Should companies in small countries produce iPhone apps? | Hacker News Reader

Should companies in small countries produce iPhone apps?

webdragon.com.au

3 pointswebdragon9 comments

It's really a question of profit.

Why would developing an app for app store in XYZ jurisdiction be any different than the US?

If you have a single convenience store in the US it's probably the same business decision in Australia.

Everything that makes Australia "small" and unique provides niches that will never be filled by American iPhone devs, for example I'm sure there is money to be made in the Australian trucking sector which appears to me to be very different than in almost every other country.

The main reason is population size.

For bricks and mortar retail (or most industries), costs scale with population size: a larger country requires more stores.

For apps, there is one relatively fixed development cost, no matter how many customers you have access to. It costs roughly the same to build the app whether you've got potential customers numbering 1 million or 100 million, so you're likely to get a lot less bang for your buck in a smaller geographic market.

There is a Tim Hortons app in Canada, we have roughly similar densities, 2.9/3.4 per km^2

Would you rather build an app for the US market, or Liberia, yet Liberia has a higher population density.

It sounds like you want to build store finders, to me this would mostly be boilerplate with a few images and a different location db for each store.

Build one store finder and then go shop rates around that reflect the fact that they are all the same. Heck it could mostly be done in HTML which means you can do a jqTouch app instead of Cocoa Touch.

Is there something about Australian businesses or addressing that would make abstracting these details impossible?

The Tim Hortons app in Canada is a great example - having such a large network of stores, partially in the US, makes it possible to share costs over a large number of customers. The same is true of any large company with access to a large number of consumers (in Australia or elsewhere).

Every developer in Sydney seems to be working on iPhone and Android apps.

Australia might be "small", but aussie hackers and their work are exported to bigger markets daily :-)

That's true! The article is more about iPhone apps for Australian companies (as clients) as domestic app users, rather than by Australian companies for anyone worldwide. There have been some good high-profile success stories of game developers in particular making great apps for the international market, but so far only corporate giants seem to be building apps specifically for their Australian customers.

Disclosure: I'm a app developer who makes apps for 3rd parties, so far from disinterested in this discussion.

All amounts in USD.

I'd say the calculus for "should we make an app" matters strongly WHY you're making an app.

Many companies make "prestige" apps. These have little functionality, and are mostly toys or are basically sophisticated marketing materials. An example of this type of app: http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/digital/e3i2e2... [Coca-Cola]

Should you make this type of app? If you already have name recognition, or your industry functions off of it, YES. This type of application can basically be something that people toss away, but just like much of advertising, may make your customers take notice and remember you.

If your industry does NOT function off name recognition, I don't really see why this type of application is useful for you to make. They often disappoint people who want hardcore integration with your products and services, so they aren't without cost (not even costing development cost).

Now should you create a client/tie-in app for your business? It depends. If you work off of some sort of information that the iPhone can collect (even "Where is the user"), then really look at a strong case for developing an app. Functions the application can access are: Where is the user, what's a picture of something the user is near, how fast is the user moving, what is the user's email, what is the user's contacts, what are the user's phone numbers, shall the user call you right now, and would the user like to hear something right now. Odd pieces to consider separately, but depending on your industry, they may be appropriate. If you're a paint company, pictures of their room which you then make an app to show their walls (or even have real people doing mockups for them) could be a good selling tool. If you're a home improvement company, pictures of the job could be a great thing (see the excellent "JuJu List app" for an example of this) for making a good quote. If you're a company that needs to show a local area to users (say, here are our locations, or here is our delivery zone), then the app can do well for you. But remember, if people think your app COULD do something, they may go away disappointed if it doesn't.

For instance, if your company repairs heating and A/C, if the app doesn't show them the status of their call, and estimated time of the driver, you'll very possibly get negative reviews, bad press, etc (then again, bad press can be better than no press).

Additionally, iPhone apps are not inherently expensive. You can get them done for under 10k, but you have to listen what's cheap, what's not, and be willing to cancel what's not. Lots of medium to large size companies involve way too many people and expensive measures, and end up spending 40-200k internally and 20-150k externally before they get their app out the door due to overmanagement. Ideally, this sort of thing should be a 1-3 person job lightly managed at a company.

In small countries like Australia, unless you've got tens of thousands of customers, or very high-value customers, it can be difficult to see the value even from a $10k investment!

Well then make a useful app that costs money! Then it's not just the advertising side, but the actual revenue as well you get to factor against the cost.

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