Build applications for a potential of 1 billion users!
From Wikipedia:
As of June 2008, the number of personal computers in use worldwide hit one billion, while another billion is expected to be reached by 2014. Mature markets like the United States, Western Europe and Japan accounted for 58 percent of the worldwide installed PCs. The emerging markets were expected to double their installed PCs by 2013 and to take 70 percent of the second billion PCs.
As I’m sure you know, PCs are everywhere these days and the market is still growing rapidly. I’m also sure you know that Adobe AIR can run on most of these as well (provided they run Windows Vista Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise, Windows Vista SP1, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition SP2 and SP3, Windows XP SP2 and SP3, Windows 2000 SP4, Windows 2003 Server, Mac OS X 10.4.11 or higher or Linux). That means that, building an application that runs on Adobe AIR has a potential user base of 1 billion users that is growing rapidly every quarter!
“That’s cool, Serge. But how do I make money from building AIR apps? Where’s the AIR app store like Apple’s app store for the iPhone?”
I think Apple has done a tremendous job at making buying and installing applications completely foolproof. But the real question is: “Do you really need an app store for AIR applications?”. There are lots of ways to monetize your application. And there are already lots of good examples of people making money with AIR applications.
For example: EarthBrowser, Agile Agenda, Broadchoice, Tanager Audioworks and Balsamiq all sell licenses per user. No developer programs to sign up to and no middle man (with the exception of the payment provider). Easy to set up and you have total control.
Selling software licenses is just one way of monetizing your AIR application. Robert Christensen, one of the AIR product managers, did a session on this topic at MAX in Milan. If you want more information on how to monetize your application, I would suggest you check out Rob’s blog post on this. Rob has a few real world cases that will definitely inspire you. You really don’t need an app store and thus you don’t have to wait to make money with your work!
Now the only things left to do, is start building your AIR applications, make money with them and send me a percentage of what you make with them ;-).
13 Comments
Feel free to follow me on: 
You’re 100% right – Adobe doesn’t have to start an AIR App Store. Not because we don’t need one but because people would hardly visit it. It’s about time that Adobe manages to get beyond the designers and the developers and finally gets to the man in the street. Whether it’s through a coffee making machine like Microsoft or through something else but as long as Adobe is only for designers & developers they don’t need to do anything for the masses because the masses don’t know they exist.
I see your point but do you really want Adobe to put engineers on coffee machines or magic tables instead of innovating the core products? Also, have you tried asking a dozen people if they know Adobe? I think you’ll be amazed about how many do know the brand. Even my barber knows Adobe…
I’ve been searching a lot for post like this, hoping to give me an answer to the main question, i think many developers have: how do you secure your application with for example, a serial key…or something…
Flexapps or even air apps can be decompiled and scriptwizzs can create hacks in notime…
do you have any suggestions Serge?? what’s your 2 cents on this?
Serge, I’ll qsk my daughter of 13 to check in here classroom who knows Microsoft, who knows Apple, who knows Google and who knows Adobe. Because I’m not interested in knowing how many adults know the brand. I want to know how well-known (and more importantly how popular) the Adobe brand is amonst the next generation. If raising this popularity means putting some engineers on a killer-app or -device then they should start doing this yesterday. Why? Because I want to build applications for 1 billion users but I don’t have the marketing budget to reach them. A popular (non-protective) Adobe App Store could help me get there. So Adobe, don’t wait any longer and come up with some nice device with an open screen and FP10 :)
Good feedback Tom. Would love to hear more developers…
Serge, I think an AIR store would be a good addition. It’s good to centralize these things so that customers have at least one “official” place (Adobe == trust) to go to when willing to buy high quality and trusted AIR applications. However I wouldn’t like to see it as strict as the iPhone store, but somewhere in between :).
Serge, Adobe needs a store to support its developers community and gather customers around strong branding and quality. Apple, Google and Microsoft have caught the importance of this concept.
I’m surprised that Adobe didn’t run on the same way at this time. I wrote a post about it 2 weeks ago: http://blog.tweenpix.net/2009/01/05/un-app-store-pour-adobe
One more thing, it would be nice if Adobe could unify Flash Lite and AIR products selling on the same platform.
Any bigger applications don’t need store app. I don’t think it’s realy confortable for the applications like EarthBrowser, Agile Agenda,…
But the power of a Apple store isn’t realy bigger application. This is little funny application who haven’t a lot of fonctionalities and less visibility. But there are fun and there are cheaper.
They are so small and outside the store, we do not find on the Web.
Yet they are sold very well.
Hey there,
I think there are pros and cons regarding an AIR app store.
One of the pros would be that a centralized app store like Apple’s or Android’s certainly improve a client’s trust in the application. I’d say the fact that there is a selection process for iPhone apps lowers the bar for actually buying an app.
So I think an AIR app store would only make sense if it is moderated.
On the other hand, I can’t imagine Adobe throwing in considerable resources (especially manpower) for maintaining such a store, although they would certainly not mind cutting some 30% of the revenue for apps sold via the store.
It’s the old problem: you can either choose to market your product all by yourself or share your revenue with those who do it for you.
And then there is the AIR Market Place already. So you already have a place to promote your app.
In another session at MAX Milan, a similar discussion took place for Flash Lite apps, and there actually already are hubs to sell your application. So there will probably be a lot of third-party-portals in the future offering their subset of AIR apps.
So I think a good solution would be some sort of rating or certificate for AIR apps; something the like of movie ratings (four stars for suspense, three for romance…). I can imagine ratings for productivity, fun, usability, portability and so on…
The Adobe MAX awards lead the way: Adobe should take those awards to another scale, maybe even initiating an annual award show with considerable prize money for the winners and runner-ups. But that’s probably a different story.
I think an AIR store would be useless.
When people buy software for the desktop, do they go to a Microsoft .NET store? How about a JAVA store?
AIR is about cross-platform desktop software and I think a store would be useless.
In fact, end user’s shouldn’t even be aware that an application is written in AIR (in my opinion).
THen again, I eventually think that ADOBE should lift restrictions of AIR runtime and promote and create a true cross-platform desktop runtime with unlimited power — like that of QT, wxWindows…etc…but thats a comment for another time. Or, at least have a sandbox that would allow this.
AIR isn’t an end-user platform, it’s a tool for developers. The end user of software doesn’t care about the tools developers use to create software.
Todd, the AIR runtime IS an end-user platform :).
I think some of the above already mentioned it: The cool thing about the Apple App store is that everybody hits the store to get new applications. That means every single iphone/ipod touch user comes to the place where your app is listed.
Getting your AIR application spread around *everyone* becomes very difficult when you can’t reach that *everyone* kind of people. Having an Adobe App Store would surely simplify things: You’d be able to sign up, (pay something?) and list your app for millions of people. Be it for free, or for a (small ;) ) amount of money.
Personally I think that would be one hell of an advantage. :)
Ronny the problem is that there’s no reason for millions of people to visit the Adobe website. Some cool device is needed in order to get people moving. It’s clear that Microsoft got the picture – I hope Adobe will follow soon because it would be great to build AIR apps or ‘widgets’ for let’s say a mirror in the bathroom that shows stock prices (especially these days), weater information, traffic situation, …