Dear business people, an iOS app actually takes a lot of work! →
The big question: How much does an iPhone app cost?
This is a very common question that I’m asked by a lot of my business-oriented friends and non-tech savvy clients. Without fail, every single time I gave my initial estimation before even locking down the specs, I received that shocked expression because of the unexpected (high) quotation.
Yet, none of my quotations has even came close to the range being discussed in this StackOverflow thread, in which the development cost of Twitterific app is discussed. Despite the fact that the original question was asked in 2008 and the best answer (by one of the Twitterific developers) was in 2010, it is still accurate today in Jan 2012 and I can foresee that it will still be true atleast until the end of 2012.
So, with the hype of businesses wanting to have an iOS app continues into 2012, I thought it would make a good post trying to explain why the cost is high by breaking down the steps and variables involved. I hope it will benefit both the non-iOS developers and business people who need to make decisions or just want to understand the process. The ideas in this post are not restricted to just iOS, they are also applicable to other mobile platforms (Android, Windows Mobile, maybe Blackberry) to a large extent.
