Ask An iPhone App Developer - Week 3 - Win A CollegeKidApp Wristband
September 18, 2009
And we're back! I know, I know, we're a week late once again and I sincerely apologize. Cameron and I are still working out the kinks, so please bear with us. From now on if we are unable to get a column up in time we will at least inform you so you won't have to wait another week just to hear from us. If we find out we just can't sustain a weekly Q&A, we will change the format to bi-weekly. But as of now, we are still shooting for weekly.
Our wristband winners for this week have been chosen and contacted, and they are as follows: Kevin, Mike, FuzzyChinchilla, and Casey. Congratulations! Since the wristbands are so totally awesome, and since we still feel really bad about the delay, we have decided to offer another three CollegeKidApp.com wristbands. The same rules as before apply, simply submit a relevant question in the comments section below or via email before September 22nd at 11:59 PM PT to be eligible. You can still submit questions after that time, but you won’t be eligible to win a wristband. Residents within the 48 contiguous US states are only eligible to win a wristband. Winners will be announced in the Ask An iPhone App Developer column, so don’t forget to check it out.
And now on to the questions…
FuzzyChinchilla asks: "Do you have to test an app on multiple devices before submitting it to the App Store? Or is it alright if you test it on just one?"
I think the answer to this question always lies in the question "how comfortable are you with your code and your testing so far?" Could you get away with only testing on one device? Yeah, possibly. Apple doesn't force you to test on an iPhone 2G, 3G, 3GS, and iPod Touches before you release, if that's what you're asking. It kinda depends on your application as to how many devices you test on. For Battery Go!, we had a hard time finding an iPhone 2G for testing, so we were unable to test on one. However, we did test on every other possible device to ensure capability. Although for an e-reader we created, we only tested on an iPhone 3G and an iPod Touch 1st Gen. It just kinda depends, but I would encourage developers to test until they're confident, because each device is a bit different.
Mike Phillips asks: "Other than your own, what are some of your favorite iPhone apps and why?"
Without a doubt, my number one app is Doodle Jump. I absolutely love the game and can't get enough of it (just reached a new high score of 47,165 today!). I'm a big fan of Echofon, which used to be TwitterFon. Guitar Rock Tour and Tiger Woods are two other games I love. Honestly, I use my device mostly for games just to occupy some time here and there when I'm bored.
Casey asks: "How do you go about choosing a price / decide to have a limited time sale price? How about the ad-based ( free ) option? I would guess it is difficult not to be greedy and try to get all you invested back as quickly as possible, but greed has made some apps sell very poorly / gain negative ratings with initial sales."
This is a great question and one we get asked all the time. When we released our first paid app in Battery Go!, we sat and talked for a couple hours about price. After some discussion, we decided to go at $0.99 because we felt as if we went any higher, a competitor with a similar app would come around and undercut us. We knew we would be in a competitive app category, so we didn't want to lose customers on the basis of price. This wasn't an easy decision to come to though, because when we started selling, it was easy to think that our profits could have been doubled if only we released at $1.99. That being said, we're happy with our decision and feel as if it was the best price which we could have released at.
I don't really know how other developers do free apps and would love to talk to others as to how successful they've been with them. We did a lot of research into ad-based free apps and just didn't see it as being plausible if we wanted to make a profit. I know this is hard for users to swallow, but end of the day, we're trying to make money for food off our apps and we need to charge something in order to do that which makes free applications a difficult thing to justify as a company.
As for sale prices, we've also done a bunch of research on other applications success with sales and have specific strategies as to how we should approach sales. Sales can definitely build you up a lot of press and are a technique which every developer goes into an app release thinking about before hand.
Kevin asks: "How does the process of writing and changing the app description in the app store work? And how does changing the price of your app work?"
This is one of the easier parts to app development, as Apple has given us a great web back end through which we can change our price and description. We just log into a website, make the changes, and the new description or price can be found in the store in only a few hours after the App Store goes through its regular update process throughout the day.
Nick asks: "Why have no physical keyboards been released for the iPhone yet? Does the built-in functionality for hardware support only allow you to develop hardware for your specific app as opposed to system-wide?"
I think the biggest barrier falls upon the current SDK system and the fact that specific hardware for the iPhone can only be developed on an app by app basis,. Basically this means that if someone develops a keyboard, they could only use it on apps they develop or apps which they give permission to. As I think you can see, it would be really expensive to produce a keyboard in hopes that people who buy your app will desire a full keyboard for it. Given this limitation, I think you're going to see a limited number of hardware attachments, because developers are going to have to be 100% certain that they are going to sell a lot of units before they would ever produce a piece of hardware like this.
Of course, hardware manufacturers could always produce a keyboard and license out the rights to use it to developers, but I think most devs are happy with the current on screen keyboard and don't feel as if their apps will be that much better with a full keyboard. You have to remember that even if a full keyboard were a possibility, we still need to develop our apps keeping in mind that a majority of users won't have that keyboard. With that thought in mind, we're not going to make any app that specifically requires something like that because it greatly limits our market potential. Due to these limitations, I really don't see a ton of hardware support coming for the iPhone anytime in the near future. It's just not a safe enough gamble yet.
That's it for this week, let's keep the great questions coming. Feel free to submit anything that’s on your mind that’s iPhone app related. Please be as specific as you can so Cameron can answer your questions as clearly as possible.
Thanks again to everyone who contributed this week! I would like to make a special shout out to Cameron and his crew for finally getting the update to Battery Go! approved after a very long wait.
Have a question for our iPhone app developer? Send it to: tyler [at] appadvice [dot] com with the subject line “Ask An iPhone App Developer” OR just leave a comment below.