App Store Insider: Three College Students Give iPhone App Development A Try

App Store Insider is back from its short hiatus to bring you a new perspective on all things App Store related.  Instead of the usual whining about the App Store being broken, and how developers are constantly given the run around from Apple when things don't go as expected, I have decided to bring you the story of three college students trying to make their presence felt at the App Store. As the story goes, three normal guys, currently attending Valparaiso University, decided to pull together to try and create a successful application for the iPhone.  The idea wasn't to only build and distribute an application, but to allow other people in their same general position to follow along and witness what it takes to accomplish this task from start to finish. The three man team consists of Cameron Banga, Michael Phelps, and Jeff Lange. And no, it's not that Michael Phelps.  Each member of the team brings their own special qualities to the project. Cameron Banga is the business development and marketing director, Michael Phelps is the lead programmer and technical consultation director, and Jeff Lange is the technical implementation and program director. The project is only in its early stages so far, but the team intends to ramp up productivity starting this week.  They have spent most of their time simply getting everything prepared for the endeavor, including their website CollegeKidApp.com, which is where you will want to be to follow the team's progress.  They have already started marketing themselves to websites such as ours, and have dabbled in advertising as well.  They are also working on getting a few more sponsors along with some donations.  Actually, if you would like to help the team out, they will be holding a Metroid Prime gaming marathon on June 12th as a way to raise awareness for the project and hopefully raise some funds, since it is an entirely self-financed project.  The event will appeal to all of you gamers out there, so check it out at their website. That's pretty much where they stand so far.  I decided to have a little chat with CollegeKidApp.com's Cameron Banga to get more details on what exactly it is they are working on, what their goals are for the project in general, and basically anything else I could think of: What made you decide to give iPhone app development a try? Going into the summer, myself and my teammates had some plans but really wanted to go all out and try something we've never done before. We've all been following iPhone development pretty heavily and read stories of independent teams working together to make applications which were selling unbelievable numbers in the ITunes App Store and figured we had to give it a shot for ourselves. However, while the possibility of money did help push us off the cliff, it was really the idea of coming together to build something that none of us had much experience with in hopes of forming a little company of sorts that really got us excited about the idea.

Do you or any members of your team had any development experience? In a formal development sense, not really. One of our members has done a lot of website work in more formal web settings and another one of our team members has done a lot of coding in an engineering setting. I'm kinda the rookie on our staff, but I'm working more on the business, marketing, and product design side and not so much on the coding. Why did you choose to document the process on CollegeKidApp.com? This was more or less my brainchild in the project. I've kept a blog for quite a while and have had some various levels of success doing different blog and podcast projects, so I saw this as a perfect opportunity for a new blog to kinda document our development process.  It was also a bit of a selfish decision, since I've never done this before and thought it would be neat to look back at the end and see where we made good decisions as well as bad decisions in the whole process. I did think that others would find the development process interesting as well and wanted to give those people a chance to watch from the sidelines and kinda ask questions as we went along. What type of applications are you currently working on? Why did you choose this type of application? We've got a couple projects in the pipeline. Right now we're working to finish up details on a project for a potential client, which would be an application that would meet the needs of this entrepreneur. I would love to talk more about it, but really can't until we finish up some details and sign some contracts. Another project we're focusing on heavily is a utility which I think would be really useful to any iPhone user, but we're not sure if we're actually going to be able to get all the code we need to work. If we can figure it out though, I do think it would be a VERY successful application. What type of sales or exposure do you believe must be achieved to consider this venture a success? To be honest, our team hasn't set much of an expectation for ourselves when it comes to sales numbers. We're more focusing just on getting a final project into the iTunes App Store, which would be a more than successful summer for us seeing as we didn't have any iPhone development experience coming into this whole project.

Do you intend for this to be your career? As of right now, we're just focusing on getting our feet wet to get an application or two out over the next three months. If we see success in these first couple projects, we'll definitely have to consider keeping up development into next school year and further into the future. We're not opposed to doing this long term, but we definitely need to find out if we can even have any success first before we look into it as a career. What has been the most difficult part of iPhone development? The easiest? The most difficult part for us has been organization. It's not to say we're bad at it, but it's just tough when you're working as a three man team because you need to make sure you're staying focused and working hard. It's like having a constant vacation but knowing that you need to be doing something. So far, we've done a great job. We'll just see how focused we stay a month or two from now, as that will be the real test. The easiest part about development has been learning more about the iPhone SDK and development process, as Apple has really put out 1st rate documentation and extremely easy to use software. The whole process is so easy that it's almost ridiculous. Being a small team, do you believe you have an advantage or disadvantage when compared to other developers? I think being a small independent team gives us some advantages because we don't have investors looking over our shoulder and we can pretty much do whatever we want. I think this is an advantage for us, because we're able to learn a whole lot really quick. As for if it's advantage when it comes to making money on the App Store? Well, I think we're going to have to wait and see about that one. What excites you the most about the future of the App Store? The least? I think just the sheer amount of people who currently own iPhones and the future sales predictions for the device are the best part of the App Store because it gives us a huge diverse market. You're going to continue seeing great applications which are focused at small niche markets just because those markets will still be profitable, which is great for consumers and producers. My least favorite part of the store would maybe just be the amount of applications currently available in the store. It's just going to be harder for us to get a focus on our app, haha. What are some of your favorite applications in the App Store? I use TwitterFon a lot, it's been my favorite Twitter app so far. TapDefense has been my favorite game. I've downloaded the Metal Gear Solid demo and that's pretty amazing. Ocarina is maybe my favorite use of the iPhone just because it's so unique. I'm tied to the Facebook app, of course. Finally, I think Google Earth may be the most amazing piece of software I've ever used, mostly because I have the entire globe in my pocket. Cameron and company definitely have their work cut out for them, but what first time developers don't?  They seem to have a solid plan set-up, they aren't expecting too much, and they seem to have genuinely enjoyed the entire process so far. It's nice to see that it isn't all just about them either, as their successes and failures have a chance at helping other curious developers learn from the process as well, so if you are interested to see where the iPhone together with the App Store can take three young college students, bookmark CollegeKidApp.com.  I will be checking in with the team every now and then just to see if they can keep all of this together long enough to finish an application and have it placed in the App Store.  I personally can't wait to see what they have in store. Do you have a great topic idea for the next App Store Insider?  Email me at tyler [at] appleiphoneapps [dot] com

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