I was wondering if anyone here had any guidance on the current market for developing iPhone apps. Any links, market research, or anecdotal evidence would be appreciated.
I charge $40/hr, and I'm the cheapest guy I know. Anywhere from $40-$150 hourly for competent people.
Nobody looks at apps that are below about $5k in size. So that's your starting point for something simple (tip calculator, etc.). Web services, datacenters, anything algorithmic is way, way more (~50k?)
Never hire people on eLance.
Market: grows 10-20% every six months or so. You won't get rich, especially if you expect Apple to do all your marketing. You can make a living if you're competent. Blockbusters are pure luck, but if you get one you can make 50k a month. 5-10k a year is much more common for niche apps with no marketing (what everyone seems to write).
Free+in-app purchasing may change the market quite a bit ("oh, you want wheels with that car?"), but nobody really knows yet.
App review is a bitch, so get a developer who's been around the block to advise you on getting through review.
Interesting reply. I have a couple of questions for you.
1. How do you get your clients?
2. Could you elaborate on "5-10k a year is much more common for niche apps with no marketing (what everyone seems to write)." I'm curious about your apps and results.
1. People find me. A combination of Google juice (I occasionally blog about iPhone development), and people (ab)using the "support contact" for my apps in the store. I've never (except when I had just started) actually had to approach anyone. Random point sample: I've gotten two e-mails so far from people who have read my comments on this post. It's a developer's market.
2. I don't talk about clients' numbers for obvious reasons. I'm not really sure how to elaborate. Can you elaborate on your question?
The figure I gave above is for a generic niche app that does a useful computation for those in a particular profession with no marketing budget. There are a lot of people who say to themselves "I'm a doctor, and I want an app that does X" where X is something doctors do. That is, the primary audience is the client. In cases like this, the marketing budget is 0 and the client's focus is to make a little extra income, but his day job is being a doctor, and making his own life easier. If he makes his investment back in a year, he's happy, and has 3-4 years or however long the lifecycle is of pure profit.
Other times you have people who use iPhone apps as a loss-leader (online ordering, etc.) for their real business. I have no way of tracking the "success" of this, but anecdotally the proposals are like 25% of the market.
The "startup" case--where somebody quits his job to develop the killer iPhone app--is actually not that prevalent (except on HN). 90% of these people are those flakey guys who "have a killer idea" that reduces to "Facebook for X" or "Let's make a CSI-enchance button for the iPhone camera." There are other problems too, that basically reduce to not having thought things through or not knowing what they're doing. The remaining 10% are legit, but it's work to separate them from the flakey people, and meanwhile I've got unsurmountable piles of Type A and Type B people's proposals in my inbox.
Cool projects pay less than boring ones, and at this particular stage in life I want to work on cool things.
I'm also very selective about clients and I prefer working with very reliable people. I might raise rates on somebody new, but I haven't taken on any new clients in... at least 6 months; there's plenty of work to do for the existing ones.
Have you ever hired people on elance? The company I work for has, and they do create what you want. If you specify exactly what you want, you can get 10 tip calculators for a couple grand.
How do you get that kind of rate? I'm at a bit of a loss on how I could do that, especially with the typical return with most iPhone apps. I am a fairly experienced (now) developer with iPhone apps (3D games, tip calculators, web scraping iphone apps, facebook-iphone apps, etc). I don't live in silicon valley although. (250k people town in western canada)
Congrats if you truly get that rate for every hour you work on multi-month projects.
I'm currently making apps for Disney and I price total projects based on a detailed spec (not hourly), but when you figure actual hours worked, I don't charge anywhere close to this rate.
Do you really not stay up until 4 am polishing the app even when you're over budget?
So you're honestly making $250,000 (40x125x50) a year doing contract iPhone apps?
Edit: I just saw you posted below about $40/hour. That's fine to overestimate when you're charging $40/hour. My comment is directed at Rothmic and malbiniak above. Apologies for the mistake, drewcrawford.
It wasn't clear in my first comment, but it is representative of a company, not an individual. We're fortunate to have a great team estimating and scoping projects and great developers on staff staying on budget; it's rare that our actual rate is less than what I've cited, and we don't cut scope to stay on budget. Estimating, by far, is the hardest part.
If the app isn't to our internal standards, we'll do whatever it takes to get there, even if it pushes us over budget (ie, staying up until 4am).
Ok, I think this is a big point of confusion. A "company" rate is very different than a developer rate. A company rate usually includes project managers, client liaisons, secretaries, etc. I can't imagine an individual developer getting paid $20,000 for one month of 40-hour-per-week iPhone work.
I think it's important that we make this clear to new developers, so thanks for clearing it up.
I am not a developer but I have hired a couple to develop apps on my behalf. I think $60/hour is a reasonable rate and I have no trouble (psychologically) paying that. When I see someone charging $40 my first thought is to assume he is either a college student or an indian (i dont mean that offensively). When it comes to development, price is indicative of quality (at least someone on the "buy" side like myself thinks so).
That being said, I think you will find it difficult to go around charging $125 an hour unless you are damn good. When I hire someone at $100 an hour (which I currently have), I know I am getting a guru. Your price should be indicative of your level of expertise. Your clients will find out sooner rather than later if you arent worth what they are paying you and that isnt good for anyone.
Hi, I'm the co-founder of Get Apps Done. The site is still pretty young, but we get a few new job listings everyday. Let me know if you have any other questions about the site.
I've found it's easy to find relatively small projects (1 good engineer, 1-2 months), but more difficult to find larger projects.
I generally advise potential clients not to expect too much from the App Store (~$30K-$40K revenue for a "good" game that's featured by Apple for a short time), unless they get lucky.
Our company is based in Vietnam and self-published a relatively successful iPhone game recently. Using it as our foot-in-the-door, we've been seeing ~$80/hour for smaller projects requiring 1-2 very talented engineers, and ~$40/hour for larger projects requiring more engineers.
I've been doing a ton of research on this over the past few days and put it at this:
Freelancers: $40/hr-$75/hr
Shop / Agency: $100/hr-$250/hr
Just wish there were more developers out there. I've been scoping projects and looking for resources but its tricky. Its such a different world than web that you almost need to find Mac software engineers really.
Since there were only so many mac engineers out there to begin with, its about getting old dogs to learn new tricks which is slow and painful, or college kids breaking in, which is where I'm looking...
I charge $65/hr, but that's because I'm just starting to get into the market and I'm not yet swamped with work. From what I've heard in the community, you can expect to pay twice that for someone established.
edit: if you'd like to get in touch with me, my email's in my profile.
You might be shocked to think how much money is in iPhone applications. I run a small group that has some big clients, and we are going to clear 1MM easily this year doing just iPhone, and Android.
Hi
We are an offshore company and have developed various corporate applications and few ranging to top download both on iPhone & Android. We charge only $ 30 an hour ! I feel like , i am charging lowest but have developed some really interesting applications ! We also developed ODesk's iPhone App ( those are considering using elance , ODesk etc ) !
Nobody looks at apps that are below about $5k in size. So that's your starting point for something simple (tip calculator, etc.). Web services, datacenters, anything algorithmic is way, way more (~50k?)
Never hire people on eLance.
Market: grows 10-20% every six months or so. You won't get rich, especially if you expect Apple to do all your marketing. You can make a living if you're competent. Blockbusters are pure luck, but if you get one you can make 50k a month. 5-10k a year is much more common for niche apps with no marketing (what everyone seems to write).
Free+in-app purchasing may change the market quite a bit ("oh, you want wheels with that car?"), but nobody really knows yet.
App review is a bitch, so get a developer who's been around the block to advise you on getting through review.