Comments on: PDAGreen Shutting Down

Truely. They have recently adjust their take up to 33%+/43%+ which will force developers to raise prices which is not good for anyone but PalmGear.

DevPOV, where exactly did you read that PalmGear increased their take to 33%? AFAIK, the standard commission is still 30%. At least, that's what the Reseller Agreement on their site says.

Just wondering where the 33% is coming from.

The new rates of 33%+ and 43%+ are taken from this leter:

Date: 06/01/2004

PalmGear, a division of PowerByHand, is committed to furthering our position ...

To enable PalmGear to aggressively launch more affiliate distribution channels, including some of the world’s leading carriers, we need to ensure our Reseller Agreement is more in line with carrier requirements and those of our other web properties. This includes calculating royalty rates based on a Gross Revenue minus Transaction Costs model.

Below is the new formula for calculating royalties which goes into effect on July 1, 2004:

Actual Sales Price minus Transaction Costs equals Net Sales minus Royalty Rate equals Net to Developer.

An example for an application with a sales price of $19.99:

$19.99 sales price
-$1.12 (minus transaction cost*)
$18.87 net base for royalty
-$5.66 minus 30% royalty rate (40% for Premier Partners)
$13.21 net to developer

*Current transaction costs are estimated at 3.85% of gross plus $.35 per transaction.

Developer Transaction Adjustment will take effect on July 1, 2004.
Allowance is made for thirty days notice effective June 1, 2004 that our Agreement has been amended.

At PalmGear we are committed to aggressively providing our strategic partners, developers and customers with technical enhancements and superior service to strengthen our position as the industry leader in the Palm Powered™ software marketplace.

We wish to thank you for your valued partnership and know that you will understand the necessity for this transaction adjustment.

If you have any questions or inquiries, please contact us via email at partnerservices@palmgear.com.

Thank you.

Our Best Regards,

The PalmGear Team

Yes, I will continue to list also.

But it's getting to the point where I wonder: For example, this month, they basically put all software on 15% off without asking the developers. They didn't advertise or give any other special condsideration with this. So any software bought by users essentially upped the commsion to 45% if the developer was on the normal contract and 55% if the developer was on the premier program.

I would suggest for developers to look into distributing their software on the emerging European software market too. Pdassi (http://www.pdassi.de) is strongly expanding into other European countries (Netherlands (http://www.pdassi.nl) and Italia (http://www.pdassi.it) and is also powering the official German Palmsource softwareshop. It might be not as big as Handango or Palmgear by the looks of it, but it really helps sales because they offer localized descriptions and paying in local currency (also non-creditcard payments!) and are more than willing to help you into localizing your own software.

For Dutch Palm-users: http://www.palmclub.nl

After 3 years of doing business exclusively with PalmGear, I now haven't done a dime's worth there for just shy of 2 years.

PalmGear is morphing more into a mini Micro$oft with its every move. I have deleted apps off my device after the trial period because they were only available at PalmGear. I can't blame developers for offering their goods on PalmGear, but if anyone wants my business I must be able to buy it elsewhere. Same goes for sale prices, can't be PalmGear only there either.

I'm another one who Google's the developer and registers on his/her site as my first choice.

the VisorMiser
_____________________________________________________________________
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. -- Sir Winston Churchill

I'm from Motown (Home of the NBA Champion Detroit Pistons). Around town, for many years, we have heard similar crys about Automobile prices being hi because of dealerships. If people could buy straight from the manufacturer - the cost would be extremely lower. Well every attempt to do this has failed. The courts have blocked any attempt for the manufactures to open their own "dealerships".

Palmgear.com (Handango, Tucows, etc) is sort of like a Palm OS software dealership.

People go to the Palm OS dealerships because they have a larger choice of different developer's wares. A small percentage of people find it on Palmgear and then take the trouble to buy it from the developer - but most simple buy it from Palmgear because of the convenence.

The US market is built on this principle. If we could buy our peas from Delmonte directly then the supermarkets wouldn't get their markups either. These are distribution channels (dealerships, markets, Palm OS shop sites). The majority of the products would go unknown without these channels.

Palmgear has setup agreements with the larger Palm OS news sites to (1) Further their distrubution channel and (2) Bring further awareness of the developers' products to people who would normally not know about the products (or Palmgear for that matter)

Developers can sell their wares without the dealerships but in most cases it comes down to this: Developers can have 100% of nothing or 70% of something.

Carl Brooks
http://www.palmloyal.com
(By the way I have a sub-distribution agreement with Palmgear as do PIC)

>>>That's just wrong.

And you obviously have a high sense of what is right and wrong.