📜 A brief history of App Store monetization - with David Barnard, Developer Advocate at RevenueCat 🛍️

The Mobile User Acquisition Show

David Barnard started developing apps soon after the first iPhone was released. In the last 12 years, he has seen each minor and major change play out in the appstores - from the first paid apps and their price drops - to the explosion of freemium - to the advent of subscriptions. In today’s episode, he tells the stories of living through the roller coaster that the appstore has been.
If you’re wondering as to what relevance details from a decade ago will have to our world today, this episode will help you think about the unseen forces that influence what we see on our phones, and about how Apple’s policies have influenced the kinds of apps that flourish. Just as important, all of this helps contextualize the looming privacy changes that will effectively deprecate the IDFA in iOS 14.
This episode provides a fascinating and in-depth look at how the last decade helps us learn about what’s ahead - and we’re excited to present it.
KEY HIGHLIGHTS
💼 David’s background
2️⃣ 2 primary reasons why the App Store was a game-changer in 2008-09
🛡️ Introducing the App Store: a platform consumers trusted
🧶 App Store enabled indie developers
💸 Price played a huge role in galvanising the App Store
🗿 The Stone Age of monetisation
💰 Why the only way to earn from an app was to have a paid app
🤑 What “free apps are free” meant for monetisation
🍎 How the smallest of Apple’s decisions shaped the app marketplace
📊 The tale of 2 top charts
📸 Exposure: How curation influenced market economics
📲 Limited monetisation led to mass market apps
✨ With subscription, you get sophistication
⛔ The limited scope of early ad-monetisation
🎮 Games were big winners
⌛ The timeline of how the platform and the marketplace evolved together
🆓 The advent of in-app purchases - and the freemium/free-to-play model
🥕 Subscriptions and in-app purchases changed the incentives for developers
♾️ Value is the biggest driver of the subscription economy
🧯 Apple’s new IDFA policy is to offset some of the ills of the monetisation models
⚠️ Freemium isn’t evil; but it brought about unintended consequences
🔜 The future of the app economy is value-driven subscriptions
💞 How Tinder is an example of a subscription that also has consumable purchases
Check out the show notes here: https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/a-brief-history-of-app-store-monetization-with-david-barnard-developer-advocate-at-revenuecat/
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