While the iPhone and Android platforms and their ilk have certainly opened up the playing field to a long tail of developers, they are by no means cash machines. In fact, if you had planned on quitting your job to get rich developing apps for these platforms, you might want to reconsider — the chances of your making enough money to build a sustainable business or even survive are slim (see my earlier article on iPhone apps). Read the full article »

Apple’s iPhone has triggered “apps store” wars (with the iPhone as the clear leader so far), with almost every major mobile platform vendor now launching its version of an apps store. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to even remember their names: Google’s “apps store” is called Android Marketplace, RIM’s is called BlackBerry App World, Palm’s is called Palm Pre App Catalog, and so on. For the purpose of this article, we will refer to all of them simply as “apps stores”. Read the full article »