Strictly Professional Podcast
FounderCast
The format is a roundtable of technology three company founders (@dougmartin, @cemerick, and @paulhake). In the first three episodes they have discussed the tools they use (development and sales), how they got their first customer, customer service and other topics. The pilot is unedited and rough, so don't judge it on that one -- by the third episode it got signicantly better. You can also follow @foundercast on twitter.
More interesting iPhone pricing articles
And, here's another iPhone app pricing article I got from John Gruber's DaringFireball. In the article, Peter Cooper uses popularity as a stand-in for units sold and and tries to figure out which apps have the most revenue. Put this one in your RSS feed if you are interested in hearing more as this installment covers mostly the Games category.Having more than doubled over the last two months, Gaming remains the largest category accounting for a quarter of all apps. The fastest growing categories were Education and Lifestyle. Medical is the newest app category and as of the end of November there were over 80 medical apps, the 10 most popular of which were free. Among Game apps, Racing, Music, and Sports were the fastest growing Game sub categories.
Seth Godin's iPhone App Ideas
The Google Maps app on the iPhone has traffic data already--what's missing is that I don't think it takes that into account when selecting a route, or updates it if conditions change. If the traffic data is available with an API (like most google data), then this might be easier than even Seth thinks (no server side) -- of course, no lock-in either.Have the iPhone use the gps data... upload where I was a minute ago and where I am now. Figure out my speed and route. Use the data to tell other RadaR users which route is best. It's worth $20 a month if you live in a place with traffic jams. It's a natural monopoly--once someone figures it out, why wouldn't everyone want to use the market leader?
The second idea needs some kind of server-side dialier because Apple doesn't let apps run in the background:
Here's an easier one that you could probably sell as well. I type in a phone number and enter a time. Record a message and press go. I can cue up a bunch of messages that are based on time. I can have groups get the message I record, at the time I want them to get it.
Interesting iPhone App Pricing Articles
This other article from Andy is also good.The fix for pricing too low is really simple: raise your prices. Most $0.99 apps should become $9.99, $4.99 apps should become $14.99, and so on. With a $9.99 app, you’d make $7 per copy and at 16 copies per day, you’d make about $40,000/year. That’s not a great income, but that could potentially support one iPhone product being developed in some Iowan’s wheat field.
John Gruber made an interesting point when he linked to Andy (software with higher prices needs demos and refunds)
Tap, Tap, Tap has had a couple of AppStore hits, so what they have to say is also very interesting.
iPhone apps are typically much smaller and more focused than desktop apps and as such, should be priced accordingly. In addition, you need to take into account the much larger market that you’re dealing with here… Apple is selling well over 10,000 iPhones per day and these are all potential new customers, plus all the existing iPhone owners and iPod touch sales.