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Staying Afloat In a Sea of iPhone Apps

Posted by Soulskill on from the is-there-an-app-for-finding-apps dept.

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.

3 of 149 comments (clear)

  1. So.... how many of them are worth using? by Colin+Smith · · Score: 3, Interesting

    300 notepad applications, only a couple are going to be worth installing, never mind paying for. The same will be true of any category.

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  2. Re:No burst - phase change by andrewd18 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Far from being an app bubble, we are simply seeing a transition into a more mature market with richer products. Because it's so easy and cheap to create apps I'm sure we'll always see a ton of simple apps, but the market will grow on from that base instead of contracting as the term "bubble" would imply.

    Quoted for truth.

    One could have the exact same argument about the x86 Windows-based market in the 90's. So many applications popped up that the market was flooded; take CD burning applications, for example. Roxio, Nero, Sonic, CloneCD, Power ISO, Ulead... all applications vying for consumer attention that do the exact same thing. In the end, the competition just widens the field, increases choice, and spurs innovation, both in the software and advertising fields.

    In the end I expect iPhone apps will be sold primarily by word of mouth.

  3. Re:Actual iPhone Developer Response only please by BSDimwit · · Score: 4, Interesting

    To develop iPhone apps, you must have the following. 1. Intel based Mac or hackintosh. (there are ways around it but it's easier to stick with x86 macs)
    2. Download the free iPhone SDK. This SDK includes Xcode which is the IDE that most mac devs use the iPhone cocoa touch libs and an iPhone simulator app to test certain kinds of apps.
    3. Learn Objective-C and Cocoa Touch libraries (plenty of books for this)
    4. Pay Apple $99/year to test your apps on an actual device and sell your completed app on the App Store. 5. Profit!