For every success story on the App Store, there is a developer that is starting to notice the impact of privacy on their application sales.
As piracy of apps on smartphone devices running both Android and iOS continues to rise, with the Android Market piracy prevention system having recently been circumvented and tools available on the Cydia repository that allow users to download paid apps for free.
It now appears that iPads apps are starting to see a dramatic rise in piracy, with one developer noticing piracy rates as high as 50% on his gaming app. Qwiboo founder Vladimir Roth took to Twitter to demonstrate how piracy affected his game Aqua Globs HD, noticing that the number of people registering a score on the game’s OpenFeint leaderboards was double the amount of people that had actually purchased the game.
Roth compared his iPad figures to those on his iPhone app, the piracy rate on the smartphone was no higher than 5%, a drastic difference between the two Apple platforms.
Pocketgamer interviewed Roth and quizzed him on why he thought the numbers were so different, even though the game is available on the same marketplace. He feels is that because iPad games have been priced higher by developers, customers are not willing to pay twice for an upscaled version of the same app they already have. Roth also feels that because anti-piracy measures can potentially disrupt paying customers, it is not worth adding such restrictions when it could affect your loyal userbase.
We feel that the because the number of iPhones and iPod Touches are so high, there are only a small percentage of users that jailbreak their handsets, allowing them to download the pirated apps. A piracy rate of around 5% would indicate this.
However, many iPad owners will already be Apple customers, possessing an iPhone previously. The percentage of jailbreakers will likely be higher due to the lower volume of devices sold and the existing knowledge of the jailbreaking process.
We would love to hear from some App Store developers who have both iPhone and iPad versions of their games. If you would like to share you experiences of app piracy, drop us a line in the comments.
Um… How about the fact that ipads are shared!?!
I share mine, in that, my whole household use it as we leave it in front of the tv and use it for surfing and reading books…
One of the most frequent complaints I hear about the iPad is that you can’t have multiple accounts.
I use the same iTunes account on both iPhone and iPod for example so I pay for the apps only once. I believe you can do the same if you own more than one iPad. Did Roth consider that?
mtiks – http://mtiks.com is offering anti-piracy. Check it out.
It would be nice to have more complete information. Does this developer consider people using the software on their iPad after they purchased it for their iPhone piracy? It is difficult to tell from this article.
There are a number of games for the iPad (the HD version) that are available on the iPhone and I see no reason to pay the extra for the HD version unless the game is really worthwhile.
this person complaining about piracy needs to explain himself a little more on the numbers, most leader brds are set up so the whole family can participate on the same ipad… you can also change your user name in most games so that multiple people can play…
I highly highly doubt that 50% of ipad users have jail broken their iPad, i know for a fact that 50% of iphone users have not jail broken their phone, so this person needs a little more data…
I guess you would notice the “impact of privacy” as the article says on sales if you were a developer.
I know too whole families can have iPods, iPhones and share a paid game all around under the same account. Nothing wrong with this as Apple sanctions it.
Does the author understand fair play licensing? Purchase once, and make available on up to 5 computers and “an unlimited number” of devices that sync to those computers. So it is totally reasonable that one copy of an app would be in use by multiple devices, legally.