Making Your Own iPhone App

These days, everyone is obsessed with iPhone apps. After the success of Rovio's "Angry Birds," which brought its creators millions of bucks, many started thinking that creating their own sweet iPhone app may be quite a lucrative business decision. Let's analyze the business of selling iPhone apps.

A bit of statistics

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Apple's App Store has grown a huge amount as a business since the time it was launched in 2008. Since then, it grew into a digital content and application distribution empire that hosts over 500,000 (yes, half a million) applications. At the time of writing this article, the applications have been downloaded over 18 billion times.

The revenue from the App Store is also pretty impressive. In 2010, it have reached 1,782 million dollars. With new iPhones, iPods, and iPads always being released, the distribution base is growing every day, so it is no wonder that many people want to have their share of this sweet apple pie.

How much can one earn on iPhone app?

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When it comes to money, it is best to get real. The iPhone works like magic, but its App Store is not magical. It is a highly competitive marketplace with a number of great and not-so-great applications.

With such a competition, one must stand out to earn money in this environment. The benefits of your app must be so noticeable that a large number of people would want to use it. This is the only way you can earn considerable money in the App Store. Otherwise, your app can simply get lost in the mind-boggling number of iPhone applications.

Around 80% of the revenue from the App Store goes to 3% of the most popular applications. So, the only way to earn real money is to get popular.

Business models for iPhone apps

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When you are in the business of making apps for the iPhone, you need to understand that 30% of the money that users pay for your app goes to Apple. The other 70% belongs to, you.

There are several key business models for how you can earn money from iPhone apps:

1. Paid apps. This is a good model if your app has some unique features that are hard to reproduce or that are not available in other apps. 

2. In-app purchases. The basic version of your application may be free or paid, but you can also earn on additional goodies that extend the app's functionality. For example, if you are selling digital aquarium app, you may provide users with an option to buy additional species of fish for it.

3. Advertisement for your company's services. If you make a free app that notifies users of concerts in their region, your company may be more successful in selling tickets.

Of course, there are other models, but these are the key ones.

Apple`s requirements

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In order to be able to start developing iPhone apps, you will need the following:

1. Join the Apple iPhone developer program (This will cost you $99)

2. Get an iPhone (You need to test your app)

3. Get an Intel Mac with Mac OS X

4. Fill in and sign an NDA with Apple

5. Install the iPhone SDK

But before you start the actual development, it is important to understand Apple's rules for applications to be allowed into the App Store. Here are some important points of these rules:

   ●    Duplicating the functionality of any Apple apps that come along with the iPhone is a bad idea. The app will likely be banned from the App Store

   ●    Apps may be rejected if they are of "limited utility"

   ●    Nudity and erotic content is banned

In fact, these rules are not really well-defined, and some applications are removed from App Store for quite strange reasons.

Skills required

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You will need a large set of skills to write iPhone apps. These skills are as follows:

1. Coding in Objective C and Cocoa Framework. Either you or someone in your team has to know how to do that in practice. Objective C is a primary programming language for the iPhone.

2. Designing User Interfaces. Beautiful user interfaces are a part of any successful iPhone application. If you want users to buy, your app, it has to have a nice and highly usable interface. Also, a designer of your app's UI must at least read the iOS Human Interface Guidelines. Downright ugly apps will not be allowed into the App Store.

3. Positioning and marketing. You need to know what kind of user will be your target audience, which problems or needs your app will address, and how you can sell and market the application.

4. Turning great ideas into great applications.

It is not necessary that you have all of these skills. You can always hire people who have them and thus match your talents with those of other people.

Tools for the rest of us

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You have probably made a rough calculation of the necessary expenditures needed to develop an iPhone application. If you think that investing thousands of dollars is not for you, there is an easier option: online services that help you develop iPhone apps even if you have no idea what software development is. Here are some of them:

   ●    AppMakr offers you an opportunity to build content-oriented iPhone applications using a convenient and well-made web interface. And it is free. The company earns its money on some in-depth customizations and the support of the apps you create.

   ●    SwebApps is a powerful tool for building apps related to your business. It is good for building an app that will, for example, provide users with info on the menu of your restaurant, allow them to view videos and photos from your company's event, or gather feedback from users. It is a business application constructor, actually. You will be able to use SwebApps after paying a flat developer fee of $399 and $29 for each month that you host your application on the  SwebApp server.

   ●    Bizness Apps  provides a range of choices for creating an iPhone app right from your browser. It is just $39 per month, a good price considering that the Bizness Apps helps you with publishing your app into iTunes and promises to fix the app if you screw it up.

   ●    eBookApp -  If you want to sell book-like content, this application is right for you. It allows you to turn almost any known eBook format into an iPhone application. 

These are the most interesting web tools that allow you to create iPhone apps. You might be interested in checking out the following tools as well: App Breeder, My App Builder, AppsBuilder, appcookr, Buildanapp, Buzz Touch, iBuildApp, Mobbase, and MobiCart.