We have been publishing iPhone apps for quite sometime now. We have over fifty iPhone apps on the Apple app store. In addition to this, we have designed over two hundred iPhone apps for many clients across the globe.

With this background, I had been reading various news articles and blog posts on writing successful iPhone apps. My increasing impatience led me to write this.

The App Store

What is the App Store? Really, for someone who has seen business brass tacks for nearly two decades, I look at the Apple App Store as a Wal-Mart.

1. I am a company that is vying for shelf space in some of the product categories.
2. I try to make good products (iPhone and iPod Touch Apps in this case)

3. I market them to my target market segments (this happens outside of the App Store)
4. I tell my prospective customers (when I meet them, through my website or various other ways of reaching out to them) to buy my apps from the App Store. This is convenient for me because I want to stay focused on building apps and gaining expertise in the product category. I am happy to have Apple handle the distribution. (As an approximate analogy, Wal-Mart takes care of a host of logistics)
5. I play by Apple's rules. Therefore I abide by the UI rules, their coding guidelines and more. This is a basic requirement. I am comfortable with it.

6. I put in a lot of hard work into apps I build and publish. I market them well enough. I support them and all my customers. I am happy when Apple's staff likes my apps and recommends them. That is Apple's promotion bit for me. I would love Apple to do more but with the fleeting attention span of Internet users and with the fact that I am responsible for my business, I take it as my sole responsibility to promote my apps. Apple's promos are a plus.

I follow these simple business principles and wake up fresh every morning to talk to my technical architects and fellow-founders and do my best to serve customers.

 
Success is to Stay Focused
 

Thus, when I read about all the fuss on what is right or wrong with Apple's strategy / treatment etc. I tell myself that complaining does not result in success. Working does. If I find something worrisome with Apple, I send in my polite feedback and it is well received.

This is success for me. In my present business model, it has spelt success on the Apple App Store. Wish you all the very best !