinct users (assuming that there are many people who have replaced
devices or own iPad with an iPhone, etc.) Suppose 10% are jailbroken,
which is what some cursory Googling turns up. That gives us 15M
candidate users.
Now, unless you are writing Angry Birds, it seems unlikely that you will
appeal to any more than 1% of the user base. That leaves 150K users.
Maybe 80% are unwilling to circumvent your copy protection, leaving 120K
users. Now the kicker: how many are then going to want to actually buy
the app? Maybe 5%? That puts you at 6000 users.
So with these admittedly crude guesstimates, if you could gain even 6000
users (out of the 135M non-jailbroken user base postulated above) by
devoting your time and energy to anything else, you'd come out ahead.
Well there are many tries to detect, if a device is jailbroken. But most of them can be tricked out again. So there is no SAFE method of detecting a jailbroken device. But just search for "detect jailbreak".
Than you could send your result to your server (together with the data request) and decide, what to do. But think about the effort, as said by Conrad Shultz.
Anyway you can track, how many apps are sold and how many server requests there are. So you will have youre private statistic, how many copies of your app are stolen. You can upload an update for your app anytime, if it really will be a big problem in your case.
Related
I’m making an application for iOS, I plan to release it in the App Store soon. The question arose - how to promote it correctly? Catch up with the audience? How to form the content initially, given that the application is something like a message board, respectively, if people download it, but it is empty, it does not fit. And is it better to launch it first in one city or in several? If anyone has such experience, I will be very grateful for the advice and answers.
The App Store
Apple’s App Store is a vast and complex ecosystem containing millions of apps across dozens of categories. But this vast selection is only valuable if users are able to find the apps they’re looking for. To that end, Apple has designed the App Store to promote discoverability.
How do people discover apps?
There are two main ways users discover apps in the App Store: by searching for keywords and by browsing featured and top charts. Surveys have shown that between 20 and 50% of users find apps by search, while another 14 to 20% discover them by browsing categories or looking at Apple’s featured selections.
App name and keywords
According to Apple, nearly ⅔ of app downloads result from searching. Therefore, it’s worth spending some time thinking about how to optimize your app for search. Your app’s search relevance is determined mostly by your app name and keywords, so let’s take a look at each of those in turn.
Apple once permitted app names to be more than 200 characters, leading to “names” that were chock full of SEO-gaming keywords, metadata, and the names of rival apps. Today, App Store guidelines limit developers to 50 characters and prohibit terms and descriptions that are not the name of the app.
When it comes to keywords, developers are limited to just 100 characters per app. With so few characters to work with, developers need a deliberate strategy. Ask yourself: What keywords are most important to you, and what are the keywords that will set you apart from your competitors? The best keywords are both relevant to your app and frequently searched, but the former outweighs the latter.
Remember: Users are much more likely to go with the top search results. Therefore, it’s generally better to be ranked #2 or #4 for a keyword that’s searched fifty-thousand times a month than to only be ranked #345 for a keyword that’s searched a million times a month.
Lastly, some brass tacks:
Separate keywords with commas.
Break down phrases into individual words (i.e., “photo, editor” not “photo editor”)
Save characters by not pluralizing your keywords (i.e., “calendar” not “calendars”)
Getting featured
Getting an app featured in the App Store is the dream of many developers. Not only does it confer special recognition on your app, it also gets you more prominent placement in the App Store. To add icing to the cake, getting featured also permits app developers to customize both their app and developer pages, further enabling them to stand out from the crowd.
A survey by Applause found that 40% of awareness of apps comes from browsing the App Store. In raw terms, that means getting featured on one of the dozens of lists, which are themselves created by a combination of popularity and editorial curation by Apple. Since users in general are more likely to trust (and therefore download) an app that they’re already aware of, having a recognized presence in the App Store is a major asset.
So how do you get your app into this elite group?
Obviously, there’s no substitute for quality. The best way to get an app featured is simply to build a great app. Apple’s curators are always looking for new apps that their users will be excited about. To that point, having a world class user experience goes a long way.
Beyond that, it helps to understand how the App Store works. A former App Store manager has revealed that the App Store isn’t a monolithic app supermarket, like Walmart or Target, it’s actually more like a bustling mall with dozens of small stores specializing in different areas. Each of these editorial teams is dedicated to a specific category or region, and each makes its decisions about what apps to feature internally. That said, developers can pitch their apps to Apple’s marketing team, who may then choose to advocate for an app within Apple. Going to events like WWDC and chatting up Apple representatives can also be a good way to raise awareness inside Apple about your work, especially if you’re a small or first-time developer.
Another thing that Apple’s editorial teams consider when choosing what apps to feature is whether an app takes advantage of Apple’s newest and most exciting tech. Remember, promoting an app in the App Store is also about promoting features that set iOS apart. Taking advantage of the newest APIs and functionalities can make your app more timely and relevant when Apple is choosing what apps to feature.
App Store search ads
A relatively new product from Apple allows developers to promote their app at the top of search results. Given that nearly ⅔ of app downloads come from searching, Search Ads can be an effective way to give an app the bump it needs to get found.
Search Ads are built around an automated auction process similar to Google AdWords. Developers set a maximum price they’re willing to spend per tap, which is then compared against the bid of the next most relevant competitor. Developers only pay when a user engages with one of their ads.
As with organic search results, relevance is the main determinant for whether an app is likely to appear on a given page of results, not how much a developer is willing to pay for placement. Relevance is determined by a combination of App Store metadata and user response.
That’s just a broad overview. Search Ads also includes some advanced features, like the ability to target specific groups based on demographic and location data. It also includes services to help you target your ad spend by recommending keywords based on your app’s metadata.
However you promote your app, it’s important to make sure you’re doing it in a cost-effective way. Marketing analysts and SEO experts may be able to help you optimize your marketing spend to ensure that your app gets in front of the right users based on your business objectives.
There are many application in app store that they force users to vote 5 stars to unlock the content. That's forbidden by Apple but they don't care about it. I have at least 4-5 competitors which build very poor app but have more than thousand forced reviews.
Suprising thing is that even people complain about they are being forced in their reviews, Apple is not doing anything about that and those apps are in top 10 in their categories for more than a year. That's dissapointing and not fair!
Should we wear the black hat and do similar tricks to compete?
I don't suggest you using the same bad practice than your competitors, obviously it cause you to be down the research when user look for your product. To avoid that kind of situation, Apple offer this website
I've never use it before so I can't tell how effective it is.
After some more research, this website seems to be what you are looking for
It's an absolutely unfair competition you're facing but as long as user won't complain or report to Apple those kind of situation, they won't do anything I guess.
Or maybe now users are OK with this kind of situation so it would mean that the rating system of the AppStore might be re-think in a better way.
Anyway you have only few options in your situation but reporting those app.
Since I've never seen similar situation in an app, may I ask what kind of app it is ?
Is it is possible to make users pay for digital points so that they can use them for real-world services outside of the app?
Take for example 'Uber', assuming we have the same model, can users purchase 'bundles' of 'points' and then use these points to order a taxi service?
Will this be allowed on the app store?
This is basically the "digital wallet" problem. All kinds of issues exist, from security, to convincing vendors to accept it, to convincing customers to trust and use it, to figuring out how you're going to take a fair profit out of it..
Frankly, Apple has claimed to be working in this space themselves, as are the credit card companies. Given your question, I have to assume you have nowhere near the resources they can afford to spend on this effort, and their efforts are still vaporware.
If you really have a way to make this work, I suspect you could sell it to one of them for a few million. If you just have the idea... well, it's premature to try to guess whether Apple would try to lock you out or not, and only they can answer that question in any case.
Testing in-App Purchases seems fairly straightforward but I want to release my app globally. If I read the dev guide correctly, it says that I can only have 1 test account per territory. So am I stuck making over 150 test accounts? There has to be a better way!
I would agree with Kheldar. Is there a specific reason that you need to test for all your territories? Personally I would test my app for one territory and assume it works the same for all.
They just "suggest" that because it's a good idea to make sure all the currency values are tested for everywhere you want to release it at plus any sort of localization.
Really big companies are the only ones who can truly test that way - it costs a lot of resources to validate every country...
By not doing it you will be fine, plenty of indie apps get released with only enough testing to make sure the app runs with the normal framerate and you can do each of the features without crashing and these apps have done very well in downloads and sells (even with the inevitable 'issue' that pops up here and there). Leave a support e-mail/contact and makes sure to check your reviews for anything major you need to address and you will be good to go.
Just test with your major area or major areas (ie: Your a German living in America and want to make sure your German and America versions are top notch so test the '2' versions and release everywhere!) and handle anything else as/if it comes by.
This is a very general question. I'm asking because I want to know in advance if it's worth the time and money to jump into this market?
Apple's iOS developer program costs $99/year. MonoTouch looks good but costs $399/year (I feel comfortable with .NET). That's $500/year. So for an app priced at $1 needs to sell 500+ copies per year? How likely is it to achieve this number? How about free app with ads? Is there any extra cost?
Personally, I feel that the iPhone ship has sailed, for the most part. While we did get some decent sales from our "iAmbigram" app for the first 3 months or so back in early 2009, the sheer onslaught of apps in the app store make it all but impossible to get located (even if you have a pretty darn good app).
We spent about $3.5k to develop the app, and have basically broken even over the course of 2 years. It wasn't the windfall we were hoping for, but I understand that few apps are. We have a second app in the store which was pretty much a total loss (at $.99, even).
The problem, as I see it, is discoverability. Unless you have a killer app, people will not know about it, and you will suffer in obscurity forever. At least on the web, you can do some basic SEO and rank high on Google and make some $$ that way, but on the iPhone... there is no similar mechanism.
Anyway, I wanted to share our case study. Believe it or not, it's not easy to make back even a small $500 on iPhone apps these days (which was certainly NOT the case in 07 and 08).