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It doesn't necessarily solve RoAS tracking either. If you only have information on some % of your purchasers* and you optimize against that small, self-selecting sample, you may entirely miss other groups of higher spenders who just don't want to be tracked.

It might help answer the question "which campaigns are performing better relative to each other" as long as we assume that no campaigns are more likely to affect opt-in rates than others. It may even be an improvement over up-front consent seeking, if the theory is that a better checkout UX with less upfront annoyances results in better opt-in rates later on. But it doesn't really answer the bigger question of "is this the best place to spend my marketing dollars" vs, say, investing in campaigns/platforms that may have greater reach but less transparent funnels (comparing a Google Ad to a Superbowl TV ad, for example).

If you use this in a vacuum without any statistical modeling thought, you end up optimizing against algorithmic limitations rather than real customers. At the end of the day you're drastically reducing your sample size, and not in a representative, random manner. Your opt-in users are behaviorally different from the majority of people, and it wouldn't be a good idea to make big decisions based on their actions alone. They are essentially a cheaper focus group, with all the pros and cons of such.

(*Probably a very low percentage, if the recent iOS tracking opt-in is any indication. One analysis says <15%…

Thanks so much for the feedback. Always nice to get a counterpoint to the sunshine and roses you hear from friends, family and the like.

Regarding:

a) Performance. Very disappointing to hear that you are experiencing lag. We did extensive device testing on iPad 1, and while we can't get the app to perform like it does on iPad 2 (SJ wasn't kidding about 7x graphical performance on the iPad 2), we did think we had gotten it to a stable, smooth operating state for the original iPad. Sounds like that's not the case for you. Would you be willing to let us know whether you downloaded the free or the paid version? And what version of iOS are you running? We'd love to address any issues you're seeing, but any further info you can provide is very helpful for any fine tuning.

b) Music. It's a funny thing, very much a matter of taste. My kids (age 2,4) love the music. In fact, the three of us had a huge dance party to the Brahms piece from the app to celebrate launch. Sorry it's not your thing. We would have loved to include some music from Philip Glass, but we couldn't work out the licensing. Any suggestions on what you would like to hear?

c) In-App Purchase. Very familiary with your sentiment regarding IAP. That said, the freemium model seems here to stay - see for example: http://blog.flurry.com/bid/67748/Consumers-Spend-Average-of-14-per-Transaction-in-iOS-and-Android-Freemium-Games
And while there is a (vocal) group of folks that don't like this model, there…

Samsung seem to have really gored the Apple community's oxen by having the temerity to challenge the iPad with "a big phone" and an Android phone at that.

This guy's estimating 225 thousand sales total and getting featured on Daring Fireball.

This app stats & analytics company on the other hand saw 0.9 million activated in December alone, basically tied as the second best selling android device.

http://blog.flurry.com/bid/54035/Android-Special-Report-Is-Samdroid-the-new-Wintel

Since Samsung originally thought they were going to sell a million in the last three months of 2010, then upped that target to 1.5 million I'd say they were doing okay.

Personally I have no need for a 3G tablet, since I already have a phone I'm paying for data on and could tether, but those in the market for such a thing seem to like it as much as or more than the iPad. I did the research because I consider buying one to use as a jumbophone (this capability was removed for the US market) but it was just slightly too big for me. I'll settle for one of the next generation of 4.5-5 devices (and probably a cheap Tegra2 wifi tablet as well).

iOS users continue to purchase more apps, and pay for more expensive apps, than their Android counterparts, despite the gulf in overall sales and user figures:

http://www.distimo.com/blog/2011_12_distimo-releases-full-year-2011-publication/

In 2011 iPad app revenues alone topped Android Market revenues by a significant margin.

edit: some more recent sources: http://www.appannie.com/game-of-phones/

http://blog.flurry.com/bid/85911/App-Developers-Signal-Apple-Allegiance-Ahead-of-WWDC-and-Google-I-O "Running a comparison of revenue generated by top apps on both iOS and Android, Flurry calculates that the difference in revenue generated per active user is still 4 times greater on iOS than Android. For every $1.00 a developer earns on iOS, he can expect to earn about $0.24 on Android. These results mirror earlier findings from similar analysis Flurry conducted in Q4 of 2011 and Q1 of 2012."

Curious if you're aware that mobile web usage dropped from 14% to 8% from 2014 to 2016[0]? And that according to Alex Russell[1], Google's internal telemetry has it well below 7% now. It seems to me that the opposite is true, that the irrelevance of the web on mobile will keep the web app versus mobile app division around essentially forever (web apps will be popular on desktop, and native apps on mobile). (Unless I was misunderstanding and you were saying, what's the difference? E.g., Facebook is Facebook, whether it's a web app or a native app.)

[0]: https://www.flurry.com/post/157921590345/us-consumers-time-spent-on-mobile-crosses-5

[1]: https://vimeo.com/364402896

In general, if you want to make any real money from iOS, make your app free and have users unlock features with in-app purchases. The cost of gaining wide adoption of free applications is very low and you'll find your conversions once they start using the app are much higher than price changing strategies. You also have the option to break down the pricing into smaller pieces (have a few $0.50 upgrades instead of paying $2 for the app).

If you have more specific questions about the kind of app/genre I'm happy to answer them. My company (http://flurry.com) specialize in mobile application analytics and marketing.