The chances of making a successful mobile app are almost nil | Hacker News Reader

The chances of making a successful mobile app are almost nil

venturebeat.com

47 pointsuladzislau23 comments

This was all true 5 years ago. When the App Store was announced, I bought a Mac and learned Obj-C and wrote a few apps. The most successful took off out of nowhere because someone wrote an article about it. It was on the top charts in my category and it paid for my truck, but not enough to retire on. It was a great ride while it lasted. I still get a little residual now and then from it. Maybe enough to buy lunch once a month.

I stopped writing apps probably 5 years ago when the market became super saturated. Like the article says, it's all about marketing. The players with deep pockets dominate and the programming Joe doesn't have a chance in hell anymore.

One of the lessons is to move early on new platforms, it's much easier to sell an app in a store with hundreds items than millions and when rank is influenced by sales those early sales really add up. Some of the earliest apps I bought are still listed as top paid apps.

The challenge is choosing the right next platform to bet development resources on... Any recommendations?

Every once in a while Apple still gives developers a mini opportunity to be early in a small featured segment of apps. For a while they featured books made with iBooks Author. Now, they're probably going to feature apps with ARKit. Watch apps still seem relatively early...

Looks like crypto is becoming a "platform". Worth looking into.

The web!

AR apps and websites, if you can squeeze yourself in between the behemoths.

Alexa!

Are you making apps for Alexa? What are you making? Do you think it's worth it to learn without ML/AI knowledge?

Alexa Skills don't require any AI/ML knowledge of you; that part's already handled, so getting onboard is very easy. Disclaimer: work on Alexa.

Just like websites, viral effects play a major role for apps. Both people inviting people, as well as media outlets writing about you. That's how you get your stuff out there, in a market where there is huge long tail.

I agree, unfortunately getting published seems really difficult. I released a Mac app and wrote to every Mac publication I could find - probably 30 - and never received a single response. The app had/has some rough edges and could use some more polish, but it was fairly novel.

It’s not any easier or harder to make money as an independent mobile developer than any other kind of independent developer.

I made a living as a “mobile developer” back in 2008 doing Windows Mobile for a company. I believe in two years if I actually wanted to,I could go from not knowing how to develop for any modern mobile platform, to finding a job as a mobile developer making more than 99% of the independent developers.

In my experience, the job market for mobile is significantly smaller, at least in my neck of the woods. Also, working for someone else, even as a contractor isn't ideal. Ideally we would want to own our own product, but as the article states, that's no longer a cottage industry.

Why is that “ideal” for everyone? My ideal is knowing that I’m going to get paid every two weeks and sleeping well not caring if the venture I work for goes belly up knowing that I can get another job quickly.

When considering risks, the payout from working for a company is greater. Most of the popular mobile apps require a team of engineers, marketers, and funding.

Well it's not ideal for everyone, but when you own your own product, you can't be fired on a whim.

But you can spend months on a project and it fail and not make any money from it. Whether a product fails for a company you work for, you still get paid.

If you are a developer in a decent market (not necessarily SV) and you keep your skills up, getting another job is relatively easy. It has never in 20+ years taken me more than a month from the time I started looking to getting a comparable job or better. My record from starting to look to getting an offer from what was then a Fortune 10 company was four days.

>But you can spend months on a project and it fail and not make any money from it. Whether a product fails for a company you work for, you still get paid.

Totally agree. I'm saying it's better to own something (that makes the same or more money) than to work for someone.

>It has never in 20+ years taken me more than a month from the time I started looking to getting a comparable job or better.

Yes, I'm mostly the same. I had a hard time during the dot bomb because I was in a city and industry heavily affected by the circumstances at that time, but other than that, it's easy. I'm still working at the whim of the industry that is doing it's damnedest to push wages down. I also have to deal with a lot of processes (and people) that I don't like and know are counter-productive.

Also, our current employment situation probably won't last forever.

It is better but what are the chances of that realistically happening? When I was doing enterprise mobile development from 2008-2010, I worked for a company that had people to go out an chase funding, marketing, salespeople, a QA department, business analysts, etc. I could have never done that as an individual developer. Even if I were to start my own company, I would still need capital to compete with the big guys. — and the code would not be mine. It would belong to my business that was partially owned by investors.

>It is better but what are the chances of that realistically happening?

Admittedly slim, but much slimmer if you spend 40 hours a week working for someone. :)

Mobile got super saturated quick. I tried the same thing and was only moderately successful. I still work for someone but fight for my own thing when I can.

Admittedly slim, but much slimmer if you spend 40 hours a week working for someone. :)

Being one of the relatively few people who knew about developing mobile applications in 2008, I tried to do something “on the side” with a coworker. Another much better funded company was able to move faster than we could even though you could tell from their product that they didn’t know the industry they were chasing.

The only way we could have been competitive (not necessarily successfully) was by being able to dedicate to it full time and networking and selling during normal business hours. So yeah, a small independent developer who has to work full time is ata major disadvantage.

Apps that are anchored in the real world is a space that still has plenty of room. But they also require lots of extra work, since physical goods or actual people are involved.

They could just close the app store then. (sarcasm) The market is saturated. But it's also huge, and things move faster then before.

Your changes of being successful making unsuccessful mobile apps for other people are almost 100%

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