Some of the other key focus points of the conference echo the current trends in the industry and point the direction that Sprint will head in the future. Items such as NFC communications, machine to machine communications (M2M), and 4G roll out dominated both the keynotes and the sessions. While only one session was dedicated to the iPhone and iOS, it was a topic of conversation in many of the sessions and mentioned frequently in the keynotes.

It was big news when Sprint finally got the iPhone last month. From the mood that the Sprint Open Solutions Conference held last week, they are also welcoming iOS developers. I’ve been to more than a few press conferences and developers conferences from the major US carriers in the past few years. And one of the most interesting things to me has been how little AT&T mentions the iPhone at their conferences. And Verizon recently had their developers conference and dedicated not a single session to iOS or the iPhone. So while iOS barely gets a mention at the AT&T and Verizon developers conference, Sprint welcomed iOS to their stable with a three hour of introductory session from Bill Dudney, Tim Burks, and others. This is just a beginning of course, but it’s promising.

During the keynote from CEO Dan Hesse, he mentioned many times how great it was to have the iPhone on Sprint now (and to no longer have to answer the question of when they would get the iPhone). The addition of the iPhone 4 and 4S should allow Sprint to have their best year ever this year. Needing to have just one million adds to reach that record level. The iPhone should easily help them retain users and gain new ones.

Steve Jobs also got a very nice mention from CEO Dan Hesse to close out the keynote. Mr. Hesse commented that there’s no doubt that “Steve jobs, Apple, and the iPhone have revolutionized this industry.”

Overall a great conference, packed with information. Put this on one your radar for next year.

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Remco van den Elzen, co-founder of analytics firm Distimo, thinks in-app transactions now represent about 30 percent of all iPhone App Store revenue. “We’re seeing more developers implement more in app-purchases especially with games,” he said. “Freemium apps are also picking up significantly. A lot of developers realize it’s a successful model.”

The phenomenon has meant big things for apps like Restaurant Story and Tap Zoo, which have been able to lure users in with a free taste, then ask them for money to buy upgrades and new items when the players are already hooked and wanting to take their skills to the next level. If you want further proof of how successful the model can be just as Zynga about Farmville on Facebook, which stands as the ultimate how-to on making a Freemium game.

Interestingly enough, while freemium seems to be working well on the iPhone the same can’t be said on the iPad. Not a single app on the iPad top-grossing 100 is free to download, as the generally higher price point on the iPad tends to skew the numbers toward paid apps. That’s not to say that the freemuim isn’t a viable model on the tablet, it’s just not as effective currently as paid apps.

The ultimate takeaway here is that as the freemium business model has grown more mature developers have learned how to fully utilize it to maximize profit on Apple’s mobile devices. If you happen to be working on an app which you can afford to release for free but charge for micro-transactions down the road there’s a good chance you’ll be flush with cash in the not too distant future.

[via GigaOm]

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Multitasking – Multitasking services allow your apps to perform tasks in the background including playing audio, push notifications, receiving location change events, and more.

Game Center – With the Game Kit API, you can implement Game Center functionality such as submitting and displaying achievements, scores, and leaderboards, and establishing multiplayer games.

AirPrint – iOS 4.2 allows you to easily enable instant wireless printing from your iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch apps.

“Submit Your Apps Today

“Build, test, compile, and submit your apps for review using iOS 4.2 SDK GM seed so they can be ready when iOS 4.2 is available to users around the world.”

The 4.2 update is eagerly awaited by the general public, and as the last announced update by Apple before the holiday season many are expecting this to be the last major OS update before the potential announcement of an iPad hardware refresh in early 2011. The 4.2 update is also particularly of interest to iPad users who, in addition to the above features, will also be getting folder support and a unified email inbox a la the iPhone and iPod Touch.

In any case consider this your official notice from Apple that your homework is due and now it’s time to put down your pencils and turn in your papers. We honestly are expecting 4.2 to launch at any given moment so make sure to send your submissions in now if you haven’t already if you want to be part of the initial wave of apps available on the new version of the OS.

[via TiPb]

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So why the disparity in profits? It’s all about the price. While the average iPhone app sells for around $4, but the top 100 apps only cost an average of $2.14. The median price of iPad apps, on the other hand, stands at just under $5, with more popular apps averaging $5.18. Thus it’s easy to see that it takes half as many sales on the iPad as it does the iPhone to make the same earnings target, particularly for the more successful releases. All this, along with the fact that iPad games aren’t that much more difficult to create, means that Apple’s tablet is a far more lucrative venue for developers looking to make maximum profit at minimum cost.

Of course, you have to be careful, as there is also more risk in developing for the iPad. The smaller number of owners means that there is more competition amongst the apps which are released, so those apps which don’t land are likely to whiff entirely, possibly not even managing to recoup investment costs. At least with the iPhone the fact that you’re pitching products to a large audience means you have a good chance of making a fair return on a cheap app, with the iPad you have to be a lot more cognizant of ideal pricing and potential market penetration. in short, it’s a risk/reward situation wherein those who manage to release a hit can really score big.

Of course the risk will reduce as more people adopt the tablet, and if current trends are any indication the device is gaining steam incredibly quickly. The iPad is already considered to be one of the top items on holiday wish lists, so the small market may soon expand, and risk may quickly shrink. If that does happen, then iPad development becomes less of a risk and more of a gold rush.

[via GigaOM]

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Every iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad has its own unique device identification number, better known by the abbreviation UDID. Without TestFlight, developers need to add manually acquire every tester’s UDID number and add it into their developer account, then distribute the application via email or download so that testers can install the ad hoc copy through iTunes. The process, for both developers and testers, is time consuming and prone to error.

With TestFlight, developers upload a build of their application and are then given a private web link that, whenever a tester taps on it on their iOS device, automatically installs the application. The process of UDID gathering is handled through TestFlight and the Apple Developer Portal, as explained by Josh Kerr, co-founder of Zosh. A tester enters in their UDID information into TestFlight, then the developer can just copy and paste UDIDs straight into the Apple Dev Portal. Once the necessary certificate has been installed and a new build created, TestFlight automatically notifies all relevant testers that a new build is ready. No uninstalling of the application occurs, as it does through Apple’s official system. Having worked with beta releases through the old-fashioned Apple way and through TestFlight’s new alternative, the process is suddenly so much simpler. No iTunes. No syncing. Just a single webpage.

To understand just how useful TestFlight is, I turn my attention to Neven Mrgan, co-creator of The Incident. His story reveals how “I flew to WWDC just as The Incident was shaping up into a fully playable game … but the timing ended up being slightly wonky: there was a serious bug in the last version I had.” Under normal circumstances, people in this situation would have been forced to update the application through their own personal computer to which their device was authorized. Not ideal. And that’s where TestFlight comes in. With one tap to a unique link and another to download straight to your iDevice, the latest build downloads and installs automatically.

Apple rejected TestFlight as an application, presumably due to its circumventing nature of the normal beta process, but that has not stopped the developers 23 Divide from implementing it entirely through Safari. Nonetheless, TestFlight moves the barrier forward when it comes to ad hoc testing. Having used the service personally, I’m certainly appreciative.

[via ReadWriteWeb]

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Over at Read Write Web today, we see a story that is sure to be of interest to developers of iOS applications and games:

Despite Antenna-gate and Android-boom, it appears as though venture capitalists and angel investors are still pouring money into startups developing iPhone and iPad apps. That’s the findings of a recent CB Insights report that examines the investment in the Apple ecosystem over the last 12 months.

According to CB Insights, investment in pure play iPhone and iPad startups has grown over 220% over the last year as compared to the previous year.

“Pure play” companies are those whose sole focus is building applications for iPhone and iPad. Between 2008 and 2009, there were 11 investment rounds over 10 companies, with almost $38 million raised. This year, over the same time period, there were 17 investment rounds distributed over 16 companies for a total investment of $120.6 million.

What this tells me is that the wave of iOS applications and games is still going strong, and that it continues to be a good bet to go into as a business. No, you won’t automagically make a billion dollars with a derivative game and some word of mouth promotion, but there are still many investors willing to give money to folks who solelyfocus on iOS apps.

(Source: Read Write Web)

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Originally an in-house tool for mockup design, Froggie has now released Dapp for the wider community to use as an iPhone app for UI design.

The $9.99 tool works on the iPhone and allows developers to create mockups of their ideas before passing them over to their teams as a PDF layout or as code.

Alongside the benefits this tool provides developers looking to quickly design apps, Dapp also offers a unique way for beginners to learn how iPhone app coding works. iPhone GUIs can be customized within the app with a number of tools available to adjust colors, lists and images and the app adheres to the Apple UI Standard as a Rapid Application Development (RAD) tool.

While it’s not as simple as just dragging and dropping buttons, images and text, Dapp looks to be a useful tool for any developer who wants to speed up their workflow or has difficulty communicating with designers.

More information and basic tutorials can be found at the Dapp website including the quick video tutorial embedded below. Dapp is available now on the App Store.

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Those looking to learn the ins and outs of app development and promotion including Objective-C programming and marketing workshops should definitely add iPhone/iPad DevCon to their list of events this year. With over forty five classes and workshops available, an exhibition hall, twenty five expert speakers and keynote speeches from Mike Lee and Aaron Hillegass the convention is ideal for developers of all levels.

Produced by the publisher of SD Times, BZ Media, classes and workshops are split into four categories; iPhone Training & iPad Developer Essentials, Spotlight on iPad, Spotlight on Enterprise Apps and Spotlight on App Marketing.

Check out www.iphonedevcon.com to learn more and register.

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iPhone app developers would do well to carefully examine all aspects of pricing as it pertains to their product, make careful pricing decisions, monitor and measure sales results, and make adjustments as needed to maximize their revenue. You can maximize sales results for your app through better marketing and marketing includes spending some time on the challenging area of pricing.

You should consider a number of factors when pricing your iPhone app. For starters, look at competing apps in your category and then ask yourself the following questions:

• How much do competitors charge for a similar app? Take a look at the AppStore and review how many apps are similar to yours. Have you produced another Battleship game that is similar to other apps or is it far better? Be honest!
• What are the differences between my app and someone else’s? Do you have more features? If it is a new financial calculator, does it offer something more than the other competing apps on the store?
• How does your app rate against the competition? Do you feel that your app has better graphics? Better sound? More exciting action? Have you confirmed this with your reviewers, friends, followers, and customers?
• How do you define your app and market? If you are selling a tool for sales reps only, have you attempted to define approximately how many sales reps are in your country or market? Of your target market how many of them might own iPhones?
• How does your app compare to free apps? If there are many competing free iPhone apps you will need to strongly communicate the value of your app. Overcoming objections to free is a high hurdle that can be mitigated with better marketing.
• How much would the app cost to develop by another company? Larger development firms can create an app less expensively than a small developers because they already have developers and graphic designers on staff and can quickly redirect their efforts to that iPhone app. Independent developers may have to outsource some of the skill set of development (especially if it’s a game).
• What were the actual development costs or time involved? Knowing your development costs is also very important in helping you determine the price of your app.

Setting Your App’s Price

After you’ve considered these issues, the big question remains, “How do I price my app?” You’ve come this far to develop a great app so don’t pass up this crucial step in making your app as successful as possible. Now, everyone defines success in their own way. Perhaps you want to generate $20,000 a year in additional income from an app that cost you $5000 to create.

Perhaps you have grander ambitions and want to generate $100,000 in app sales for a product that cost you $20,000 to create. If you start at a $.99 selling price (less Apple’s 30% take) you would have to generate 28,860 downloads to clear $20,000 or 144,300 downloads to achieve $100,000 in sales! These are huge numbers of downloads any way you slice it and that’s after you pay for your development costs. Starting at a $.99 sales price is going to take some time to breakeven unless you have a “grand slam, out-of-the-park, into-the- parking lot” kind of app!

In both examples I didn’t mention the breakeven which should also be factored in. I’m assuming you want to make some money selling your iPhone app. But, for the record you would need 7,215 downloads at the $.99 selling price to break even on the first example at a development cost of $5000. The second app would require you to have 28,860 in downloads just to break even on expenses of $20,000!

I also realize that you may have spent less developing your app and so your break even may be lower. But, regardless you need to calculate your break even so you at least have an idea of what it’s going to take to cover your development costs. If you haven’t spent real dollars in development you most certainly have burned long nights writing code! So, you should calculate your hours spent in development and estimate some sort of development cost based on your typical hourly rate.

Let’s assume you have spent $5000 to develop your business application. You believe you can sell 100 apps per day. Your sales numbers based on different price points are shown below. As you can see by looking at the table, pricing your app at $.99 will take you over two months (70 days) to break even assuming you spent $5000 to develop your app.

Based on the chart above I am of the opinion that it’s better to price your app a little higher at first and carefully monitor the results. By this I mean at least $1.99 so that you’ve got room to adjust your pricing downward if needed. The issue with any pricing assumption is trying to figure out how elastic the pricing model is for iPhone apps. Some app developers have said that lowering their price has had some effect on sales but only for a limited time. Others have said that lowering the price has had no effect on their sales. Who do you believe? Well, they are both right. It depends on the type of app being sold. So, the best approach is to experiment at a price point that makes sense for your app based on your competitive research, breakeven analysis and type of application. A truly unique app can command a higher price. Some utility apps are selling for much higher than $.99. Yes, even some games are selling for more than $.99!

Some app sellers have also found some success in offering some limited time offers where they drop the price for a few days to spur sales. If you have a certain promotion you want to do around an event you can often spur sales by offering a temporary price cut. Let’s say you offer a financial calculator that includes special tax features. You may want to reduce your price for a few days around tax time to spur sales to have your app take advantage of this particular time of year.

If you are confident that your app is unique and has qualities and features that no similar app provides, I say price it higher and measure the results. If over a few weeks your sales start to drop off you can carefully reduce the price for a time and measure the results. If you are spending some time on marketing and building a following for your brand you should see steady sales. Remember, in this economy people are willing to pay for quality at a reasonable price. They are not willing to pay for poorly designed apps at any price.

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Discover which Scoreloop games your friends are playing

Scoreloop Community provides the following features both on the web and in the dedicated iPhone application to any game developer/publisher by simply implementing the free Scoreloop SDK:

• Discover & Browse – All Scoreloop-enabled games, their high score lists and challenges are now more visible to players. Scoreloop Community for the iPhone also acts as a central gaming launch pad. It allows for launching Scoreloop enabled games and switching back and forth between the community and games.
• Scoreloop Promote – Now players can view the games that are played by others and access them directly on the App Store.
• Friends Activities – Scoreloop keeps players up to date with what and how their friends are playing.
• Scoreloop Avatar Editor – Players create and save custom avatars changing them as frequently as they wish.
• Web Widgets – With a single click, developers and publishers add customizable online high score lists to their own web sites, extending the community reach even further.

Scoreloop Community on the iPhone fully implements iPhone push notifications for Scoreloop challenges. Whenever players are challenged or when their challenges are accepted they will be directly notified through text like messages, badges and/or sound. This brings the social interaction in gaming even closer to the players and makes playing a Scoreloop enabled game even more addictive.

“After pioneering player challenges, Scoreloop is again raising the level of play for game developers with its cross platform community,” said Scoreloop’s CEO, Marc Gumpinger. “We’re providing the most sophisticated and complete mobile social gaming platform making gaming more fun and allowing our developer ‘partners’ to increase their user base virally through friend invitations and more. Scoreloop doesn’t create games, but instead we partner with game developers to move the market forward together.”

With its free, easy to implement and highly customizable SDK, Scoreloop is the only platform offering online high scores and player challenges available today for any game on the iPhone and iPod touch from OS 2.0 to 3.x. At the core of its mobile social gaming approach, Scoreloop’s challenges allow players to interact with each other on an entertaining and thrilling level. Players instantly see their high score ranking and can challenge anyone, including buddies in their address book or on Facebook. Scoreloop’s comparison algorithm makes sure players compete against someone at a similar skill level. If the player performs well, they win medals and Coins that show their skills to opponents. These features increase the game’s value, virally spread games and increase user loyalty.

Scoreloop generates revenues from its micro-transaction infrastructure that is shared with game developers and publishers. Scoreloop offers its technology free of charge and even allows for monetizing free games.

With hundreds of developers already registered, Scoreloop-enabled games continue to proliferate at the Apple App Store including: Aeio, Bug Landing, Flying, GeoRain, Monster Mash, Orb, Sorty, Submarine, Zombie Pub Crawl and 50 more game commitments from third party developers – more coming in day-by-day.

“We definitely will be integrating Scoreloop into all of our upcoming games,” said Bruce Johnson of Orange Crane Games who implemented Scoreloop in Zombie Pub Crawl. “Our staff is addicted to Scoreloop challenges,” added Stephen Northcott from Ginetix, who implemented Scoreloop in Orb.

With its new community platform on the Web, on Facebook and on the iPhone, Scoreloop extends its unparalleled online high score and player challenge features to reach even more players and generate even more visibility for Scoreloop enabled games.

About Scoreloop

Scoreloop is the technology leader in mobile social gaming bringing online high scores, player challenges and viral distribution to game developers and publishers.

As a neutral-platform, Scoreloop focuses on partnering with game developers to build the mobile social gaming community rather than developing its own games. Scoreloop is venture funded by Europe’s Target Partners.

To find out more about Scoreloop Community go to www.scoreloop.com/community and to download the free SDK go to www.scoreloop.com

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