Travis Yates agrees, and worries that the small application developers who led the development of the sector are about to be squeezed out by larger companies that have discovered there is money to be made.
“I’ve only got limited resources; I’m working by myself,” Yates says. “If there are popular brand names they’re going to be pushing other titles down. That’s my main worry at this stage, that it’ll get to a point where it’s run by big companies.”
But Fawkner says that if the individual developers can’t beat them, then they should join them with some simple business tactics.
“They need to build a brand as people will like something they know and trust. If I build four or five applications, I should name them all similarly. If I create a brand, it helps me stand out from the noise and lends an aura of credibility.”
Despite the success stories and the attractive business model offered by Apple, Australian developers warn that building an application is no guarantee of financial success.
“I feel I just got lucky,” Yates says. “I wouldn’t recommend people quit their job and do it. It was quite easy to make a fair bit of money early on, and that’s why I was in a rush to get into it, but it drops off over time. Some people make it big, but it’d be wrong to expect it to be the norm.”
Dawson agrees, saying that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to become known as a quality developer among the crowd.
“With there being thousands of apps out there, there are a handful that have hit the big time, but they also get the most publicity, so people get the impression anyone can do that.”
“It needs to be balanced,” Ahern says. “Everybody loves a story about who had a laptop, spare time and is now a millionaire, but not everybody is getting the million-dollar applications.”
Ahern says good ideas will work if executed properly, but it’s just not enough to have the tools available to you.
“Novelty apps have done very well, but follow ups have had no attraction whatsoever. We’ve made apps that are more impulse buys, and we’re being very careful to spend a week or two on them, not three months or so because the risk is far too high.
“It’s not a sure-fire recipe for success, but I encourage anybody to try it…just don’t sell your house in the process.”
But despite the drawbacks, these developers and analysts predict the application market will eventually become a major industry in its own right.
“Application stores means people need to have a rethink about how their business is going to market,” Fawkner says. “The industry is going to be huge. I suspect we’ll see a lot of changes over the next few years.”
Ahern predicts that as more, smaller developer houses enter the market, larger companies will be eager to work with them and create new content.
“Funnily, the big players are excited about that. So these big players are distributors; when they see a small house get something out they can talk them out and help them out. It’s fantastic and everybody is happy with that.”
Dawson says that the industry hasn’t even begun to explore everything that is possible with application development. “It’s all happening very quickly, it’s taken on a life of its own. Nobody can be actually certain where it’s going, but it’s exciting and evolving rapidly.”
“This is definitely becoming a market in its own right,” Burley says. “There’s a lot happening for developers.”
See the Top 10 iPhone applications on the next page.
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
