Mobile Application Stores - what's the true cost?

Amidst all the promotion of Mobile Application Stores the reality of the steps required to launch an application can be lost.

Yet these steps required to get an application out are very real to application developers - and consist of real costs and delays in bringing their application to market.

So what is the reality of launching an application once you've already developed it on the major mobile application stores?

I've recently launched an application on two major application stores - Live Talkback on the iPhone and iPod Touch and Live Talkback on Nokia S60 phones

In the case of both platforms it's possible to download and build an application as a developer for free by creating an account and downloading the SDK from Apple's Developer site and Forum Nokia respectively.

Once you've gone through the hard task of creating an application that you think people will like and use, then you need to get the appropriate pieces in place to submit your application to the store.

Apple's submission process

Apple's Developer Program starts with registering as a developer - this costs $99 for the standard program which is all you need to get applications out on the application store. As part of this process you need to authenticate your corporate details with apple - which involves faxing appropriate documents to them, so expect about a 2 week delay while the approval is completed. Apple have a great developer support line where you can speak to someone who can help through normal issues like this.

Once this is done you have the ability to sign applications - and you can create AppStore certificates, sign your application which is done from within the XCode build environment, and upload to iTunes Connect - the sumbission tool from Apple, and voila - with some screenshots and marketing copy your app is in the application store pipeline. Expect to wait around 10 working days for the app to be approved and go live.

Total effort? About 1 hour, with 2 websites to visit (the Apple iPhone Program Portal, and iTunes Connect), and total one off cost $99.

Ovi's submission process

Ovi publishing looks similarly easy, and cheaper, but there are some hidden extras underneath this.

To publish an application to an S60 device you need to have first built the application - easily done using the SDK from the Forum Nokia developer site. Once you have done this, you need to sign the application. This is done using the Symbian Signed program - which requires a separate registration.

Once you've done this you are presented with an array of options on signing at varying prices. The cheapest, and simplest is the "Express Signed" option - to use this you need to have an authenticated certificate. This can be obtained from TrustCenter and involves sending copies of corporate and personal details to their authentication center. Cost is $200 - expect a couple of days delay while the documents are checked, but staff at TrustCenter were very helpful in responding to enquiries and dealing with any problems or issues.

Once you have your Trust Center certificate you then need to extract the parts needed by the Symbian Signing process, which requires use of a commandline tool.

Once this is done then you can build a signed install package using a different commandline tool.

Now for express signing you can upload a package that includes this signed file, one of the files used to create the install file, and a README.TXT file - this wasn't clearly documented on the very complicated Symbian Signed site, so I uncovered this by getting repeated failures on submission.

You now need to buy some "credits" for signing - Express signing is the cheapest option at $20 per signing session - though this can quickly add up if you plan on doing iterative development and releasing minor version updates, or you have different versions for different device types - like I do, so the reality was that I needed to pay $100.

You now get to fill in some forms on the Symbian Signed site - these are a mixture of marketing information (though how exactly these will be published is unclear, and Symbian Signed seems to have no tracking of downloads or publishing statistics) and technical information that's used as part of the checks on signed applications to ensure that no inappropriate API access has been made - where there are multiple applications for different devices this means repeated entry of the same text.

Assuming you've done everything right here, you now have a signed, installable package that you can make available to anyone with an S60 phone to install - which could be directly from your own web site, or via a publisher.

This takes us to Ovi, where the application upload process is very similar to Apple's iTunes Connect - but with more complexity to deal with as you need to specify which of the myriad devices/platforms that Nokia support in market your particular application runs on.

Once this process is complete your application needs to pass Ovi's QA process, which in my case took 3 working days.

Total cost - $370, with a charge each time a new version is uploaded. Time taken - about 4 hours, with 3 different company websites to visit (and manage authentication and login) Symbian Signed, Ovi and TrustCenter.

Once you have a signed application on Symbian you can use this same application with multiple application stores, or offer your own direct download - so submitting my application to GetJar took just 20 minutes more, with no additional cost. However this multiple application store solution means that there are more different places to keep up to date with new versions, different promotion strategies, and fragmentation of the places that consumers go to to get applications.

Conclusion

Apple does have the cheapest, and simplest path to market for applications - and as they maintain a monopoly on the application distribution, also have an advantage of scale within their target market.

If Apple were to "fix" their approval process to be automated (retaining the ability to revoke applications that on subsequent review were found to be in breach of the Apple T&C's) then they would have a superb offering - indeed anyone creating an application store or platform would be well served to look at the "end to end" experience of developers launching applications.

The competition here for mobile app stores is really the web - by comparison a new release of the server components of Live Talkback require about 10 minutes of elapsed time, and go live about 5 minutes later, and require no approvals beyond our own Q&A. We could improve this cycle with more automated Q&A - but at the moment we are happy with the results we have here - they are certainly better than all of the mobile application stores!

Looking forward

I'll be tracking the actual downloads of the applications from the different stores over the next few months to see how different platforms fare, and who's application stores are the most effective at delivery of applications.

Comments

[Paul Todd]

Very good, except you missed out an important point the Trust Center/symbian Signed requires you to be a company with all the hassle and cost that entails.

This is a big put off for developers.

[pt]

Thanks for the nice overview. One problem I am facing with Symbian/OVI store is the fact, that certificates are only available for companies.