Staying Afloat In a Sea of iPhone Apps 149
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.
So.... how many of them are worth using? (Score:4, 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.
Re:No burst - phase change (Score:5, 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.
So many little, crying babies... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, it's too bad that it's harder to find good apps in the App Store when there are 50,000 than when there were 5,000.
But that only means you now have to work for your supper, like any one else who publishes anything from books to music to movies to software.
The same goes for those who complain that if they charge $50 for their app no one buys it.
Wow, welcome to the world of microeconomics and price theory. And, again, promotion.
Here's a clue: you don't have to use the app store as the only or even primary venue for promotion and discovery of your app. Yes, it's harder now than it was, but that's life in a competitive market place. The barriers to entry are lower than they've ever been for such an awesome platform, but that doesn't mean that becoming a success is any easier (nor should it be, if economic theory even kind of works as we understand it to) than it ever has been.
Frakin' cry babies. Suck it up, wipe off your crocodile tears, and make something awesome.
If you have anything legitimate to cry about it is Apple's dystopian app approval process.
Re:So many little, crying babies... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, it's too bad that it's harder to find good apps in the App Store when there are 50,000 than when there were 5,000. But that only means you now have to work for your supper, like any one else who publishes anything from books to music to movies to software.
Still, I think Apple could do better organizing the apps. For one thing, their categories are too vague. For example, the IM clients are all in "social networking" along with tons of other crap.
Since Apple is keeping tight control of distribution, I think they're somewhat obligated to make it easier for people to find what they're looking for, for the sake of both developers and customers.
Graphics Designer's point of view (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:So.... how many of them are worth using? (Score:3, Interesting)
or J2ME or even Symbian. At least, there is free market I would say. There is no "app store" to say "duplicates functionality". It is USER who says "bleh, this sux" and presses C button on its icon to uninstall application. No harm done...
Apps like Profimail and Opera Mini proves that if you code a really good application, you stay on guys device and in case of Profimail, guy even pays for it. I picked these 2 because they are coded in J2ME instead of "native" Symbian C. You can`t believe how hard it is to succeed for a J2ME app on a smart phone let alone getting picked instead of a thing already coming with it in its ROM. Well, they succeed. Open market gives that chance.
Re:Actual iPhone Developer Response only please (Score:4, Interesting)
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!
Word of mouth only goes so far (Score:3, Interesting)
and very nearly 100% of the market can find your app and acquire it in seconds.
Yes they can acquire it in seconds, a powerful force. That makes the job of advertising easier because you are that much closer to being able to obtain an app quickly when you hear about it.
But I very much disagree that they can *find* your app in seconds, because there are so many apps - they must generally know about your app or be searching on a keyword (which have been heavily salted by other apps trying to dry eyeballs) to find it.
The market for the apps is tiny...With that kind of market, with that kind of convenience, all you really need is word of mouth. And not much of it.
I disagree on tiny. I don't think a market reaching 20 million + users is tiny at all. Word of mouth will get you subsets but not nearly as much as informing people the product exists in a targeted way.
The best way to make an app popular is not to advertise it, but to make it so good that iPh?o(ne|d) users will recommend it to their iPh?o(ne|d) user friends.
You should do that anyway, or why bother? But that is only a precondition to marketing being successful, not an end in itself. That is only taking things half way, or really not even that much.
If your app really stands out as being good, people will find it without spending a dime on advertising.
That is often true now but I am mostly talking about the future state, where I simply do not see that holding - and even an app that does get that word of mouth, will be far more successful the more groups it gets mouths in. Advertising is still important, though you can obviously have some success without it.
You yourself said you have 30+ apps. Do you really tell people about all 30, all the time?
As for advertising, the only question of course, is where to advertise... and that is a very domain dependent answer.
Re:approval process blues - developers causing it! (Score:3, Interesting)
Apple should build an automatic scanner for malware and approve apps that are malware free in a matter of hours.
How do you plan to scan an app for malware without either A. solving the halting problem [wikipedia.org] or B. wasting battery power on a more robust sandbox?