The success stories that gilded the launching of the software of the iPhone, with people having gained fortunes in a few weeks was largely responsible for the passion of the developers programming for this platform. Never has a new system had so quickly been supplied by so much of software, one is well on the way to 90.000!
But since that moment, many things have happened to cool their enthusiasm. Of course there were many problems involved in often incomprehensible filtering, but also of the problems more difficult to regulate. There is now a huge mass of software so that it is difficult to standout. Thus it is necessary to propose increasingly complex software that requires more time for development. Previously, where people made miracles in a few days, it is now necessary to envisage months of work. This work has a cost that it is increasingly difficult to overlook since the price of software spirals downwards. Only some rare exceptions such as Tomtom or Navigon succeeded in imposing expensive software.
In addition to this problem, others are posed, to start again with the Apple screening. 60% of the software is rejected at least once. Even though one can assume that developers will try to go a little beyond what is allowed, the things are complicated by two-speed screening process between the large and the small developers and with rules that are still too fuzzy. To lose several weeks between the first tender and the acceptance is also expensive.
For all these reasons it becomes increasingly delicate to pay people full-time to develop for the iPhone. After having succeeded in exciting the mass the developers, Apple will have to face a new challenge, to incite them to remain whereas the requests of competition (Palm, Google) are increasingly strong.
