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NY Times: App gold rush leaves many struggling developers
The New York Times appears to have finally caught on to the big secret that many independent developers have known for a while -- the days of grabbing a pot of gold by writing an iOS app are over. In a Saturday post, the Times regaled readers with the stories of two app developers who have seen very different results on the App Store. The success story noted in the Times article is that of Ethan Nicholas, who released the iShoot artillery game (icon at right) back in the early days of the App Store. Nicholas was able to get his app into the store in 2009, and made over US$1 million -- in fact, he sold over 17,000 copies of the $2.99 app on January 11, 2009 and quit his day job the next day. Nicholas is now part of a healthcare app startup and attributes his early success to "sheer dumb luck and being in the right place at the right time." At the other end of the spectrum is the sad story of couple Shawn and Stephanie Grimes, who formed Campfire Apps to develop educational apps for kids. The couple started Campfire Apps after Shawn lost his job as a computer security specialist at Baltimore financial firm Legg Mason. Stephanie quit her job as a teacher, and the couple estimates that they've made a paltry $4,964 from the eight apps they sell. The moral of the Times story? Don't expect to become a millionaire independent developer overnight, as those heady early days of the app gold rush are over. But we already knew that, didn't we?
Buyer's Guide: 33 things you don't need if you have an iPhone
Every time I walk through Warehouse Stationery (New Zealand's equivalent to Office Depot) or Dick Smith's Electronics (pretty much Best Buy), I'm struck by how probably half the products in each store are pretty much useless to me since I've got an iPhone. Thanks to the apps that come pre-packaged with the iPhone and the more than 100,000 third-party offerings now available in the iTunes Store, the iPhone has gained functionality that might have seemed hard to fathom under three years ago when Steve Jobs first announced the device. "A widescreen iPod with touch controls... a revolutionary mobile phone... a breakthrough internet communications device... these are not three separate devices. This is one device." So Steve Jobs told us all back at Macworld Expo 2007. But since then, the iPhone has grown to be much more than just those three concepts. What follows is a sort of anti-buyer's guide, a list of products and devices that you may never need or even want to buy again (or receive as a gift) if you have an iPhone. Some of these are certainly open for debate, but more than a few of them are products that, for all intents and purposes, are completely unnecessary if you have an iPhone. (Items in bold also apply to the iPod touch).
iShoot goes 2.0, adds networked play
When your simple-yet-addictive tank shooting game blasts its way to the top of the App Store sales charts and earns you a reasonable fraction of a cool million bucks, what do you do for an encore? Developer Ethan Nicholas has released iShoot 2.0, adding much-requested features to the $2.99 artillery battle (the free iShoot Lite remains unchanged). The new version of iShoot (App Store) adds plenty of customization options, including a weapon designer, new rulesets and rule editor, background music -- and a local LAN network play option, allowing you to blast 3 of your friends over WiFi whenever you like. Check it out.
Indie iPhone dev makes half-a-mil, we question our career choices
Dear Whoever is in charge of this sinking ship, This games journalism thing has been great, really it has, but word around the campfire says iPhone development is the wave of the future. So, with dreams of owning my own "dive-able" pit of money, like Scrooge McDuck, I'm totally outta here. You can't be surprised. Ethan Nicholas is just one of the developers rolling fat wads of dough after releasing the game iShoot, which was demoed by over 2.4 million users and shot to the top of the most purchased games list when he released a free trial version, iShootLite. According to Nicholas, he earned $37,000 in a single day with tiny iMoneyMachine. Do you have any idea how many news posts (and lolcats) that is? Right now, iShoot hovers within the Top Ten games on the iTunes App Store -- a store made up of about 20,000 applications -- and Nicholas thinks the small tank artillery game will make him a millionaire by years end. Now, I don't know anything about programing on iPhone -- nor do I have the patience to read a bunch of online FAQs to learn how, like Nicolas did -- but my plan is pretty solid: 1) Kidnap iPhone developers 2) Steal their ideas 3) ??? 4) PROFIT. Peace out, suckers! Love, Xav de MatosP.S. If this developer thing doesn't work out, disregard this email and I'll see you at work in the morning.
