
The App Store Hype Gets A Dose Of Reality - peter123
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/25/the-app-store-hype-gets-a-dose-of-reality/?awesm=tcrn.ch_2Y1&utm_campaign=techcrunch&utm_content=techcrunch-autopost&utm_medium=tcrn.ch-twitter&utm_source=direct-tcrn.ch
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jsz0
It seems to me this is just one big made up story. I seem to recall TechCrunch
was one of the sites reporting these hyped up stories of someone successfully
quitting their job to develop iPhone apps or a teenager making $20K a week.
Now they're telling us not to believe the hype they helped create? Seems
they're milking this thing for all its worth.

~~~
zimbabwe
In Drew Curtis's book _It's Not News, It's Fark_ , he talks about how more
than anything, the media loves talking about media, because they understand it
the most. That means any huge story almost inevitably turns into reports of
"Has the media gone too far?" and "What role do we have in stories' getting
out of hand?"

I see no reason why this wouldn't apply to mass-market tech blogs.

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jfarmer
I'm going to toot my own horn an link to an article I wrote six months ago:
<http://20bits.com/articles/the-099-app-store/>

It's the same fundamental misunderstanding. It's like launching a Facebook app
and hoping the app directory helps you take off (in the early days there were
people who did just this), or banking on getting mentioned on TechCrunch.

Now, I don't know what Rick Strom did or didn't do to market his apps, but
success or failure isn't the App Store's fault. It removes a huge chunk of
friction from the sales funnel, but it's all at the final, transactional step.

There's a big chunk in the middle which consists of marketing and, AFAIK, no
app developer has talked extensively about their marketing efforts, only about
their position in the App Store.

Rick is right: you're probably going to lose that game. Rather than go home
I'd try to figure out a better game to play.

~~~
patio11
_Rather than go home I'd try to figure out a better game to play._

Downloadable software where the main source of app discovery is Google rather
than the App Store? (i.e. for Macs or PCs or both)

App Store: 600,000 competitors, success by any of which decreases your
visibility.

Whole wide Internet: lots of other people writing software, but if they're not
in your niche they might as well not exist. I don't lose sales just because
DeliciousMonster launched.

App Store: sales curve starts with initial spike, then dies within 2 weeks.

Whole wide Internet: sales curve typically gradually increases as you tune
your site and marketing with step increases at new releases

App Store: iFart

Whole wide Internet: you make apps people use on a daily basis for things that
are important to them. They send you letters about how happy your app made
them.

App Store: $4.99 is expensive

Whole wide Internet: $19.99 is cheap

~~~
mighty
I think there's a lot Apple needs to do to improve the IA of the App Store,
and they need to make the iTunes store accessible from standard web browsers
rather than just the iTunes software. But there's nothing preventing iPhone
app developers from creating websites for their apps, and there are a variety
of sites that review apps. That you cannot _buy_ an iPhone app outside of the
App Store does nothing to prevent developers from gaining visibility outside
of it. There is nothing preventing anyone from Googling for iPhone apps (just
as you can Google for non-iPhone apps), than the developers themselves.

As for the differences in sales curves, that's actually reflective of how much
easier it is to find and purchase new apps on the App Store (as well as the
increased competition -> price reduction that their aggregation provides), as
opposed to having hundreds or thousands of different purchase sites with their
own method for payment processing. Also note that most iPhone apps tend to be
for entertainment, for which an early sales spike and sudden drop-off is the
norm regardless of platform...or medium.

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cubicle67
I keep reading all these stories about how bad the App Store is, and how you
can't sell stuff after the first few days. I've got one app up there that took
me a day to write, is typical of the 'this is my first iPhone app' apps,
hasn't been updated in about 5 months (and thus would be _well_ towards the
back of the pack) and yet still sells a moderate number of copies each month.

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quantumhobbit
"To those of you who keep building things anyway: rock on."

I think that for developers and pretty much anyone in a creative pursuit the
above mentality is key. If you set out to build something solely for the money
you are not going to produce something of the same quality as someone who
builds something they want to build anyway, and consequently you will fail at
your objective.

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mattmaroon
"Strom likens the App Store to a lottery, with the time and cost spent
developing your application as the price of admission. And I think he’s right
in this respect. The thing is, I don’t really see how this differs from many
professions where the rich and elite are given heavy media coverage while
everyone else toils away in obscurity."

Maybe not, but it's a lot different than developing for the web or Facebook,
where you can continuously iterate on your product, get better over time,
attract a few loyal users and expand from there. The difference between iPhone
and other software platforms is like the difference between trying to become a
pop star or starting a software company.

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trillablue
Inevitably every dev that comments for an article on how the App Store is
flawed/overhyped falls into one of two categories:

1\. Those that relied on merely having their app in the app store to generate
purchases. 2\. Those that spent far too long and far too much developing an
app then fell into trap #1.

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TweedHeads
The AppStore has become such a successful magnet for developers that it is
being attacked from every front just to push them away from the ecosystem.

They are afraid Objective-C and XCode become the next development platform.

Well you know what? With all its defects, it is still the number one
marketplace for online apps. And Objective-C, a complete unknown a couple of
years ago, is hotter than never.

Period.

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sgrove
Who is attacking the AppStore?

Who is afraid Objective-C and Xcode will be the next development platform?

What does "the next development platform" even mean?

ObjC and Xcode are just fine, and developing apps for the iPhone is a lot of
fun (outside of the AppStore experience, apparently), but I'm not sure they
deserve any sort of conspiracy theory.

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bcl
Duh? Any developer knows that the success of their app is a crap shoot. We
don't need techcrunch to tell us the bloody obvious.

