How much does an App Cost?

[Allister]

OK - it's a widely general question, but I'm trying to get some idea
of how much the market expects to ap for iPhone apps.

Clearly - that is unless you have some hot smoking app that is a must
have - there's not that much money to be made from the small amounts
Apple will forward to you if someone actually buys a copy of your paid
app form the app sotre. Frankly, my experience is that most people
want them for free!

So, I guess that income is more likely to be generated by developing
apps for a client, who will probably put them in the store at zero
rate and has an interest in an app for other reasons, such as news or
their own promotional marketing.

So, my question is 'how much does an app cost?' By that I mean how
much does the market expect to pay for an app to be developed at this
current time. Clearly it depends on the complicity of the task, I
appreciate that, but at the same time, it would help to get some ball
park figure. Do you guys rate it by the hours it takes to develop? Do
you have a fixed cost for a basic roll out?

A simple app with a few rss feeds; maybe some in-app data; some screen
design…..$10? $100? $1000? Lots more zeros?

Those of you who actually sell these thing…can you offer some advice?

Thanks,
Allister

[Louis Lau]

I am just getting into iOS app development as well and I have tried to figure out the same thing. I think you have to try and monetize a self-developed free app with ad revenue. (not sure what the inpression or click through rate on that would be) The $0.99 price tag seems to be the defacto pricing for most apps - not sure what the take is after apple takes their cut but it seems you would have to sell thousands and thousands of apps to turn a profit.

I think one could turn a pretty good profit by developing for others - you just have to weigh the hours in the job with the fee charged. (plus any overhead of course)

My guess would be a min of say $3000 for a basic app and on up to the tens of thousand for complex apps.

I am admittedly new to iOS dev so I could be way off - I would love to hear from some more experienced devs out there on this.

-Lou

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[Phil]

$3000 is probably not a bad place to start. Your first app will take
far longer than you think and you'll probably have to eat a lot of
that time. Your second app will take far less time. Currently most
apps are "small", but this will obviously change over time.

You get 70% of purchase price from Apple's App Store. As of June 2011,
Apple had paid out about US$ 2.5 billion dollars to their app
developers.

I would strongly encourage you to avoid developing ad-supported apps
for iOS. To quote Merlin Mann on the difference between Google and
Apple: "Google: Thanks for looking at 100s of ads you hate. Apple:
Thanks for buying 100s of dollars of stuff you love."

If Horace Dediu is correct (http://www.asymco.com/2011/07/13/itunes-
app-total-downloads-finally-overtook-song-downloads/), it appears as
though the app market is about to become bigger than the iTunes music
market. I can't think of a better place to be right now than in mobile
development.

Also, investigate Apple's new Volume Purchasing Program for custom
business apps. I believe these have to be priced starting at $9.99.

Thanks.

-Phil

On Jul 16, 12:45 pm, Louis Lau <loula...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I am just getting into iOS app development as well and I have tried to figure out the same thing. I think you have to try and monetize a self-developed free app with ad revenue. (not sure what the inpression or click through rate on that would be) The $0.99 price tag seems to be the defacto pricing for most apps - not sure what the take is after apple takes their cut but it seems you would have to sell thousands and thousands of apps to turn a profit.
>
> I think one could turn a pretty good profit by developing for others - you just have to weigh the hours in the job with the fee charged. (plus any overhead of course)
>
> My guess would be a min of say $3000 for a basic app and on up to the tens of thousand for complex apps.
>
> I am admittedly new to iOS dev so I could be way off - I would love to hear from some more experienced devs out there on this.
>
> -Lou
>