Staying Afloat In a Sea of iPhone Apps

Burnsy writes "During all the hype of Apple celebrating its 1.5 billion iPhone App Store downloads, some good advice on how to be successful and stand out in the App Store came out. One story describes how developers are increasingly coming up with various strategies to make a splash, employing everything from temporary discounts to guerilla marketing tactics. On the other hand, some successful developers, such as the creator of the Flight Control app, which has been the number one selling app in 20 countries, talk about the pitfalls of Apple's approval process for the App Store. They say it can take a developer up to three months to get an application approved and distributed on the App Store and that maybe the iPhone bubble is soon to burst." A related story at Wired points out that the games category — already crowded with over 13,000 entries — is getting even more competitive as the major game publishers push into the market.

Comments

Frustrating For Developers

[quangdog]

I've released a few apps on the app store, and have met with some success with them. However, the single most frustrating thing is the approval process for getting an app released in the first place, and publishing updates on a continuing basis.

I recently updated one of my apps, and it took Apple 16 days to review the executable and publish it. I then updated my other app, and it took 14 days.

Seriously? 2 weeks? There is nothing more frustrating than to have users contacting me saying "when will feature xyz arrive?" and my response have to be along the lines of "I've submitted it to apple 2 weeks ago. They'll approve it when they approve it. There is nothing I can do to speed it up.

[Shameless Plug]:
For any who are interested, here are the apps I've written:
Velocity
Points

Re:Frustrating For Developers

[Arslan ibn Da'ud]

Might I recommend that if you wish to provide a link to an iPhone app, don't link directly to iTunes. Not everyone has iTunes installed on every machine? (Last I checked there was no Linux version.) Instead provide a link to your app via AppBeacon.

For instance: Velocity

They mirror the info iTunes provides, also providing a iTunes link. But that way I can review your app on my linux box and buy it directly, or buy it later on my mac laptop. (No, I don't work for AppBeacon, just a satisfied netizen.)

There's a fair number of useless apps

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

My advice, jailbreak your phone. Apple touts the sheer number of apps as something wonderful but I don't need 5 different apps that can make my iPhone into a flashlight.

Jailbreaking my iPhone in the first hour yielded me apps from Cydia that allow me to record video, tether my iPhone and most importantly blacklist callers and SMS. Just this morning I successfully got Perl 5.10 running on it.

Point is, just don't look to the App Store if you want something useful.