• Our podcast feed
• Download Directly
• Subscribe via iTunes

This week: we can’t stop talking about the App Store and what it means for developers. We recorded before 2.2 came out, but expect it to be the topic du jour next week for iPhone Live!

We have our final entry to the App Pack Contest! It’s the Mobi Cradle — everybody likes having a backup cradle. To qualify this week, you just need to do one of two things:

1. Register in our forums
2. If you’re already registered, sign a friend up! Just head to your “User Control Panel” by hitting this link. You’ll find a link at the top with your “referral link.” Send that to a friend and when they use it to register, you’ll be entered to win. You can enter up to FIVE times by referring FIVE friends!

As a reminder, here’s everything you’ll get if you win!

• Blueant Z9i Bluetooth Headset
• Griffin PowerDuo
• V-Moda Vibe Duo Headphones
• Belkin Sport Armband Plus with FastFit for iPhone 3G
• Seidio Innotraveler Car Kit
• Case-Mate The Hipster for iPhone 3G
• Mobi Cradle

News

• App Pack Contest
• Mobi Products Cradle
• Round Robin
• Reliability & Marketshare
• Papermaster Drama
• iPhone almost ran Linux
• Tethering at $30
• Google Voice Search is Awesome
• Gaming
• App Market Crash Coming? (See especially this). Joel Spolsky article discussed in the podcast.

How To

iPhone as Mouse and iPhone and numberpad

Credits

Thanks to the the iPhone Blog Store for sponsoring the podcast.

Our music comes from the following sources:

• I Called You — iPhone Remix by Pete Leidy
via Sneakmove iPhone Ringtone Challenge
• Relaxation Spa Treatment by Dan the Automator via Wired 12.11: Sample the Future
• Wataridori 2 by Cornelius via Wired 12.11: Sample the Future
• DC 3000 by Thievery Corporation via Wired 12.11: Sample the Future

[Introducing TiPb of the Iceberg, our new, bi-weekly column from TiPb Senior Editor, and all-around Smartphone Expert, Dieter Bohn.]

The recent news that development house Tap Tap Tap is breaking up has me thinking about the App Store and developers again. Partially it’s because Tap Tap Tap has previously been mentioned here at TiPb as an example of developers raking in the cash and as an example of developers being open about how much they’re making and what they think of the industry. The break-up is interesting for a few reasons in this context.

After the break, some ruminations and thoughts on the State of the Apps from this layman’s point of view. Warning: as you can see from the title, this post includes hackneyed references to the Long Tail

Firstly, the details of the breakup include a new way for developers to make money off of applications — by selling them completely. Tap Tap Tap’s “Where To?” app is now on the market for a buyer, having made around $200,000 up to this point. I’m doubting that we’ll hear what the final selling price is, but I have a hunch that it’s not going to be sky high. The reason for that, though, is wrapped up in the Long Tail.

The standard business model when people talk about the Long Tail goes like this: niche software products (or blog posts, or what-have-you) never really go away, instead they generate a small amount of revenue for a long time after their initial sales surge. Taken together, this ‘long tail’ of sales can add up to real money — eBay makes more money selling millions of niche products than they do selling big ticket items, for example. You see this in other mobile ecosystems — There are plenty of software shops on Windows Mobile that push out all sorts of apps year after year. And, of course, the movie, music, and publishing industry rakes in untold millions in practically passive income every year based on their huge back catalogs of DVDs, CDs, and Books.

So the idea applied to the App Store would go thusly: Instead of developing one or two blockbuster apps that make beaucoup bucks, we may see these developers feeling pressure to keep creating new applications for that initial sales bump and a diversified Long Tail strategy of revenue instead of focusing on a single app and trying to keep it in the Top 50.

image by JSK

Setting aside the question of whether or not producing and maintaining lots of niche apps is even feasible for a single developer or a small software house, there are three ways that I can see the Long Tail theory applied to the App store. One is pessimistic, the other two a bit more hopeful:

1. The Long Tail doesn’t apply to the App Store because it’s just such a gigantic freaking money maker. It’s an order of magnitude larger than any mobile software economy we’ve seen before and it therefore needs an entire rethinking of how to make money with mobile apps. In essence, the right side of the tail for even a single moderately popular app is large enough to support a developer.

While I do think that the App Store is qualitatively different than other mobile app ecosystems, I’m not sure that I think it’s as crazy good as the 1st possibility there. Even if it were, it’s a little to optimistic for a business plan, so let’s look at the latter two.

2. The Long Tail works — niche apps are able to maintain enough publicity on their own merits within the App Store over the long run to collectively make enough money to support a developer.

Right now I’d like to think this is the safe bet — if you don’t think you have a blockbuster on your hands, develop as many apps as you can reasonably maintain and hope they add up to a living. However, I suspect the situation might be turn out to be like the third possibility:

3. The Long Tail doesn’t apply because once an app falls off the Top 50, its sales plummet. In essence, the right side of the tail is so small that no amount of niche apps added together will ever be able to support a living wage. The only safe strategy is to make an application popular enough to stay high up in the sales charts (and provide enough marketing to keep it there) or find ways other than the App Store to drive sales.

Here’s the nut of what I’m saying: My hunch is that it may be tougher for applications to develop a “long tail” on the iPhone than it is for other platforms. The reason I think this is that it looks like the real driver of sales on the App Store are the top lists. As John Casasanta previously noted:

It’s worth pointing out that our sales have dropped significantly over the past few days. We were teetering around the 50th rank for Where To but then slipped under it. It seems that once you drop past that, you’re on a free-fall since the App Store on the iPhone only shows 50 in its top list, compared to 100 in iTunes on the computer. [...] I’m willing to bet that it’s a quick ride into oblivion once you fall off the Top 100 chart and I’m really hoping we don’t get to find that out anytime soon for Where To.

The idea here is this: if your app can’t keep itself in the top rankings, it’s going to quickly become lost in the sea of applications in the App Store. Unless you have a very unique niche (or several of them), it will also be difficult to find via search. Unless you’re able to effectively market it via means other than the App Store, it simply may as well not even exist there. The effective long tail for an App with no visibility approaches zero, in other words.

It’s not the fault of any particular app if it can’t keep itself in the top 50 long-term. There are going to be too many apps and too many newly popular apps for a top list strategy to be viable for any but the most popular programs. Keeping any given application in the Top 50 long-term would likely require a mammoth marketing effort.

As Ars Technica points out in regard to the Tap Tap Tap situation, there does seem to be a genuine concern that the marketing of an app is as important, if not more important, than the design of the app itself. That’s definitely a concern I would share were I looking to make a living developing iPhone apps.

It might be possible (or even necessary) that some sort of structural change to the App Store could help non-top-list apps maintain a revenue stream long-term. I can’t say exactly what that change would be, to be honest, but I suspect it would need to involve a more robust and sortable reviewing system to help the cream rise to the top of categories and searches.

In the meantime, it would behoove most developers to consider what their marketing strategy for their application is going to be long term. Even great apps like Where To? are not likely to get a ton of visibility in the App Store over the long haul (again, through no fault of the app itself), so making apps like it part of a diversified long tail strategy is going to require some serious thought.

We’ve already called the iPhone app development a goldrush and even suggested that it’s a living. That last part may be a little more difficult than it has looked for the past couple months. Apple does have an obligation to help make quality apps more discoverable in the App Store, but not the sole obligation. As with any industry, iPhone Apps (at least the ones that aren’t in the top 50) aren’t going to sell themselves.

SplashMoney, from the folks over at SplashData, Inc., is now available in the iTunes App Store for $9.99 with a desktop version available for $19.99.

SplashData’s products have been ever-popular on other platforms, such as Palm, Windows Mobile Pro and Smartphone editions, and BlackBerry. Now, they have taken the plunge and offered up some of their goodies for iPhone.

How does SplashMoney for the iPhone measure up? Read on for the full review!

Ever since I replaced the old paper planner with a shiny PDA, I have looked for ways to eliminate paper and consolidate all of my information into one electronic brain. One of my favorite apps over the years has been a little checkbook register app for my Palm — it allowed me to leave my checkbook register at home and input my financial transactions as I spent my hard-earned cash. Now that I’m an iPhone user, I was immediately intrigued about SplashMoney and knew I had to give it a try.

First Impressions

The Setup

Setting up your accounts is rather simple to do. With SplashMoney, you have the option of either managing your accounts manually or connecting and syncing the financial data and transactions from your bank or other financial institution (i.e., credit card company). The list of available banks is extensive and I was pleased to find my credit union on the list.

The top part of the Account screen has an “Edit” button for editing your accounts and a “Tools” button to adjust various settings, from setting a password and editing payees and categories to Syncing your data to the desktop app (sold separately) or running the Quick Start Guide. Along the bottom of the screen is a ” + ” for adding new accounts, a pie-chart icon for Reports, a piggy-bank icon for managing your Budget, and a “download” icon to download your financial data to your iPhone. Additionally, there is a running balance indicator that you can customize to reflect any and all of your accounts. Given my personal financial situation, it is far more morale-boosting to just include my checking account balance so the number stays in the “black” as opposed to a “red” number with a negative to the left.

It was during the account setup period that I ran into some bugs — sometimes SplashMoney will reset, particularly when you are in the middle of downloading the financial data online from your accounts. Hopefully this is an issue that will be resolved in future updates. Even with the reset nuisances, the ability to sync up and download your current balances and transaction histories is a tremendously positive feature for me. I like to see what’s happening in my accounts while I’m on the go, and SplashMoney does a good job of displaying that information for me.

Form and Function

SplashMoney also supports multiple currencies and online real-time currency updates. Custom icon support and the ability to print registers and reports are also included features, as well as scheduled transactions and reminders. Some people may be hesitant to use the online account update feature, but fortunately there is secure password protection using Blowfish encryption.

Desktop Syncing

It’s nice to have the backup and redundancy of my financial data on both my iPhone and desktop. I’m using the Mac version and syncing my data was painless. You can download a 30-day trial of the desktop app to see if it’s right for you.

Final Thoughts

I would be far more pleased if I had more money to manage and see more balances in the “black”, but that’s not SplashMoney’s fault. In fact, I look forward to delving deeper into the features and utilize budgets and reports to manage my money better and watch with satisfaction as more of those “red” balances turn to “black.” 

SplashMoney offers a nice user interface on the iPhone and desktop app alike, and the ability to sync online with your accounts is a really nice touch. The app is simple to use but offers up very powerful features that can please the novice and power-user alike. I look forward to seeing future updates and see just how polished SplashMoney can become.

Pros

• Simple, clean interface
• Online account syncing
• Supports categories, reports and budgets
• Desktop app available

Cons

• Sometimes crashes during accounts setup
• Does not online sync to all accounts

Rating: 4 / 5

So you’ve been running on iPhone 2.0 (hopefully, 2.0.1) for a while now. And you’ve all enjoyed the plethora of quality apps at the App Store, but did you know how well the App Store was actually doing? Well, according to one of those old reputable printing press companies, pretty darn well.

The App Store holds a current pace of earning a revenue of over a million dollars a day, which roughly translates to $360 million a year. Steve Jobs issued some resounding statements about the App Store saying,

“This thing’s going to crest a half a billion, soon,” he added. “Who knows, maybe it will be a $1 billion marketplace at some point in time.” and also said, “I’ve never seen anything like this in my career for software”

So yeah, that App Store is doing great. Who would have thought an easy-to-use, iTunes-like interface would revolutionize the mobile software industry? Best of luck catching up RIM, WinMob, Android..

Read