How much does it cost to make an app?
Our friends over at Golden Gekko have a great post on their blog covering a question they (and we) get asked quite a bit: "How much does it cost to make an app?" As they note, it's not a particularly easy question to answer. It's sort of like asking, "How much does a car cost?" The short answer to that, like with mobile apps, is: "It depends."
Based on the cost of outsourced development, GG estimates 10,000-60,000+ euros for an iPhone app and 15,000-60,000+ for an Android or BlackBerry app. Where things get a bit more interesting is their talk about the cost of developing an app for both iPhone and Android, which they estimate at 20,000-100,000+ euros, based on the complexity of the app.
GG gets to the heart of why cross-platform development remains such a bugbear for so many developers, and why it's still a hot topic at our events:
With normal coding standards there is very little synergy between Android and iPhone development and few developers that can develop for both in a proficient manner. This means that most of the time the costs are the same for the second platform as for the first platform, excluding functional specification. Even the user flows and designs are different since Android uses the menu key and back button differently and supports multitasking on all devices.
How does this track with your experience? Let us know in the comments. Particularly if you're developing across multiple smartphone platforms -- do you find this to be the case? Or are there more elements that can carry over (either routinely, or if you're clever) than this post would indicate?