The Apple iPhone has caused a dramatic shift in peoples perceptions of application development and opened peoples eyes to a potential cash cow.

We have all heard the stories about the local kid who built an iPhone game and earn't himself a couple of hundred grand, or the local developer who created a gaming sensation with hundreds of thousands of downloads and dollars in revenue per month made.

This potential for massive revenues has driven a surge in enquiries for iPhone & iPad App development projects, but what people often fail to realise however, is that developing apps and games for the iPhone is actually quite expensive.

 

For example.

Your app itself may require 200 hours of development time, depending on the app, server side controls may need to be built which could add another 200 hours, Throw in another couple of weeks (80 hours) of testing and refinement, and your project dev time is starting to add up. At a standard hourly rate of $150 per hour, 480 hours will cost you about $72,000 + GST.

You are also at the mercy of Apples App approval process which can take weeks to receive approval, IF you get approved first time around.

This potential for extremely high development costs does not however mean that you are unable to enter the mobile space. Mobile Web Apps can be a much more inexpensive way to develop a mobile app without the huge cost. Of course Mobile Web Apps won't suite every project but do offer great alternatives for content rich projects, or projects that need to be constantly updated with new content.

Your Mobile Web App can even be "wrapped" in a native iOS app which acts as a glorified mobile web browser that directs the user straight to your Mobile Web App only. Additional features can also be built in to the iOS wrapper, such as Push Notifications and content Caching, which can dramatically improve the user experience.

Developing a Mobile Web App also allows your project to be accessible to users who don't (heaven forbid) own an iPhone, such as Google Android, Windows Mobile, Blackberry and Nokia Symbian users.

A mobile web app, optimised for the above mentioned handsets could set you back as little as $10,000 + GST or even less depending on functionality. So when planning your Mobile App, make sure you consider both development options. You could save yourself a significant amount of money which could be better spent on the marketing and promotion.