Future in iPhone Development

Question

One of biggest interest right now is iPhone development. I'm fixing to start putting a lot of time into pushing out my first app and I'm wondering if cocoa/objective c programming is something that can get someone a day job one day? I'm wondering because I'm not exactly at the position I want to be at and want my free time to be spent on something that can eventually lead me to a better job.

My personal feeling is that iPhone development is going to grow and grow. I just don't feel anybody is going to knock apple off there high horse in the mobile market for some time, but if they do wouldn't the knoweledge you've gained on the iphone platform transfer to the next big thing?

I really value my time and just want what I spend most of my time doing to be valuable not only to me now( what I make in the app store ) but also in the future as well.

Answer 1

Even if the iPhone fails and Android becomes the dominant mobile platform, Objective C will still be useful for development on Mac OS X. Any company which wants to port its software to the Mac and have it look and feel like a native application will probably want to have at least one Objective C developer onboard.

Answer 2

Yes you can have a day job doing this. I work full time for a company I helped start called Small Society in Portland, OR. We have a few coders now full time.

Answer 3

One thing i've noticed/read is the majority ( 99%) of the apps there are written by a one or two person teams, there are hardly any big enterprises doing big inhouse projects on iphone platform . So would you find a day job writing iphone apps? possible but there are lot of other technologies which would have higher hit ratio if your goal is to improve your job prospects . I am not sure how the new accessory framework would effect this . But if your goal is improve your freelancing prospects with iphone , i think iphone is a fairly good bet . This is the type of thing that a company/individual would hire a freelancer to implement their iphone project for few months . iphone projects on freelancing sites like odesk, elance are ones with one the highest growth rate .

Answer 4

I just talked to someone who runs a software company. His people want to do iPhone, but he's starting to hear about extremely soft sales numbers and diving prices, so he's skeptical.

I love developing for the iPhone, but I think there's just too much competition for the money you can make, and it's going to get even tighter.

I think the top apps will make loads of money. Try to write one of those. :-)

Do it for love, not for business in my opinion. Or do it for someone who will pay you to do the development because having an iPhone app is essential for their business even if it doesn't make any money for them.

To answer the skills question, if you want to be in mobile, I think Objective-C, Java, and JavaScript are all key.

Answer 5

The number of iPhone apps that sell enough copies to support full-time developers is exceedingly small. It's still an active, dynamic marketplace, but it has a looong tail. It's possible to generate some supplemental income, but more than that is hard to manage.

The gold rush analogy is very apt. In the California gold rush, there were people who struck it rich in gold, but only a very few. The people who really prospered were those who built businesses providing goods and services to the miners. Think of Levi Strauss.

That's why I think the two most viable ways to profit from iPhone development are to build apps that support or enhance separate revenue-generating products, such as web services or desktop apps, or to build a business developing iPhone apps for companies that want them for either promotional purposes or to supplement other products of their own.

The second case seems tenuous, though, since it wouldn't take much effort for most large companies to bring that development in-house.

So if you want to build a business around iPhone development, my recommendation is to position your products so that you can build revenue-generating products and services around them, to plan to take on contract work to bootstrap your own development, and to be prepared to diversify into other mobile platforms as the market changes.

Answer 6

If you don't mind doing work for other companies, you can find iPhone work (if you have a decent knowledge of the platform).

It's very hard right now to sustain yourself only on your own app sales.

You might consider in-depth research of iPhone niches, like device communication. That would go a long way to making you unique.

I do think the iPhone platform has a lot of legs, even if some individual apps are not selling that great the platform itself will still see wide adoption. Between the OS advancements and new things like custom hardware coming along for the iPhone, you're seeing a growing amount of stuff that makes it harder for other platforms to catch up... a number of them will also do well I think, but the iPhone platform should dominate for some time.

Answer 7

This thread is a little old, but I found it interesting. One related question, though. Where does an independent developer find reasonable contracts? There seems to be a lot of action on places like elance, but I find that stuff a little.... creepy. When someone needs to hire an actual responsible professional, were do they go?