Rogue Amoeba is a creator of Mac Software and are among a handful who create really good stuff. One of their more popular products right now is AirFoil, that lets you send any type of audio from your computer to any audio system via Airport Express. It was initially released for the Mac, and the lure of a much bigger installed base led them to write a version for Windows,
They wrote an interesting post on Thursday about their experience selling to the Windows market. There are disclaimers all over the post about their limited data and beta release, yet they still draw conclusions.
Here are a couple of my responses:
- There is a hive for Windows users. 200,000 downloads of Vista show that Windows is alive and well.
- The software depends on you have an Airport Express. How many Windows users are running out the down to get an AE? The hardware adoption is going to drive sales. I think their slightly higher conversion rate for the Windows version is geeks with multiple computers want to be able to stream from wherever they have audio.
I think there are equally as good questions in the comments of the post.
My comments are a little bigger than the conversion rate questions from the post. RA wrote a follow-up on Friday and asked for others to talk about their conversion rate. Unsanity, The Little App Factory, and Gaucho Software all provided more numbers.
Something around 5% seems to be what all these companies are seeing.