Cost to create/maintain a WM app.

[HoosierDaddy]

Not too long ago, I bought a Ring Doorbell. And just as washing your car makes it rain, buying the doorbell caused Ring to kill their WM app. Fortunately, Ring gave me a full refund for the device I had bought at Best Buy.

Looking for an alternative, I checked out the Nest doorbell. I knew it didn't have a WM app but there were several 3rd party apps that worked with other Nest products.

So I contacted the developers to ask if they supported the new doorbell or planned to.

None did at this time but said they may if they thought the demand was there. But the developer of the most successful app said the same thing and added that he would add it if someone contributed what it would cost to code and implement and said that would be...wait for it..... between $300 and $1,000; he would have to look more closely to narrow that down.

Now obviously, a lot of the code already exists to interact with the other Nest devices his app supports, but I have to assume the same would be true about the Ring (and other company) WM apps that were abandoned simply because they didn't want to update them when the iOS or Android versions were updated.

I'm sure big companies like Ring, etc. have more overhead etc. But seriously, even if the costs are 10 times what a successful (oxymoron?) independent WM developer would expend, it doesn't make sense to me, at least, to take a pass. Ring, for example, has an ongoing revenue stream from most customers. Just the homes on my cul-de-sac would generate enough to cover the costs for the app.

 

[Ryujingt3]

Not too long ago, I bought a Ring Doorbell. And just as washing your car makes it rain, buying the doorbell caused Ring to kill their WM app. Fortunately, Ring gave me a full refund for the device I had bought at Best Buy.

Looking for an alternative, I checked out the Nest doorbell. I knew it didn't have a WM app but there were several 3rd party apps that worked with other Nest products.

So I contacted the developers to ask if they supported the new doorbell or planned to.

None did at this time but said they may if they thought the demand was there. But the developer of the most successful app said the same thing and added that he would add it if someone contributed what it would cost to code and implement and said that would be...wait for it..... between $300 and $1,000; he would have to look more closely to narrow that down.

Now obviously, a lot of the code already exists to interact with the other Nest devices his app supports, but I have to assume the same would be true about the Ring (and other company) WM apps that were abandoned simply because they didn't want to update them when the iOS or Android versions were updated.

I'm sure big companies like Ring, etc. have more overhead etc. But seriously, even if the costs are 10 times what a successful (oxymoron?) independent WM developer would expend, it doesn't make sense to me, at least, to take a pass. Ring, for example, has an ongoing revenue stream from most customers. Just the homes on my cul-de-sac would generate enough to cover the costs for the app.

I didn't know the costs of such an app for W10M were on the low side. They could probably crowdfund it in some way to raise the money. Sometimes, it's not about the money, it's about the masses. Or rather, supply and demand. And the masses don't demand Windows phone apps, so the developers follow what they do want instead.