Take a look at this iPhone app:

It does one thing. You press the onscreen button and it makes the sound of an explosion.

It’s a free app. The developer, someone with a lot of experience, set himself a challenge to create an iPhone app in under an hour. He made it cheap, fast, crappy. The shop was already filled with fart, belch and vomit sounds but no grenade sound, so that’s what he picked. Put it on the iPhone app store. And within days, it was the #2 downloaded free app in the store.

So he upgraded it to make it “advertiser sponsored.” Still free, but every time you use it, an ad banner would appear.

Soon he was grossing US$200 per hour based on clickthroughs from one million ad requests. $200. PER. HOUR.

(Click over to this on Apple Insider. It’s worth reading the full story.)

“The App Store is not like any other software market we’ve ever seen. If it could be compared to any other market, it’s like the Billboard Charts for Music. A good pop music producer can take someone with minimal talent, get them to sing some lyrics, and then run it through auto tune. Bam. Number one song. That’s all it takes with the App Store. Do some market research, work out that most of the people that download free apps are immature and seriously uncool. Then wrap an average idea that you think will appeal to immature and uncool people with some average graphics, and boom, top 10 app. Like the pop market, it’s hit or miss; sometimes it will work, sometimes it won’t.”

(bold lettering mine)

Now he’s just added this one. Sound Grenade Pro. Cost? US$0.99. Somehow I think this will make the top ten as well.

Holy christ. I need to get the iPhone SDK and come up with my own stupid idea.

The iPhone app store seems to have introduced a new paradigm. Applications that are useful are so yesterday.

Hmmm, farts, belches, vomit, hand grenades …. need some public domain sounds and images … getting an idea ….

Hongkie Town
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