Starting an iPhone Application Business For Dummies
With all the talk these days of mobile devices and people making millions of dollars by selling apps like ANGRY BIRDS (just a reminder, iPhone app developers aren’t making that much money), the question keeps coming up about whether you should be making an iPhone app or not?
Web Watch talks with developers every day, and one question that keeps coming up is “hey, we really should make an iPhone app that does blah-blah-blah”.
And when we counter that statement with, “Why?”, we’re always told “because everyone has an iPhone”.
No, not everyone has an iPhone.
Even in that same group of developers, we have folks who are using various flavors of iPhone ranging from the latest to the earlier iPhone 3. We have Android users on different versions. We have Blackberry users, and even two holdouts who purposefully are not buying smartphones – just because all they want is cell service and an inexpensive calling plan.
Just because you surround yourself with family and friends who all seem to have iPhones, that doesn’t mean that the iPhone is the most popular cell phone out there.
And the recent Mobile Subscriber Market Share survey results from comScore confirms this.
In September 2011, Apple smartphones comprised of just 10.2% of the US market. Samsung phones took 25.3%.
As for which operating system was being run, Android is being used in 44.8% of all smartphones, with Apple’s iOS in 27.4%.
Web Watch is not saying that developing for the Apple iPhone isn’t important – it is. But don’t solely focus your development efforts on something that’s going to run on a minority of all smartphones .
The comScore survey did share some other interesting info about how people are using their smartphones:
- 71.1% – sent text messages
- 42.9% – used web browser
- 42.5% – downloaded apps
- 31.5% – accessed social networking or blog
- 28.8% – played games
- 20.9% – listened to music