There are tons of companies and even microISVs that make a good living or more, from desktop apps, in both the developed and less developed worlds. (But they are not 5$ apps.) Hell, there are many small and medium software companies in India (for example) that were doing good business (and probably still are) with Clipper / XBase apps for small businesses, on (gasp!) DOS, to take just one area (of both tech and domain). VB and VB.NET too. Delphi too, probably. C++/Qt too. C++/wxWidgets. ... I see the (XBase or other) apps myself in many shops, malls, doing the accounts, sales, POS, etc. Seen such apps in many factories too (I was on the field for a while, earlier). Its just that they are not mentioned much here on HN. (See the recent thread about the Rails jobs). And I'm sure it must be so in many other less developed countries too, not just in the US, Europe, Canada, Australia, etc. (which are highly computerized). HN is not the whole universe, only a quite small part of it, though we techies sometimes tend to think otherwise.