Starting an iPhone Application Business For Dummies
Aaron Nicholson, Joel Elad, Damien Stolarz
This is a decent marketing book on how to put together a shop that does these kind of applications, and give a lot of suggestions on viral marketing strategies. It is for the iPhone, and in general, gives a lot of iPhone references, but the two people who borrowed it were Droid developers, and liked it's marketing approach. Much of the content is generic to phone application developers, and how to promote their product as well as setting up a business.
It doesn't give a lot of detail on development, and perhaps that is a weakness of the book, I guess it assumes you are or would hire a programmer. It does give you some info on how to formulate a viable idea for an application, and how to get set up as a developer with Apple. It's really not that much different getting set up to work with Droid, so that's still helpful information to other phone application developer types.
Target marketing is really a key, and how you promote, can make you or break you. A friend recently called me targeting an application that would help stupid girls who get photographed naked by their boyfriends, secure their pictures on their boyfriends phone. I pointed out if they were that stupid they wouldn't think to buy the application, and probably the boyfriend would not like his own phone encrypted against him! It was really more marketable as a secured photo or picture album for the phone owner, and after we talked he agreed. One mans hammer is another mans potato masher, you have to find the right market, and this book can help.
