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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.

11 of 149 comments (clear)

  1. No burst - phase change by SuperKendall · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The App Store has a tremendous number of small apps that are minimally useful.

    But it also has a small number off apps with deeper functionality that are really useful - and that subset of apps is growing, and will provide real value. Those apps are much harder to build. Those apps generally require infrastructure and marketing and all the things we traditionally think of with applications - this article hints at that as developers have discovered to sell a product they need, of all things, advertising!

    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. If nothing else, the soon to be flood of augmented reality apps and apps based around custom hardware will ensure that.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. 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.

    2. Re:No burst - phase change by rho · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah, no kidding. After all those years of "There are no applications for Macs! Buy a PC!" in the press, now we get "There are too many applications for the iPhone, IS IT DOOMED?????"

      Morons.

      --
      Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
  2. Staying Afloat ? by ciderVisor · · Score: 4, Funny

    There's an app for that !

    --
    Squirrel!
  3. Re:So.... how many of them are worth using? by Anonymous+Monkey · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hay, no talking bad about Linux...er...never mind.

    --
    We are the Borg...
  4. approval process blues - developers causing it! by ardiri · · Score: 4, Insightful

    as an iphone developer (http://www.mobile1up.com/) - one who has been there from quite early on, i have started to notice how long it takes to get approved. in the early days, it was 3-4 days for a new version or update; now, i have two applications waiting in the approval process, it has been over two weeks! is apple employing enough people? i think so. the issue is that you get morons who think they need to release a "special" version of their application 100 times; take, for example, there was a weather application posted recently - one for each city in the united states.. come on; how much wasted time is there for apple to approve all 100 of these apps - when they could have approved one. with the introduction of "nude or raunchy" content; submissions have increased exponentially; now you dont get a fart app - you get a fart app with a hot girl in it.

  5. Frustrating For Developers by quangdog · · Score: 4, Informative

    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

    1. Re:Frustrating For Developers by Arslan+ibn+Da'ud · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.)

      --

      Practice Kind Randomness and Beautiful Acts of Nonsense.

    2. Re:Frustrating For Developers by ObsessiveMathsFreak · · Score: 4, Funny

      Not everyone has iTunes installed on every machine?

      But then... how would you live?

      --
      May the Maths Be with you!
  6. There's a fair number of useless apps by i_want_you_to_throw_ · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  7. 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!