Why Should I Build An iPhone App? Interesting Statistics.

Link to NPR Story

After the iPad release last week, NPR ran an interesting story this week about iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch apps, the market, and some interesting statistics for developers.  First, a note on the overall market – it is big, and expanding.

“Three years ago the industry barely existed. But recent studies suggest the app economy is growing rapidly and could top $20 billion — the amount Americans spend on children’s clothing — in just a couple of years.”

From the developer quoted in the story and the author, interesting footnotes to that big market – although the market is huge and there is money to be made, free apps are just part of tapping into the market.

“I think every developer will tell you — you’ll get 10 to 15 times more downloads for free than if it costs money,” Anderson explains…Roughly 80 percent of all apps are free.  Many of the rest cost just 99 cents…Developers typically get 70 cents of every dollar spent to download their app.

A couple footnotes to this article – evidence from hearing people’s reactions when they’ve used the iPad is that it will probably be more successful than it’s naysayers would like to believe.  The reactions usually involve “You know, I wasn’t interested in the iPad…until I picked it up” and “Now that I’m using it, you know what would be great for this iPad? [insert awesome idea here].” It is highly likely that a highly usable device like this will have a very different impact than one of the old “tablet” PCs, which were really just a PC you could write on.  Our discussions with those who’ve experienced the iPad are consistent with Apple’s vision of really redesigning the experience of this form factor.

A second footnote, from a software development perspective, is that it will be interesting to see the overall impact on the application development space, not to mention the architecture of device (PC, mobile computer, smartphone) in terms of software.  Going small has distinct advantages – but it also will take some time to see how this shakes out.

I recently downloaded a “print driver” for the iPhone, which at least HP and Epson provide.  These apps can print pictures, but not anything else – so we’re back to installing drivers?  We think it is likely that the world of apps will see some cannibalization = that apps may either be acquired for inclusion on the standard image for the device, or that Apple (and others) will slowly develop OS features that render some of these obsolete.