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Our 12th Anniversary!

by Ellen

12 YearsToday is our 12 year anniversary! Yes, we’ve been making and selling mobile and desktop software for 12 years. How amazing is that?

I wish I could take credit for it all, but I’m a little too honest for that. We’ve been smart – I’ll never downplay that – but we’ve been very lucky too. I never know what the future of mobile software will be like, but we’ll be trying hard to keep up with it, without compromising our commitments to high quality software, in-house development, ethical business practices, and world-class tech and customer support.

Of course we couldn’t have done it without our many supporters: writers, reviewers, customers, beta testers, friends, colleagues, supporters, partners, and everyone who send us suggestions, information and kind words. Many, many, many thanks to everyone.

And particularly to the people I never remember to thank (at least not on the blog) – the committed, talented, and patient people who make up Ilium Software. To develop, test, release, maintain, support, distribute, market and sell the stuff we do is an amazing accomplishment, especially given how many of us are really making it up as we go along. If you’re reading this, please join me in celebrating this incredible accomplishment.

Julie’s got a week of sales and giveaways planned, so be sure to stick around. The sale has already started in our online store, and the first blog contest will be posted soon, with lots of chances to win great prizes!

AND – we’re on Twitter. Better late than never, I hope. Check us out at http://twitter.com/iliumsoftware

Adventures in Formatting

by Ellen

With help from Marc, Dan and Lee, I learned a really bad – albeit effective – way to format a hard drive yesterday:

 
Formatting by Ellen

It turns out that:

  • It’s a lot easier than you’d expect to snap hard disks.
  • They break into many, many little pieces that fly everywhere.
  • And the pieces are extremely sharp.

If you’re wondering whether we take our data security seriously, yes, we do. That’s my personal blood on the disc pieces and the desk.

I don’t recommend trying this.

Have Coffee with Marc!

by Julie

If you’re attending MacWorld (or if you live in the Bay Area) come have coffee with me tomorrow morning! I’ll be camped out at Starbucks in the Marriott lobby from 8am to 9am, stocking up on caffeine to get me through the day.

It’s your chance to ask me your burning questions (yes, we’re working on the Mac version), offer up your ideas, and find out what we have planned for the future. We’d love to hear from you so come on over.

And if you can’t make it tomorrow, I’ll be there again on Thursday morning!

Just look for the stunningly handsome bald guy with an Ilium Software shirt on! đŸ˜‰

See you there!

Podcast with Todd Ogasawara

by Ellen

Todd Ogasawara, who runs one of my very favorite blogs: the really excellent MobileAppsToday, did a podcast interview with Marc and me yesterday. It’s published on his site and I’m going to add the player here once I make sure it will work.

We talk about products, platforms, trends and how to find us at CES and MacWorld next week.

Here’s the player, if you want to hear it directly:

Thanks, Todd, for including us!

Does iPhone User = Mac User?

by Marc

There is a perception out there that iPhone users are Mac users. Now before I say more, let me make it clear right now that this is NOT a “Which OS is best?” article. From a business perspective, the quality of the OS doesn’t matter to me as much as how many users of a particular OS are out there, and whether they will buy our software. I PREFER a high-quality OS because of the cool stuff we can do with it, but in the end its about which OS will pay the bills.

O.K., Disclaimer complete!

I’m still looking for a solid study on this, but from everything I’ve seen so far (based largely on our own sales information) it just isn’t true that iPhone User = Mac User. I think part of the reason for this is that according to one estimate, the total number of Mac users in the world (adjusting for recent increases in market share) is around 22,750,000. This doesn’t adjust down for the number of these Macs that are sitting on desks in computer labs of schools. So the number is probably lower. We’ll go with it though.

The total number of iPhones expected to be sold by end of this year is at least 14,000,000. This doesn’t account for the fact that a lot of the 3G sales were 1st gen users replacing their old phones. Still, like the 22m number, we’ll go with it.

So, what is a reasonable estimate for the number of Mac users who are buying iPhones? 20%? I’m betting this is high, based on what I know about smartphone ownership in general, but let’s go with this as a conservative number. I say conservative because 20% is 2 to 3 times the marketshare (depending on the estimate you use) of Mac in the computing market. So with 20% adoption rate I’m suggesting that Mac users are 3X more likely to buy an iPhone than a Windows user.

So, even at 20% adoption rate among Mac owners, this means that only 4.5 million of the 14 million iPhone users have Macs. That means that twice as many iPhone users have PCs. Throw in the fact that we also have a VERY big Windows Mobile market, and you can see why Windows has to be our first priority. To put it simply, Windows iPhone users are (at the moment) still where the money is.

At the same time, we absolutely see the value of Mac as a platform for our products. (I just saw a new build of eWallet for Mac the other day and it’s really coming along.) The reality though is that Mac isn’t a “core” platform yet. It falls into the “emerging” category. Of course as you all know, we don’t ignore emerging markets. Where you go, we go. It’s just that most folks aren’t there yet.

I hope that this article will help folks who say “Seriously, dude. Why on Earth do you have an iPhone version but no Mac version?” to better understand the numbers behind our decision making process.

The Ilium Software Advisory Board – YOU!

by Marc

I just wanted to take a moment to reinforce how much we appreciate all the input we’ve received from all of you. Even if we aren’t able to add something that you’ve been waiting for, much of what we do here is based directly on customer feedback. From features, to fixes, to new applications, we always look to what our customers tell us as we go to make decisions.

Does this mean that we can always do the things you ask for? Unfortunately no, if for no other reason than that for every person who asks for Feature A there is a person asking for Feature B, and at some point we have to make a choice. At the same time, we never take requests or comments lightly, even if it only comes from one person.

So thank you again for all of your feedback, and absolutely keep it coming. And over the coming week, expect to see some posts where we specifically ask you for your input on some of the challenges we’re facing!

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