… while Apple caused a revolution [with the iPhone], it is unlikely to become dominant in the market. It has sold just over 20m iPhones since the first device appeared in 2007; in that time more than 1.5bn phones have been shipped by everyone else. A similar thing happened with the personal computer market. The concept was championed by Apple when it launched Apple II, the worlds first personal computer, in 1977, and the first Macintosh in 1984, but other players now lead the market.

This argument — whose conclusion, for some reason, hinges strictly on unit sales of the iPhone units sold vs. the rest of the phones in the market as a metric for performance — overlooks several critical points:

1. Looking at sales numbers for all phones worldwide is meaningless; rather an examination of the so-called “smart phone” sales numbers would make for more meaningful insights.
2. The iPhone isn’t available in every market — in order to make a meaningful point about its sales performance, they ought to (at least also) isolate its relative performance in the markets the product is actually available in.
3. The rest of their competitors have been selling devices for a decade or more.

I guess it makes for a headline that gets the click-throughs, but since their conclusion is antithetical to the understanding everyone else looking at the iPhone’s market performance has, I would suggest merely that I’d like to see them support their assertion with something slightly more compelling and meaningful than comparing iPhone sales versus the rest of mobile phones on the planet.

Agreed Benefits

Even the critics of Macheist will concede to a number of upsides to participation, including:

1. Macheist is clearly a great marketing opportunity for each developer’s product,
2. any opportunity at growing their product’s user base builds upon its chances of retaining customers (and thereby capitalizing on upgrade fees for major versions later), and
3. participation with one product stands to produce sales gains on other products made by that developer

Naturally, these potential upsides are by no means guaranteed; if a product doesn’t compete well on its own merits, then its developer(s) will likely not capitalize on upgrade sales. But then Macheist can’t offer to make anyone’s products automagically good; this remains the responsibility of the developers, themselves.

Argued Problems

The basic arguments the critics have boil down to:

1. Macheist sells their apps at a [very] steep discount to their normal sale price,
2. this stands to undermine their perceived market value, and
3. general participation in Macheist may work to undermine the generally perceived value of shareware apps

As such, the critics argue that the developers may well be sacrificing more than they stand to gain in return for their participation.

These arguments, however, are missing a critically important point.

The Oversight

While it is certainly true that each developer could potentially make more money from any individual app (that is, per sale transaction), what these critics are overlooking is the fact that each of the participating developers also stand to make more money in a given time span than they would have if their apps weren’t part of the Macheist bundle.

As a quick aside, I would note that the Macheist sales are also final; even users that aren’t happy with any one app won’t demand their money back, which might well happen in the context of a single sale.

Consider, more importantly, the following screenshot (taken 27 Mar 2009, at ~20:15 EDT):

Note that 26,121 $39 bundles have been sold to date. Since 25% goes to charity, we’re talking $764,039.25 in gross sales.

Even if each developer takes just 1% of the pool, and if no more sales are made in the 11 days that remain, each participant would stand to take a $7,640.39 slice. I’m willing to bet that they’ll land a few more sales, and that developers may well make more than just 1% (anyone have any details?).

This, however, in the span of two weeks.

So, the question I’ll now pose to critics is: what are the chances these developers will have made this much cash in the given time period, without Macheist?

Of course it’s very possible for a piece of software to achieve better sales performance without Macheist. Many pieces of software do. I’m looking squarely at many of the OmniGroup‘s products. I’m willing to bet those developers happily avoid participation in Macheist.

For products have low sales (or even no sales yet), their income potential dramatically increases. Developers with multiple products stand a great chance to get their non-Macheist products on the radar of potential customers.

And so it’s really difficult to argue that the developers participating in the promotion actually lose.

The Shareware Community

Even so, there remains the argument that bundles such as Macheist — as well as similar ones organized by MacUpdate, and others — wind up harming the independent developers participating in the shareware market by undermining the perceived value of shareware apps as a whole.

In short, I would disagree.

My view here is that the shareware market is a commercial space like any other, and that such bundles are essentially yet another element of competition that’s simply part of the game. New entrants need a means by which to get their products noticed on the playing field, and everyone on the field must continually compete against each other to remain in the game.

Through it all, customers will continue to pay whatever price they feel is a good value. We are, after all, talking about a consumer demographic that choose to buy Macs over commodity PCs.