Will iPhone 3.0 OS Save Developers?
0iPhone development has been one of the hottest field in the computer industry. Even though we have thousands of iPhone programmers around the world, the market is not saturated and there is money to be earned here. The only problem is there are many free iPhone applications, and a lot of paid applications don’t necessarily go viral. That leaves programmers scrambling to make money by either charging more (not a good idea) or writing more apps (not a good idea if you’re coding for the sake of coding). So it’s no wonder many developer where hoping for a new iPhone business model with the new OS, and they will be getting it with iPhone OS 3.0.
The new business model will allow programmers to sell add-ons from inside their applications. Let’s say you write a very cool puzzle game with 200 levels. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could charge to provide bonus levels for your application? We still don’t know whether you can sell the add-ons separately on iTunes, but that wouldn’t be too hard to add. iPhone development is not hard, but you still have to keep developers motivated, and the latest changes will certainly do that.
The new OS will give developers some break, but I would still like to see Apple improve its app review process. I don’t necessarily have a problem with the idea but rather the implementation. But to get it right Apple wouldn’t need a software upgrade, now would it?
Your take: what are you excited about the most with iPhone 3.0 OS?