[Person421]

Is it that expensive and/or complicated to have the IT dept whip up a version of the company app for all devices? These are after all your customers, whether they use Android, Apple, BlackBerry, or Windows. Why does Tim Hortons not have a Windows app? Why does Starbucks not have a Blackberry app? I mean, hey - a developer created MAKE for BlackBerry/Starbucks FOR FREE ! I think that it would make PR and financial sense for big businesses and government departments etc. to cater to more customers. Am I missing something here?

[tickerguy]

Support costs often exceed development expense.

But development expense is not zero, and the app environments are quite different between ecosystems.

[Troy Tiscareno]

Is it that expensive and/or complicated to have the IT dept whip up a version of the company app for all devices?

The answer is YES. Developing an app is expensive, and developing it again on another platform is almost as expensive. Further, you are never "done" with an app; they need constant maintenance and updating as OSs get upgraded, as your company's offerings or policies change, or as new features are added. Changes require testing, which costs money and takes time.

If you make your app for 2 platforms, maybe you need to pay for 10 developers and 12 testers. If you make it for 4 platforms, maybe you need 18 devs and 20 testers, which may seem like an economy of scale, until you look at this:

Android has 82% of the market
Apple has 13% of the market (though nearly all of them are high earners with the ability to spend money)

Windows and BB are fighting over the remaining 5% of the market, and that's split between WinPhone, BBOS (with the majority of BB's customers) and BB10.

So, you are almost doubling your development costs just to reach 5% of the market, and how much of this market is high-end and likely to spend money on your product? For most companies, the ROI (return on investment) for this on-going development expense isn't justified by the marketshare it might gain them. Successful businesses are those that take ROI very seriously, because it's very easy to eat up all of your own profits with overhead if you don't.

We also haven't gotten into app support costs or the risk to the company's reputation if they don't put out a quality app on a given platform. Anytime you release an app out the public, you're going to need to provide support for it. Users will have questions, will want additional features, or will have problems/bugs that need to be solved. Someone (or many someones) have to provide this support, and that's just another expense for the company. And if that support isn't provided, or if the app is poorly made (or a mere port from another platform, instead of being natively written in the platform's preferred language and UI), that app is vulnerable to a lot of bad reviews, which reflects poorly on the company as a whole.

Developers are among the highest-paid occupations for a REASON. This stuff can be very complicated and difficult; you don't just "whip out" a quality app - a ton of things go into an app. You might need a graphical designer to design a color scheme and custom icons/graphics, a UI expert who designs the interface, and a team of programmers to make it all happen. Some apps may require custom sound effects or even custom music, and others may require animations or professionally-shot videos, all of which require hiring or contracting people to do the work. Often there is a lot of internal red tape in a company that has to be dealt with, and there may be legal, security, or other internal issues that have to be addressed. Many companies have teams of people outside the dev team who have to approve (and sometimes test) every version of the app before it is released, which has to be done separately for each platform.

The kind of apps that people want aren't thrown together over a weekend. They take MONTHS of work by a team of people, and a manger to keep it organized, focused, and on-time. So, yes, it IS expensive, complicated, and a "big deal" to add additional platforms. If it wasn't, then every app store would have all the same apps.

[SDTRMG]

I used to thi k so but also disagree to a certain point. There are definitely expenses etc. Take Instagram for example, they have a lot of money and developers but say it cost to much to develop for BlackBerry(which it may), but then you have a dev like Gas (developing the Igrann app) who almost completely by himself has developed the app in a few short months. (Igrann is still in beta) I think it's more an excuse for some companies, not all of course as more complex apps and games can be costly to develop.

Z30 - The Final Destination - 859 Portage ave, Winnipeg Mb Clothing|Footwear|Headwear|Headshop|Tobacconist|Ta ttoos - C00016D82

[Person421]

Thanks for all your responses, but I still don't quite understand why it has to be so involved because firstly, the app concept and what it should contain and do has already been done - they just need to translate that to one or two different operating systems. And, as SDTRMG stated, independent developers such as Gas for Igrann and qbo for MAKE seem to have been able to create apps to fill the void without too much difficulty. At present it seems kind of like the situation if you want to introduce a new cola drink - good luck getting distribution and shelf space. So as a consequence apps become a barrier to entry and make the market less competitive. What's needed is a universal standard app coding system (you could call it USACS) Lol, whereby the individual phone translates it into it's own operating system. Now if I could just get my Christmas shopping done I could start to work on this!

[heymaggie]

I'm a part time app developer of niche professional applications both free and paid. It's not enough allow me to quit my day job but enough to keep me involved on a regular basis. I do all of the coding myself for a couple dozen iOS apps. As you may realize, it's pretty competitive out there. You have to maintain your apps for both smartphone and tablet interfaces. Every year there are new OS features that will either break your app or make it stale-looking.

Along comes Android offering a bunch of potential new users but with a completely different SDK with, most importantly, different user interface elements. That doubles your work right there, assuming you are proficient enough to write good apps in two different cutting edge operating systems. I have to decide whether to spend time updating my existing iOS apps, working on new iOS apps, or learning the Android SDK and porting the apps over - in my spare time.

Using one of the universal development platforms only ensures that your app will look like crap on every device it runs on. If someone has the choice of a native app vs something that obviously was written for a different platform then there's no contest. iOS 7 was released only a few months ago and, already, apps that are written for iOS 6 look dated to the user.

By the way, I need to buy at least one Android device - just for development - if I'm going to port to Android.

Along comes BB10 with something like 0.5 percent of the smartphone market. I don't think so.

[Wiki Cydia]

Thanks for all your responses, but I still don't quite understand why it has to be so involved because firstly, the app concept and what it should contain and do has already been done - they just need to translate that to one or two different operating systems.

In most cases they already have versions on "one or two different operating systems." Nevertheless, the thing to remember is that if it were as easy to support 3-4 platforms as you'd like to believe, there really is no reason for it not to happen. The fact that some companies choose not to support more platforms suggests such support is more time-consuming/costly than you seem to believe.

[BCITMike]

The Google guys started their software. It wasn't manageable and needed experienced developers to fix it and make it manageable. Proof of concept doesn't last in long run.

Posted via CB10

[Troy Tiscareno]

I used to thi k so but also disagree to a certain point. There are definitely expenses etc. Take Instagram for example, they have a lot of money and developers but say it cost to much to develop for BlackBerry(which it may), but then you have a dev like Gas (developing the Igrann app) who almost completely by himself has developed the app in a few short months. (Igrann is still in beta) I think it's more an excuse for some companies, not all of course as more complex apps and games can be costly to develop.

Gas may put 1,000 hours into his app and get almost nothing out of it financially (he might even lose money, given expenses, etc.). I'm assuming he has a day job to put food on his plate, and is doing this in his spare time, because he personally loves BB and is willing to do this work because he really wants BB to have an Instagram client, and maybe a little because it can help "prove" his work and may lead to him getting a better-paying dev job somewhere.

But Gas doesn't have to answer to anyone, has no red tape to deal with, no company reputation on the line, or any of the concerns a big company has.

A real company cannot count on people working for them for free. Do you love your job enough to give up your paycheck? No, a real company has to PAY for their dev's time, and pay well, and they have lots of other issues to deal with.

If you go out to dinner and drinks, you may spend $30-50 on food and drinks that cost the restaurant $10 in food costs. That might seem outrageous, until you remember that food costs are just the start of the restaurant's costs to provide you with a meal and make a profit. They have to lease or buy the building, get licenses, hire employees, train them, insure them, buy the kitchen equipment, furnish and decorate the dining room, advertise, and many other expenses before they can get you to come to them and pay $30-50 for a meal and drinks. Just because your mom will make you the same meal for free, or for the cost of the food, doesn't mean a restaurant can do the same and survive.

Software is no different when it's for a business.

[SDTRMG]

Gas may put 1,000 hours into his app and get almost nothing out of it financially (he might even lose money, given expenses, etc.). I'm assuming he has a day job to put food on his plate, and is doing this in his spare time, because he personally loves BB and is willing to do this work because he really wants BB to have an Instagram client, and maybe a little because it can help "prove" his work and may lead to him getting a better-paying dev job somewhere.

But Gas doesn't have to answer to anyone, has no red tape to deal with, no company reputation on the line, or any of the concerns a big company has.

A real company cannot count on people working for them for free. Do you love your job enough to give up your paycheck? No, a real company has to PAY for their dev's time, and pay well, and they have lots of other issues to deal with.

If you go out to dinner and drinks, you may spend $30-50 on food and drinks that cost the restaurant $10 in food costs. That might seem outrageous, until you remember that food costs are just the start of the restaurant's costs to provide you with a meal and make a profit. They have to lease or buy the building, get licenses, hire employees, train them, insure them, buy the kitchen equipment, furnish and decorate the dining room, advertise, and many other expenses before they can get you to come to them and pay $30-50 for a meal and drinks. Just because your mom will make you the same meal for free, or for the cost of the food, doesn't mean a restaurant can do the same and survive.

Software is no different when it's for a business.

Never said he won't, but you have no proof he will. He's has many people donating to him during development, me included, and I'm sure many more will once the app is complete. I still feel app development cost is heavily overblown by bigger companies such has Facebook, Instagram, etc. Gas did in weeks what Instagram claimed would take well over a year.

Z30 - The Final Destination - 859 Portage ave, Winnipeg Mb Clothing|Footwear|Headwear|Headshop|Tobacconist|Ta ttoos - C00016D82

[Troy Tiscareno]

I think you're confused. Instagram says they wait at least a year with any new(ish) platform to see if there are enough sales to justify making a client for it, and they try to only add one platform a year. That doesn't mean it takes a year to write the app; they just have policies to make sure their devs are focused on the most important things, and that allows them to have a small dev team.

[Tre Lawrence]

Gas may put 1,000 hours into his app and get almost nothing out of it financially (he might even lose money, given expenses, etc.). I'm assuming he has a day job to put food on his plate, and is doing this in his spare time, because he personally loves BB and is willing to do this work because he really wants BB to have an Instagram client, and maybe a little because it can help "prove" his work and may lead to him getting a better-paying dev job somewhere.

But Gas doesn't have to answer to anyone, has no red tape to deal with, no company reputation on the line, or any of the concerns a big company has.

A real company cannot count on people working for them for free. Do you love your job enough to give up your paycheck? No, a real company has to PAY for their dev's time, and pay well, and they have lots of other issues to deal with.

If you go out to dinner and drinks, you may spend $30-50 on food and drinks that cost the restaurant $10 in food costs. That might seem outrageous, until you remember that food costs are just the start of the restaurant's costs to provide you with a meal and make a profit. They have to lease or buy the building, get licenses, hire employees, train them, insure them, buy the kitchen equipment, furnish and decorate the dining room, advertise, and many other expenses before they can get you to come to them and pay $30-50 for a meal and drinks. Just because your mom will make you the same meal for free, or for the cost of the food, doesn't mean a restaurant can do the same and survive.

Software is no different when it's for a business.

Plus, what Gas is doing is a bit different than building an app from the ground up. I won't downplay the achievement because I couldn't do it but I don't know that what he is doing is synonymous with building an app port.

But to put this on organic level (as folks have already done in this thread), it's all about ROI. If there isn't ROI, it's stupid to create an app for platform. Why hasn't BlackBerry created BBM for Tizen WebOS, WP8, WP7, bada or Firefox? Heck, what about Symbian? Because it makes no sense to.

When Netflix did not have an Android port, Android users screamed bloody murder. It took a while for the app to make it to Android... when it became worth Netflix' while to make it (or too expensive to ignore the platform). We as individuals, make these decisions all the time. I'd love to spread my talents equally amongst several creative outlets. Reality dictates that I spend a good portion making the most income possible. Why should developers be different?

If whipping up apps for every entity was so easy, we'd ALL be doing it.

[potatoguy]

personally i think eventually you will see all apps work for all devices, people will get tired of this app for this platfrom and not for another. It wont happen overnight. It may take 10 yrs or more. Likely when IPhone and Android sales drop off.

[Tre Lawrence]

I think you're confused. Instagram says they wait at least a year with any new(ish) platform to see if there are enough sales to justify making a client for it, and they try to only add one platform a year. That doesn't mean it takes a year to write the app; they just have policies to make sure their devs are focused on the most important things, and that allows them to have a small dev team.

Exactly.