Connect IQ Monetization System vs own payment system - increase in sales?

You can update it any time you like, and I assume the sync time is ~seconds.

The line items in sales reports have the following columns:

• Transaction Date
• Settlement Date (this is when the sale is committed after the opportunity to refund)
• App ID (store UUID)
• Title (of the app)
• Developer Name
• Country of Sale
• Developer Share (amount you get)
• Share Currency

Ah, so you see the price for each sale. That's good.

The quarterly reports also show vat-garmin-developer cut. However I don't know when users get those, I guess only when your cumulative sales are above $100.

The intent of the $100 annual fee seems to be to discourage people who aren’t “serious enough” from trying payments out.

I’m guessing (“WAG”-ing) that a very high percentage of IQ apps don’t or wouldn’t make much money.

The fee blocks most developers from trying payments and keeps most IQ apps free. It also might block developers from even considering writing IQ apps.

Maybe, Garmin’s $100 fee will reduce the flood of junky low-effort watch faces. (With the downside of discouraging people from developing high-value watch faces.)

Developers can still do “tip jars” (which hasn’t done a lot for me).

Apple charges $100 annually (even to be able to release free stuff). This gives to access to a much bigger “market” (with many “sellers”) than IQ. It’s possible that it would be easier for developers to create an impact in Garmin’s store than in Apple’s.

I’m not sure if I’d want to have to pay an annual fee to be able to release free stuff. So, as bad as it might be, Garmin’s fee could be worse.

Microsoft charged a low one-time fee (it appears it’s free now), which I appreciate. Microsoft might actually have real people verify the apps).

I don’t make real money with my Microsoft apps but selling stuff is interesting/amusing. It’s also a gauge of how interested people are in the product. I offer a generous trial period (I’m not interested in getting money from people who don’t find the apps worthwhile). I do wish there was a way to reset the trial so people could try new versions. I can see the point of companies charging a small one-time fee.

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I don’t like that Garmin stopped providing actual download counts.

My IQ apps have like 4000+ downloads.

Being told by Garmin that it’s 1000+ is useless garbage for no reason. It’s really anti (small) developer.

yeah, this is one more time when Garmin does something that would really benefit older devices, but they can't use it. I'm talking about datafields, that both have problems (especially in older watches) with internet (background only) and also tight on code size. Uding the Garmin Pay would mean they don't need the extra code for 3rd party payment nor internet access after installations, and still the devices that would benefit from it the most are not supported, and never will.

Garmin has a long-standing practice of not supporting old devices. Presumably, they have good reasons.

It might not make sense to prioritize adding payments to old devices when it’s possible many more people would rather they add new-device features to their old devices.

Older devices often have memory constraints and might be using krufty code that is hard to update. Of course, old devices are also a shrinking market.

Garmin payment requires changes in the firmware, so it's not surprising that it's not available on older devices.

dpawlyk said:

Garmin has a long-standing practice of not supporting old devices. Presumably, they have good reasons.

It might not make sense to prioritize adding payments to old devices when it’s possible many more people would rather they add new-device features to their old devices.

Older devices often have memory constraints and might be using krufty code that is hard to update. Of course, old devices are also a shrinking market.

jim_m_58 said:

Garmin payment requires changes in the firmware, so it's not surprising that it's not available on older devices.

This is a great point.

Most, if not all, of the old devices which do not support Garmin Pay had probably stopped receiving firmware updates for a long time when Garmin Pay was announced.

For Garmin to turn around and update the firmware of those old devices to support Garmin Pay would actually be a huge 180 in terms of policy, and cost a lot more time, effort and money than it would be worth.

So this is probably the real reason that old devices don't support Garmin Pay, and not my dumb guess that it was a way for Garmin to try to encourage users of old devices to update. They have already done that in other ways, anyway. 

Isn’t “changes in the firmware” the only way any of these devices can be updated?