Most apps take at least six months of full-time work and cost between $20,000 and $150,000 to develop, according to Forrester Research, which covers the tech industry, reports Newsweek.
Apple rejects almost 60 percent of submissions at least once, often–according to programmers–with little more than infuriatingly vague or inconsistent explanations. Of the 85,000 that have been accepted, only a few hundred sellers have much chance of supporting full-time work. “It’s a lot like the music business,” says David Barnard, who left a job in record engineering to develop applications full time. “Some indie bands make money, but most don’t. Most are not the Michael Jacksons and Madonnas of the world.”
But even App Store equivalents of the King of Pop and the Material Girl are struggling. In 2009, Ethan Nicholas left a job with Sun Microsystems after making $800,000 in just five months with his simple artillery game called iShoot.
Today, the App Store icon from North Carolina is himself staring down the barrel of a gun, struggling to produce another hit game after iShoot was buried by competitors and copycats. “It’s terrifying,” says Nicholas, who says he is “not a millionaire” and describes iShoot’s success as “pure luck.”
Despite spending eight months and more than six figures developing a second shooting game to be released this month, he says that he is still “very worried about being a one-hit wonder.”
The iPhone’s popularity means that mom-and-pop programmers must now compete with some of the world’s biggest brands and game developers, many of whom have recently decided that the mobile market is too important to leave to the little guys.
Half of the top 10 paid (as in not “free”) apps of 2008 were produced by small developers, according to Forrester.
Photo by crenk.com.