What began as a predictable linear progression a year ago has now turned into a slight exponential curve of unique vendors of iPhone Apps, showing that the horror stories of not being able to be discovered by consumers have not scared away developers looking to strike it rich on the AppStore.
The current number of unique vendors is now approaching 35,000. That means there are 35k different companies/individuals actually selling all the apps on the AppStore and they are all competing with each other for your dollars and attention. About this time last year, there were about 50 new companies per day entering the field, and that figure has now risen to over 100.
What does this mean? Are all these companies making money? Is it the cool factor of publishing an iPhone app? Is it the ease of getting an app on the AppStore? Is it the quality of the development tools? We know that not everyone is making money from their apps, and that is hard to get your app noticed. [Shameless plug: check out the Quimondo Q4 Report for more info]. It's easy enough to get an SDK now when you pay your $99, and the development tools are heads and tails more stable and robust when compared to developing for other mobile platforms, so this could well be a factor.
I was actually surprised to see the shape of this curve... I fully expected to see the curve starting to plateau as developers choose between iPhone, Android, etc. At this time, it would seem they can't ignore the platform to compete on a broader scale, even if their ROI is getting harder to predict...
The current number of unique vendors is now approaching 35,000. That means there are 35k different companies/individuals actually selling all the apps on the AppStore and they are all competing with each other for your dollars and attention. About this time last year, there were about 50 new companies per day entering the field, and that figure has now risen to over 100.
What does this mean? Are all these companies making money? Is it the cool factor of publishing an iPhone app? Is it the ease of getting an app on the AppStore? Is it the quality of the development tools? We know that not everyone is making money from their apps, and that is hard to get your app noticed. [Shameless plug: check out the Quimondo Q4 Report for more info]. It's easy enough to get an SDK now when you pay your $99, and the development tools are heads and tails more stable and robust when compared to developing for other mobile platforms, so this could well be a factor.
I was actually surprised to see the shape of this curve... I fully expected to see the curve starting to plateau as developers choose between iPhone, Android, etc. At this time, it would seem they can't ignore the platform to compete on a broader scale, even if their ROI is getting harder to predict...
