Hi Guys
While I usually refrain from commenting on speculative discussions, I think I might mention something from our perspective.
I have been working on perhaps one of the most profitable XF forum out there. We make in excess of $40K per month from an Inner Circle. I am not mentioning the number to boast, simply to lend credence to the perspective I am about to share.
Dealing with over 3000 paid members, we have discovered that in the past one and a half years, members have definitely moved on to mobile. While it is true that this depends on the niche, mobile traffic is constantly increasing at the expense of desktop even though there may not be a proportional change. I recommend everyone here to log into their analytics and compare their desktop vs Mobile traffic from now versus a year ago.
XF already has a pretty decent responsive skin. However, our experience tells us that people on iOS and Android prefer an app versus the responsive skin. We have spent upwards of $20K on developing our own apps. Of course XF by itself is a forum with a framework and not an app. However my sincerest request to both Mike and Kier is to consider offering separate products which enable people to release branded apps. If XF offers a way for people to set up a forum along with apps for Android and iOS, it would perhaps hands down be the best application to start any kind of site with. XF has an excellent framework. I have myself developed all sorts of custom features with our XF instance and where it takes me days to develop a feature with something like Magento, it takes me hours in XF. That is honest and sincere appreciation for the work of Kier and Mike and the way they have built XF ground up.
If you guys provide apps as separate products, in my estimate a large number of todays customers would buy them. To start with, the app should be able to do the basics of what XF does at least. You guys of course can think of hiring more developers if you want to explore that route.
I know this may not be the what's on top of your priority list right now, but I am just expressing the demand I see in the market.
In either case, once again, very good work guys and cheers for much! better days ahead!