Apple decided to ban out about 900 applications that were developed by a developer named Halid Sheik. In addition it decided to deprive his Applde developer license. In a period of 9 months, Halis and a group of 26 developers distributed 943 iPhone applications. Each application was approved by apple in a process that took a few weeks for each iPhone application. The revenue estimation is  that Halid made a few thousands dollars per day until Apple ban out his spam applications.

The iPhone applications that Halid and his team developed included a free information that could be found freely in the Internet. Halid did not have any authorization to distribute this content and he violated  copyright information. An example for the spam application can be found in this link.

You cannot download these applications any more since these iPhone application already nab out for the Apple App Store. It is sad to say but Halid did not provide any real value to his customers. Sometimes an application was sold for a price of $4.99.

How could Dalid do that? Halid was an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) expert and in this way he mislead his customers to buy the iPhone applications that he developed in an Exorbitant price. Halid worked in a sophisticated way so there would not be any simple way to connect between the iPhone applications that he developed to his name. If you searched for an application that was developed by his team, you couldn’t find Halid’s name in the search result.

The Web site that was built for all applications does not connect him to the iPhone applications that he developed.
It is interesting to know that there are other companies like BrightHouse that developed 2000 applications that could be found in the App Store.

One would ask, what was Apple’s part in this fraud. Apple approved every application that was developed by Halid’s team so it has responsibility in this fraud. Moreover, Apple received 30% of  Halid’s revenues.
Customers who bought the spam iPhone application might claim that Apple should have noticed that these applications were worthless since Apple approved these applications.

As a summary this incident is a red sign for applications that violates copywrite on the one hand and to Apple on the other hand for its responsibility for the content of the iPhone applications that is sold in theApp Store.

Every application in the App Store has a few fields like: application name, application’s icon and the description of the application.

Following are a few important points regarding these issues:
1. Choose a professional icon that represents your application. Apparently, it is a small issue but it has a critical importance. The reason is simple: this is what your potential customers will see. If you will choose a quality icon, the chance that more customers will download your application is higher.
2. Choose a self-explanatory name for the application; your potential customer should understand what the iPhone application does based on its name.
3. Provide a detailed explanation what the application does. Here is a place to use a professional copywriter that will describe the iPhone application in a professional way.
4. In the text description, use words that represent the type of the application. The principles here is to use ideas that are related to search engine optimization (SEO). In this way, when someone searches an application in this field, the developed application will be found. You need to understand which words are commonly used bu the potential customers of the application. We suggest to use the Google Keywords Tool for this issue.
5. Prepare an image with a size of 480×320. Choose a clear picture in the right resolution.
6. Try to compress the application as much as possible so that its size will be minimal otherwise the customer might have to download it only when he is connected to WiFi network.

It is possible that an amazing application was developed but its description is not professional and users might not download the application from the App Store. So these issues are critical for the successful marketing of the application in the App Store.
The potential customers should get information about the new iPhone application:
1. You should send the new application for a review by a top bloggers that are known as market leaders. The potential customers relate to the bloggers’s ideas as objective ideas.
2. Articles about the new iPhone application by news Web sites. For example, if we want to market a Hebrew application, The ynet Web site will promote the new application.
3. Use social networks Web sites like Facebook to promote the launching of the new iPhone application.

In a virtual shop a shop can sell products in the Internet.
Because of the large exposure of products in the App Store the simplest way to sell products in the App Store is to sell them using the standard Apple mechanism.
However, in this way the shop will have to pay 30% of its revenue to Apple. Sometimes it is higher than the revenue of the shop.How to address this problem?

One of the solutions is that the billing of the products will not be done by Apple.  Instead the billing will be by using PayPal , Tranzilla and other Internet gateway solutions. This way the shop will not need to pay anything for Apple for selling a product and the iPhone application will be a free one.

By using the Phonegap technology you can support all three technologies with the same code.
This technology uses Java script and HTML5 that are faster and simpler than the native development (for example  objective C on iPhone).  So with Phonegap you have one source code that supports all three platforms.
Sometimes there is a need to use native calls and the API of Phonegap allows you to interface with the native calls. In case the API does not support the required functionality, there is a need to develop the application with the native tools of the platform (Objective C in case of iPhone).

When should you write a client application that takes an input from the server?

Should you write the iPhone application as a client only application, all the data is taken from the iPhone or should part of the application reside on the server (client/server application). Let’s take an example a flower shop. What will happen if you want to change the price of the flowers bouquet or add a new the flowers bouquet?
There are two alternatives: The first one is to update the application with the new information and send the updated application for approval by Apple (every change requires an approval).
The second option which seems more reasonable is that the iPhone application will retrieve the updated information when it is loaded. In this approach, the shop administrator can update the shop whenever he wants and the iPhone application will receive the changes every time it is started. There is an option to improve the is approach so that the iPhone application will load the changes from the previous update, this way the size of the data that will be brought from the server will be smaller. Another example of a client/server application is a news application.

Client/Server applications have also disadvantages like: response time. If you load a lot of data, the end user might have to wait until the update is concluded. If for some reason the server is down, the user will have to wait until the server is recovered. It is recommended that the client will keep part of the data locally and update the local storage when the communication with the server is recovered.

Another example is that the user has already a Web site. In addition the user has already an iPhone application that is updated based on the server content. In such it is recommended that the iPhone application will update its content whenever the server (the Web side) is updated,

As a summary, let’s take an example the What’s up application that sends SMS messages between iPhone devices for free. Such application must have a server side since only this component can know if a specific user has already installed  the application. Moreover, in order to make this application simpler, ever message between two clients should be transferred by the server

Customers do not want to spend money on a product that costs money. Should you consider to market the product for free?
A customer who installs the product for free may accept problems in the product in a more understandable way. On the other hand, the customer who installed the first version for free might not want to pay for the next version.

Possible solutions for this problem:
1. Define that the product will always be free. In such a case the pricing model of the product will be based on ads. An example of such product is Facebook. “It’s free and always will be”. In such model, the large number of users creates an opportunity to make money from ads. Facebook is just one example, Google is another example and there are many more.

2. Trial version. The customer can purchase the product but he can return the product after 30 days and will get his money back (30 days money guarantee).

3.  Sell the basic product for free and additional features cost money. The idea here is simple: customers will want to spend money on a product only after they see that the product has a real value for them. By exposing the customers to the free version, there is a better chance that they will want to spend money on the add-on. The development of the iPhone application will be almost the same but the result may be significantly different. Let’s take an example for an iPhone application that teaches children math exercises for 1-10. Assuming that the experience with the game was positive there is a better chance that customers will pay for the add-on for the numbers 10-20.

It’s hard to tell which option is the best for you and it depends on the product type. As a general rule I would recommend on the last option since it increases the number of downloads of the product from the Appstore and there is a better chance that people will purchase the add-on.