I’ve recently been attending iPhone developer meetups in Silicon Valley. Everyone there is pretty psyched about the app store and is furiously trying to finish up their apps. The group is a mix of develops and entrepreneurs from around the area. Some are hobbyists, some fully time developers. We even have a “retired” googler in the mix.
Over the course of the meetups, a lot of questions were thrown around. One that kept coming up, is how people are going to make money with the iPhone. The model everyone talked about is advertising but there are plenty of others.
Here are a few:
Charge for applications:
This is the standard and most straightforward way to make money from the iPhone store. The BREW platform was rather successful at motivating developers by giving them a cut of sales. Apple is betting big on this one. 1 Billion in revenue? Some think not. I’m hoping the platform takes off.
There is debate over how much an application should cost. Read some analysis here.
Directory Services:
Picture this. You are walking down the street in San Jose looking for food. You type pizza into your phone, and 5 shops come up on the screen. How much do you think a company will pay to be the top listing. With limited screen real-estate, top placement will be more important than ever. See how it affects click through rates on the desktop here.
Charge to build custom enterprise apps:
All sorts of companies will want to integrate the iPhone into their operations. Restaurants could use it to enter orders. (Customers could download an app and even submit orders themsleves!) Think of all those visual basic and java homegrown apps your company as. As mobile become more and more important in the workplace, someone is going to have to provide the custom apps FAST.
Premium Content:
Give away your app free but then charge users to access premium, text, audio, and video content. Here the iPhone just becomes an extension of a web portal.
Transactions:
Think about the eBay application. How can you enable buyers and sellers to connect? Then how can you take a cut?
Conclusion:
There are lots ways to make money in mobile other than ads. Think about where you are in the value chain and consider all the options.
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I really do think that the products of the future like iPhones and so on should be free (or next to it). Then like printers make money off of the sale of ink so will Apple, Google and so on make money from the sale of ads and additional software.
Marketing Ideas
September 27th, 2008
Hey, Great tips on monetization on iphone apps. It is pretty amazing when you see all the innovative ones out. In the same way that apple makes millions of a .99 song download, they’ve done it again! it’s not the phone that is the money…it’s the resale of new apps! Shaw
shaw
January 5th, 2009
I like your pizza example. Your right, people will want to be the top listing and they will pay whatever they have to to get it.
Todd Beardsley
January 17th, 2009
pizza example is good. but with all the apps in the mkt it may become a commodity and ultimately can not charge that much or be free?
Rolo
August 28th, 2009
A lot of the apps are now making quite a bit of money from advertisements as well. I recently read a report that the popular ones (just with ads) are making $400 – $2000 per day.
BigManta
September 24th, 2009
Following on from the account above which is over a year old now, It is interesting to note how diverse the iphone apps universe has become. One of the biggest hurdles for individuals is the worry about competing head to head with some very big players. At BestiPhoneAppsDevelopmentGuide we have compiled a short report that gives a few pointers about ways in to this market. It is still possible to be the little guy that makes good, but you need to be a very shrewd and calculating little guy. However clever your idea, developing an app is not a trivial matter. It will take a genuine commitment and you need to be highly motivated, focussed and know that you have researched your market well. I anticipate that our report will whet your appetite for more information and as well as our paid guide book, you will find our blog is harvesting up to the minute relevant information and collecting it in one place for budding developers.
happy hunting and may your idea see lots of thumb prints on touch screens
Ray
Ray Cassidy
November 3rd, 2009