The iPhone Economy

You thought you only bought an iPhone. $199+ sales tax and you are all set. Little did you know that Apple disguised a little robot inside the iPhone that has one goal in life: boost the sluggish economy. Just like Bill Gates and his foundation Steve Jobs joined the philanthropic club of successful CEOs, dedicating themselves for the greater good- in this case, introducing the Apple version of the economic stimulus package.

Small is not an excuse

Should small business whine? This is how Seth Godin titled his very telling blog post this morning. No- they should not. Small businesses have every reason in the world to out preform any large company with a bit of common sense and a personal touch. When I remodeled my house, I tried to buy almost everything I could online, mainly from small businesses. In one stressful day the plumber came to install all the faucets and discovered we got the wrong part. He wanted a replacement by the end of the next day, so he can install it on time before he leaves to his summer vacation. I emailed the company I bought the item from (small business out of Louisiana) and few minutes later I got a tracking number for an next day air shipment of the right piece. No excuses, no whining- amazing service by one committed business. I ended up buying all other plumbing materials from them. Investing in personal customer service is your safest bet- you are either the boss or close to her, there is no bureaucracy and decisions can be made in minutes. In addition, you can use some of the rules I published last year that will help you appear large and professional. Look as professional as Amazon but with a better/faster/personal customer service can be your ultimate competitive weapon.

• Presence: save on coffee, dining out or anything else but don’t save on your public presence. Glossy product brochures and a shiny website are essential to look impressive (Seth Godin just published a useful guide on how to create a good enough website). Make sure you hire a good marketing agency (there are many small firms of young and smart guys that will make you look brilliant). This is one of the areas where quantity doesn’t count as much as quality. I know many people don’t think it is important–but trust me, it is as bad as coming to a sales meeting unshaved and in your DYI outfit.
• Use technology to appear bigger–

Should you give your iPhone app for free?

I am in an iPhone mood. Just like the rest of the world. It will go away, I promise. Last week I tried to answer a more fundamental question: Should you build an iPhone app? Now that you built one: how would you price your iPhone application?

Here are some interesting statistics: based on Tech Crunch’s mid day iPhone App Store download statistics from Friday, the top 10 free apps had a total of 68,452 downloads where the paid ones (mainly games) got a total of 4,484 downloads. It means that only 1 of 15 downloaded app was a paid one. I suspect the overall numbers are even lower. Why? The ratio between the number one paid app (Monkey Ball) and the number one free app (Remote) is about 1 paid to 9 unpaid. If you look at the last apps in the top ten list the ratio is now 1 to 25- which means that the longer the tail is, the more unlikely you are to make money on your app.

Should you build an iphone application?

There is an incredible amount of buzz surrounding the launch of the iPhone app store today. You walk around University Ave. in Palo Alto, CA and it sounds like everyone is building an iPhone app… Before you had out and build one for yourself, here are some things to remember:

• Watch the numbers- Apple is hoping to ship 10-12 million iphones this year. This is 1% of the total estimated phones shipments this year. When compared to the total number of phones in the world (3.3 billions), the share is even smaller. If your success rely on mass penetration, go look elsewhere.
• Ignore the numbers-