Do you think market tanked? Why not invest in Apps?

**monty** · May 3rd, 2012, 3:43 AM

Originally Posted by eddiebooth

I have what I think is a great idea for an app but have no idea how to go about building one. I also have the (possible) added handicap of not owning an Iphone nor Ipad so wouldnt be able to see what my own app looked like on 2 of the main devices for these

Have you looked at the various interface design templates ? I personally like the ones which look like sketches, so as not to get too deep into pixel level design. However, with something like iPhone/iPad apps where most applications go for a small set of common interface elements, you can get an idea of how the app looks and works and then pass that off to a developer much more easily that more complex things like websites.

One which looks good is http://keynotopia.com/ . They have a video on "how to use Keynotopia to prototype and test an iPhone app" which looked pretty cool when I watched it a while back.

**Clinton** · May 5th, 2012, 6:09 PM

On the negative side, 60% of developers lose money on apps.

As humans have lost the ability to read paragraphs, it's presented as usual in the new internet standard: an infographic.

The survey said that only 12 percent of apps earned $50,000 or more ...

I don't know about you, but that doesn't look too shabby.

**DomainMagnate** · May 6th, 2012, 5:44 AM

To me 12% of apps making $50k sounds very high. Compared to sites, I think of all the sites people build and work consistently on for a prolonged period of time, it must be below 1%.

**eddiebooth** · May 6th, 2012, 11:28 AM

12% does sound high, esp as a lot of apps are given away free with the intention of selling an upgrade at a later date

**monty** · May 6th, 2012, 1:22 PM

The headline statistics are not much use if they miss out any real background as to how they arrived at the figures.

I downloaded the PDF the infographic is from and it didn't have masses more detail.

1) The $50k is presumably over the lifetime of the app, ie possibly several years, and is in revenue - developing apps is still quite expensive.
2) It was a survey with a fairly small sample size:
"We were successful at reaching a critical mass of over 100 qualified app developers in order to ensure that our results were statistically valid."
3) The 12% ( "Top Earners" ) apparently set aside nearly $30,000 for marketing. Obviously this figure is in no way related to the fact that the producers of the infographic help market apps

On the other hand, some people are making millions in apps and there have been some high profile, high price acquisitions, so the opportunity is definitely there, but if you think being dependent on Google is bad enough, don't forget Apple control their ecosystem even more tightly.