Raven Zachary, the Open Source Research Director for The 451 Group, has a cold splash of reality for anyone who thinks they have a great idea for an iPhone application. At O’Reilly Digital Media’s Inside iPhone he posted the following tough love message about Turning Ideas Into iPhone Applications:
“I have an idea for an iPhone application.”
The most common conversation I have with people these days concerns the process of turning ideas into iPhone applications. Someone reaches out to me from across the Internet, hoping I will be able to build an iPhone application or make connections to people who will.
I love talking with entrepreneurs and people passionate about their ideas. It’s one of the things I look forward to most in my week. Unfortunately, we are at a phase in the growth of the iPhone ecosystem where there is a significant gap between individuals with the ideas and those who are actually capable of turning the ideas into iPhone applications.
This gap is almost entirely financial in nature. The demand for iPhone developers exceeds the supply and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
The going rate for iPhone developers, at least the developers I know and trust, is $125/hour and up. I have some friends who are booked out at $200/hour for the next few months, although $125/hour seems to be the going rate in my network. At that rate, a full-time contract iPhone developer costs $5,000/week and it may take four to six weeks for an application to be developed. Sometimes it will take less and sometimes it will take more. Add to development the other costs - project management, design, QA, and marketing, to name a few. It’s not uncommon to spend $30,000 and up on an iPhone development project. iPhone applications are not cheap.
I am someone who is highly motivated by ideas. So, it pains me to say that the value of an iPhone application idea right now is pretty much zero. A great idea isn’t worth anything under these conditions.
There is no shortage of great iPhone ideas, just a shortage of talent to bring these ideas to market…
[Via Silicon Florist]
Raven Zachary, Jason Grigsby, Lyza Gardner and others created the Obama iPhone application on short notice. The all-volunteer (free) effort took about 45 days to develop, from start to finish.
Obama ‘08 was a free application, developed for election campaign workers, and ran on the iPhone 3G, the original iPhone, and iPod touch.
It features a Call Friends and Call Stats and could find your local Obama for America HQ, look up local campaign events, or get instant access to Barack’s positions, as well as local and national campaign news as it happened. Photos and videos from the campaign trail, too.
Apple now holds 17% of the consumer smartphone market with nearly half of its new customers coming from Verizon Wireless.
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