Yes, the title is an experiment in clickbaiting. Not that I expect clicks.

From Panic by way of SixColors:

• We are suspending the sale of Transmit iOS very soon
• Revenue was not enough to cover development — we won’t sell something we can’t actively develop
• This does not affect Transmit 5 for Mac. It’s doing extremely well
• This also does not affect Coda iOS and Prompt iOS, both of which are still going strong
• We really hope to bring it back someday in some form
  

...

Transmit iOS made about $35k in revenue in the last year, representing a minuscule fraction of our overall 2017 app revenue. That’s not enough to cover even a half-time developer working on the app.

...

Interesting for many reasons.

1. This is one of the biggest macOS specialist shops. They get "free press". And they can't sustainably sell an FTP app on iOS.
2. You won't sell what you don't develop? Code doesn't rust, man. It gets better. (Though see the Simogo counterpoint.)
3. Wait, doesn't Coda boast "Remote protocols include SFTP, WebDAV, Amazon S3, DreamObjects, and FTP (Plain, TLS, SSL) support"? Isn't Coda a text editor wrapping Transmit?
4. Are we really that far away from iPad Pros being used as pro [web dev] hardware? (Though Coda on iOS is apparently doing well.)
5. Are "protocol apps" dying in general? Remember Unison?
6. What's the iOS hardware breakdown (iPhone sizes, iPad sizes, etc) for Transmit and Coda use? Is Transmit used as "FTP of last resort"? And is that too expensive at $9.99?

Microsubscriptions

I'm fairly convinced that the answer to much of this, "But I can't resell this!" hand-wringing is for apps to charge microsubscriptions. Ads don't pay squat, and only seem useful as an excuse to charge $2 to remove them.

How about you instead charge $0.49 a year to use your app?

Or, here, for Transmit, say $3 a year? Whatever's cheap enough that if you need it, you'll pay it without thinking. If I'm stuck in my car and a link's broken, who isn't going to pay $3 to fix it? I'm sure not buying Coda for $25.

Self-Unfulfilling Prophecies

Later on, Sasser does say...

My optimistic take: we hope that as iOS matures, and more and more pro users begin to seriously consider the iPad as a legitimate part of their daily work routines, Transmit iOS can one day return and triumph like it does on the Mac.

I'm still thrown off by, "If we don't develop it, we don't sell it," here, I think. Why not leave the canary in the coal mine to see when things do start lighting up? Isn't there a chance having Transmit available would speed professional use?

Remember Joel's rule of thumb?

To take over a market, you have to address every barrier to entry. If you forget just one barrier which trips up 50% of your potential customers, then by definition, you can’t have more than 50% market share, and you will never displace the dominant player, and you’ll be stuck on the sad (omelet) side of chicken and egg problems.

We could argue that not having a good FTP client on iOS makes this "iOS maturation" take that much longer...

Why not experiment?

I'm also surprised by this...

Also, paid upgrades are still a matter of great debate and discomfort in the iOS universe, so the normally logical idea of a paid “Transmit 2 for iOS” would be unlikely to help.

Is that really not worth trying? Do you really think Transmit buyers map to your normal app market?

Though, at the same time, I'm not sure Transmit on macOS needs half the new features it's got. I'm still on 4, and would probably still be on 3 if it weren't for some bundle deal, if I'm remembering correctly.

That's why I'm back to microsubscriptions. Not a month. Do a year. At impulse rates. Need it once? Charge a sensible price for that plus the promise of a whole year later. You'll get close to $10 pretty quickly.

Bad Marketing?

Thanks to the power of iOS, Transmit will also extend the standard iOS Share sheet — the one you see in, say, Photos or Voice Memos, when you tap the Share button — to include a brand-new Transmit button. That means you can now share your Photos directly to your SFTP server, or share a podcast voice memo straight to Amazon S3. It's incredibly powerful.

And there's one more cool iOS thing: in compatible applications, like iWork, you can Open a document directly off your server. And when you hit Save, it will silently and perfectly upload back to your server. In other words, you can use your server as your own seamless cloud storage. Amazing.

Isn't that a more interesting application than an FTP client? Maybe they need to repackage. I mean, Coda is simply a text editor wedded to a [file-transfer app]. But that integration on iOS is exactly what makes it worth the cash.

And then there's the sad irony...

Labels: app store econ, apps, business, ios, panic