One big reason not to develop for the iPhone
Reasons TO develop for the iPhone:
- Potentially huge market.
- Apple handles all the sales and marketing. They’re good at that.
- Turn your Cocoa skills, currently maxed out at 5% of the market, onto the soon-to-be-larger iPhone and iPod Touch markets. $$$!
- FUN!
Reasons not to develop for the iPhone:
- 100,000 SDK downloads already, plus more torrented and copied. Even if not all of them produce something, it means there are 100 other people writing exactly the same application as you. Yours had better be something very special to stand out from the crowd.
- In my case, it’s a good thing Apple will do the marketing: I’d have a hard time marketing myself if I were the last man on Earth. It’s been said Apple likes to control the whole chain of their business, because when you’re reliant on someone else, you get burnt. And Apple has your business by the balls. They control access to the most important aspect of your business – your customers. Apple doesn’t like you or your app? You’re gone from the Store, with no other means of distribution.
Those start-ups getting VC money to do iPhone development? The VCs don’t own those companies. Apple owns every one of them. Utterly pwned.
