New Business Model: Free iPhone Apps. The Source Costs Money.

This is a new idea but the market is extremely small. None of the those applications are that difficult to replicate. I might be willing to pay for some OpenGL app with a lot of documentation but I don't see this really turning into a good business model.

Even an OpenGL app is pushing it, there is already code from Apple freely available and you can download the code from TouchFighter 2 in some places. I just don't see this filling a need.

Is this a consequence of the broken "What's Hot" ranking at the iPhone App Store combined with the NDA? Perhaps there's more profit potential in the horde of greedy wannabe iPhone app authors than in the AppStore customers?

nda is over and done. And it may be that for this guy free apps + and a reasonably priced source distribution is the most profitable business model.

None of these apps strike me as uniquely useful.

What this seems to be saying is that the iPhone apps that are not popular are no longer making money. Someone who has some not popular iPhone app should tell what's really going on there.

I'm tempted by the bonjour apps. Are there any open example of bonjour on iPhone currently?

Resale rights for E50 on 9 apps? That's a surprisingly good deal.