Filed under: Feature, ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA | Tags: Android, App Store, Apps, Apps Store, Blackberry, Gartner, Handhelds, iPhone, Kettle, Mobile, Olivier Peyre, Palm Pre, Smartphone, They Make Apps
GOT MOBILE APP DEVELOPERS?: THEYMAKEAPPS DOES
As someone who prides herself on being a digital nerdstress, I often field questions from folks looking for mobile app developers. It’s very analogous to that moment where someone texts you looking for a good restaurant or bar in their neighborhood. Inevitably, your mind goes blank and the vestiges of cool locations are lost rendering you helpless in directing your friends to that cool bar you always want to refer people to. Eventually, perhaps you muster up the mental energy to pull a few developers out of thin air, developers who most likely have no additional bandwidth to take on new projects. FAIL.
Enter TheyMakeApps, an online directory of iPhone application developers categorized by location and price. iPhone users have so far downloaded over 3 billion applications from the iTunes store. A recent study from Gartner found that users will download, on average, 20.1 apps per smartphone this year. With that much consumption, it’s easy to see why everyone is looking for a good developer. With over 100K registered iPhone developers, it’s easy to see the need for something which weeds though that much choice. The challenge in finding the right person is in finding someone who can execute the vision at the right price. They Make Apps helps it all come together in a slick user interface that makes the process a bit more fun.
How to
Currently, users can browse through apps filtering by price (up to $20K) and by location. The site was developed by Kettle, a NYC-based digital consultancy. Olivier Peyre, Creative Director of Kettle, tells me that search will be available soon. Clearly, search is a critical feature allowing users to drill down on exactly what they’re looking for, be it a mobile app developer specifically or a developer who has worked with a brand of interest. I like that the site allows for users to save mobile developers of interest for a comparative look later in the process. Any developer can easily sign up on the site to be included in the directory.
Currently, the limiting features for me are the lack of search (which is already on its way), the lack of budget options above $20K, and the lack of Blackberry, Android and Palm Pre developers. Some nice-to-have features would be a way to vote up and down certain developers creating a hot list of preferred vendors and a way to email developers of interest to friends.
TheyMakeApps isn’t exclusively for agencies and developers. SPIN magazine used the directory to find the developer for their latest project. Nick Pandolfi, Digital Edition Manager of SPIN describes his experience:
“TheyMakeApps was a huge help with SPIN’s latest development project. Rather then reach out to all our contacts for developer references, it was a quick way to find locally based developers and see exactly what they specialize in. I’m sure we’ll be using it again soon!”
TheyMakeApps is simply the glue connecting need to the solution. And frankly, I love glue.
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Filed under: WIRELESS | Tags: 3G iPhone, Apple, Application Store, Apps Store, iPhone, iPhone 2.0, Smartphones, United States
Tucked away on the iPhone 2.0 version of Apple’s Application Store is a counter for the number of times that each application has been purchased . When this information is combined with an application’s price, and the uniform 30% that Apple pockets on each download, it is possible to know how much Apple is making from the App Store. As of 4PM (PST), that number hovers around $55,000. This is pretty incredible given that the iPhone 2.0 software is not officially available and App Store does not officially open till tomorrow, that bloggers have only been able to access the Apps Store for less than 18 hours, and that the 3G iPhone, with the App store built in out of the box, is not even on sale yet in the United States. If sales of applications stay at the current pace, which they won’t, because they are going to speed up dramatically, the Application Store would still provide Apple with an additional twenty million dollars of revenue per year. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/10/before-the-app-store-%E2%80%9Copens%E2%80%9D-it-has-already-made-apple-55000 7/10)
As of now (about noon California time) the iPhone 2.0 software update hasn’t officially launched yet, but everyone who cares knows that for the last five hours they could download v.2.0 anyway and access the App Store. Early download stats are coming in on the most popular apps. We’ve divided these into two lists, one for paid apps and one for free apps (there’s a big difference in download numbers). We’ll update for comparison purposes in 24 hours or so. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/10/iphone-app-store-the-early-list-of-top-downloads 7/10)
All of us iPhone fanatics are just getting our hands on the new apps, but I’ve already found one that I’m sure to consider indispensable within the next few months: Facebook’s new app. Why is it so compelling? Because it almost eliminates the need to maintain a separate contacts list on my phone. While Facebook’s web app for the iPhone was cool enough, the native app basically transforms Facebook into a mobile directory with rich information about your friends. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/10/facebooks-iphone-app-almost-replaces-my-contacts-list 7/10)
While I agree with this in principle, I can’t in practice. While sharing information with my iPhone is a pleasurable experience, sharing information with Facebook especially when it comes to a mobile number seems more questionable given Facebook’s access to that data for whatever purposes they see fit.
With iPhone lovers paying people as much as $100 to wait in line for them in Washington, D.C., a half-mile queue forming at stores in Tokyo and the first iPhone 3G customer waiting for 55 hours in New Zealand, questions over the demand for the new iPhone have been answered. Consumers who were interviewed said they view the iPhone 3G — which went on sale around the world this morning — as more of a portable PC than a smartphone. (
ClipSyndicate/Bloomberg 7/11, The Washington Post 7/11, Bloomberg 7/11, Yahoo!/Associated Press 7/11)
iPhone relevant data points, courtesy of Nielsen Mobile:
Demographics:
67% of US iPhone users are male (compared to 48% of all mobile subs)
55% of iPhone owners are under 35 (compared to 34% of all mobile subs)
63% of iPhone users earn above $75k (compared to 38% of all mobile subscribers)
24% of iPhone owners are Hispanic
9.7% of streaming video users and 4.9% of mobile internet users own an iPhone
Popular Features/Media Consumption Habits:
75% use the phones MP3 player
68% use the Wi-Fi functionality of the phone
76% send e-mails over their phone
37% of iPhone users watch video on their phone (10X more than ave. mobile sub)
82% access the internet (5X more than ave. mobile sub)
17% stream music over their phone (7X more than ave. mobile sub)
20% play online games on their phone (9X more than ave. mobile sub)
Smartphone Market Share:
HTC 25.2%
Research in Motion 23.4%
Palm 19.3%
Apple 11.6%
Source: Nielsen Mobile (Cynopsis 7/11)
