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.
