"Is There Hope for the Paid App? Sure there is. Just do what Starbucks does: Build an app experience that’s unique and doesn’t feel easily replicated."
I'm not sure Starbucks does this :-) Overall a pretty good acticle.
The truth is the that the bar was set very low for apps by Apple in order to commoditize the apps being sold. In economics if you can commoditize the complements to your product, then you can sell your own product at premium rate.
People call console themselves by talking about app experience etc, and even though app experience is important, i believe experience is not why apps are sold at shitty 99cents. Apple's strategy was to commoditize apps and guess what they succeeded.
My conclusion is that there is little or no hope for paid app or any breakthrough success for the majority of app developers. It was not meant to be, because that will affect the appeal of the iphone which will in turn lead to a drop in demand which will in turn force down the price of iphone and ipads. Do you think Apple will ever let that happen?
I'm not sure Starbucks does this :-) Overall a pretty good acticle.