By | No Comments
Last updated: Thursday, December 11, 2008

Apple’s App Store for the iPhone is a huge success for users, with more than 10,000 third-party applications and 300 million downloads in about four months. But according to an open letter by an iPhone developer that’s receiving attention on the Web, the dominant price point is hindering the development of better applications. Craig Hockenberry, a principal at Greensboro, N.C.-based IconFactory, has posted the letter to Apple CEO Steve Jobs at furbo.org. “As an iPhone developer who’s been in the App Store since its launch,” he writes, “I’m starting to see a trend that concerns me.” This trend, he writes, is that “developers are lowering prices to the lowest possible level in order to get placement on iTunes,” and the “proliferation of 99-cent ‘ringtone apps’” is affecting product development. 99-Cent Apps Limited Hockenberry said two products released by IconFactory — the game Frenzic and the Twitter add-on Twitterrific — have received a fair amount of recognition and popularity in the store. The problem, he said, is funding the development of more ambitious products. Instead of working on “cooler (and more complex) ideas,” he wrote, which require more development time, they’re working on 99-cent titles “that have a limited life span and broad appeal.” Bigger projects, he noted, can take up to nine person-months, cost up to $225,000 and require sales of more than 300,000 units at the 99-cent rate. “Unless you have a white-hot title, selling 10-15k units a day for a few weeks isn’t going to happen,” he said. But raising prices means the product won’t reach the top of the App Store charts, Hockenberry added, and things will become even harder as the number of apps in the store grows. Hockenberry said one basic issue is how users of this platform are assessing whether to buy new apps. He noted that it appears “people…

See the rest here:
Developer Cites Price Point for Apple’s iPhone App Store

CommentSubscribe