In 2007, when we first created iBird™, the iPhone was still in its infancy and many skeptics, including myself, wondered if it had a future.

Yet for the next 12+ years we at MWG(1) (see http://mitchwaite.com) were lucky to continually expand and improve iBird’s content, because 43 million birders in North America discovered that an app could replace a heavy book.

Our Good Fortune
Essentially, we at MWG were lucky to be swept up in the wonderful wave of iPhone apps in a large and under-filled nature and outdoors market. This meant we could publish non-stop improvements in iBird content, including improved illustrations and better photos (with no paper), which gave birding apps a huge advantage over printed books. Our updates were often dictated by the American Ornithologist Union, whom every year issued an update to their birding standard.

Thank you, Apple
Every year Apple gave iPhone developers remarkable new power in iPhone and iPad SDK functionality. For example, Core AI allowed us to weave a neural network into an app that we trained with 1 million photos, to identify birds from even poor-quality photographs. This was the foundation of iBird Photo Sleuth and finally became a plugin for iBird Pro.

Unfortunately, while we were leveraging the remarkable power of the Apple SDK and adding new bird species data, our costs climbed. We continued to pay our artists to draw new birds, ornithologists to research the many changes to species due to DNA research, and programmers to implement the new features and changes Apple made to the iPhone and iPad. So, at the same time our expenses were going up, our income was shrinking.

Why is App income dropping? (Skip to 7-Day Free Trial)
There are lots of reasons income from paid apps has been dropping. One of the main reasons is that, for the industry as a whole, as you have probably noticed, one-time paid apps are being converted to subscriptions. For those who sell reference guide types of apps, there are additional reasons.

App Market
Perhaps the biggest reason for the drop in the market for reference guide apps, like iBird™ Pro, is that the market for birding apps is saturated. iBird was fortunate to be one of the first, if not the first, serious reference field guide apps to hit the iPhone market in December 2007. Today the market is over-supplied with dozens of birding apps of all stripe and color and all vying for a slice of what is already a small pie.

How to Beat Free
A trend in apps today is to make them free. These are often supported by advertising in-between text, or video ads you must listen to for 30-60 seconds. Some offer to sell you a printed version of the content in the app, e.g., Kindle for Amazon. Others ask you to become a member and pay dues.

Consequently, over the last decade we’ve been forced to lower the price of iBird. Originally iBird was one of the few quality apps which allowed us to set the price at $29.99. It turned out this was about what most popular printed field guides cost, like National Geographic or Sibley. People quickly recognized they could leave these 3-to-4-pound monster books at home, and just carry a light-weight iPhone in their pocket.

7-Day Free Trial
And now to my point; we can no longer continue selling iBird at a fixed price and stay in business. Our solution is to offer a trial version of iBird Pro that will allow you to play with it for 7 days at no charge, then elect to continue with a monthly or yearly subscription. This iBird 7-day trial allows you to do all the things you can do in the paid app, for up to seven days with no charge.

1-Year Trial for All Prior iBird owners
For any customer who bought iBird Pro, Plus, Ultimate, UK and Ireland, Hawaii and Palau, or any other iBird version in the last 8 years, this statement applies to you:

“We hereby bequeath to you one free, full-year subscription of iBird Pro™ for no charge at all.”

You just have to decide what you want to do after that year is up: subscribe for another month, subscribe for a year, or don't subscribe at all. Of course, we will alert you when your subscription is about to expire and let you choose what you want to do next, and you can cancel anytime.

We hope you decide to stick around. Please join the conversation in one of our birding group forums found here:

Join the WhatBird Forum

Thanks,

Mitch

(1) Our Group: Programming: Rick Stephens, Anthony Spinelli, James Tavakoli, Phillip Furlan, Robert Levy. Ornithology: Jane Wright, Lisa Mease. Graphics: Michelle Sixta. Illustrations: Yury Lisyak, Michael Oberhofer, Chris Vest. Support: Brenna Fossett.