Pinch Media recently released a presentation they made to the New York iPhone Developers Meetup on Feb 18th. Reaction in some circles would suggest iPhone App development is not worth the time and effort. Yet applying some business basics to the data shared by Pinch suggests otherwise.
I took a look at the presentation at the time and thought it offered some interesting insights, was quite logical and gave some good tips on being successful. And there is one slide (5) that gives a very interest insight into pricing to drive demand that is gold. Take a look if you haven't yet seen it.
So I’ve watched other blogs cover it over the last week or so and the headlines have ranged from the sky is falling, through a couple that seem to seem to be on the same wave length as my thinking, namely there are no guarantees of success but this is a viable and growing market and you can succeed if the product, pricing and marketing are solid.
(Oh no)
(more realistic)
- We know the app store now offers a vast choice of apps
- We know overall usage blows every other mobile platform of the map
- We know price barriers to downloading and trying apps are low and encourage trial
- We know from the number of downloads that people are doing just that.
So I am wondering what I am missing that the sky is falling writers are getting?
My iPhone usage is not typical. I use it heavily. But having talked to a number of other users this last week ranging from very light users through to nearly as bad as me, there seems to be a reasonable pattern.
- We all have a small number of core apps we use 2-5 times a week and rely on. How many of core apps seems to be the biggest difference between light, medium and heavy users.
- We have some games that we try once or twice and discard. Some games that we use heavily for a while, then get bored with a move on and one or two we are addicted to (for the moment)
- And a lot of specific situation apps and utilities that we use from once a week to once in a blue moon when the situation calls for it
- and most of us could do with a clean out of stuff we tried and didn’t like.
In my case it looks like of the 103 icons on my phone, 68 are third party apps and the rest Apple installed apps or web bookmarks
Again I am not saying this is typical but it seems to be close to the Pinch data and highly reasonable. It is actually a lot like my everyday use of computer applications. One difference is the "as needed" type applications. On the phone these tend to be one off situational apps eg I need a good meal so I use urbanspoon, I want to identify a song so I use Shazam. On the computer "as needed" use for me tends to be driven by projects, so I might use an app for a week, then not touch it again for 12 months.The very nature of apps lends them to this very specific tasks, very occasionally model. It does however reinforce the message about not expecting reward from advertising. A developer needs to be paid for the app either by the user or by a company commissioning a branded app as a service for customers.
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