Programming for mobile phone applications in general and the iPhone and its siblings (iPad and iPod touch) in particular is one of the most difficult and complex programming, design and testing processes due to the restrictions imposed in this programming process from adherence to certain narrow spaces and one screen for work and use (and here is where it differs from programming for applications Desktop) as well as the limited memory, processor and storage where each step in the use of previous resources is calculated very accurately and any error in it will lead to the collapse of the program and its corruption, as well as the restrictions that Apple imposes on developers to adhere to specific instructions and policies in programming, design and publishing.
From here we see the great effort made by the owners of these applications from individuals and companies to come up with a program that competes strongly among the crowds of more than a quarter of a million applications available on the software store, as well as the long time it takes for this one application to come out on the iPhone screens and it works with full strength, efficiency and distinction.
But what is the actual cost of creating a single iPhone application distinguished by the calculation of all these previous factors that we have talked about? The matter cannot be determined precisely because it differs from one country to another and varies with different work teams and individuals or companies and their policies and wages for different working hours, but let us list the experience of one of those programmers who worked on one of the famous iPhone applications (which is a free application by the way) and we mean an application Twitterrific It is an application for a site Twitter Social on the iPhone.
Says programmer Craig Hockenberry Craig Hockenberry They have worked on this application since the first release of the iPhone system No. 1.0, with a total of four major releases so far, and they were every time writing a lot of source code or codes so that many parts of it are rewritten in each major release due to the different features of deleting, adding and modifications On the operating system.
As for the iPad version of this application, they were in a big challenge as their application should be released with the official launch of the iPad, and Apple gave them only sixty days or a little more to deliver this application to the software store, where they began programming this application on the iPad From scratch, except for some basic modules that they reused here.
From here, the lack of time motivated them to work ten hours a day, six days a week, that is, sixty hours a week, and the work of the application took a full nine weeks, meaning a total of 540 hours is the number of hours of making an application Twitterrific For the iPad, but the application was created not by one programmer but by two, so the total hours of making this application are approximately 1100 hours.
The hourly fee for them was approximately $ 150, so by multiplying the number of 1100 hours of programming hours by 150, the value of programming this application is $ 165.
But the calculations are not finished yet, as the previous price is the price of the new code only, and there are ready-made codes that were written before and were used in programming this application for the iPad and Craig estimated at a value of 35 thousand US dollars, meaning that the total value of programming this application became 200 thousand dollars .
Wait, the calculation is not over yet! The previous value was for programming only, but what about design and interface? Which is very important and a lot of work in programming for iPhone and iPad. Craig tells us that he had two designers with them, who worked about 25 hours together a week to produce that distinct interface for this famous application for a period of nine weeks, meaning a total of 225 hours, and in order to get the design value, it is multiplied by the hourly price of $ 150, meaning that the design cost Separate is approximately 34 thousand US dollars.
There are also a number of costs neglected in some projects for the iPhone, including: project management costs, equipment costs used in programming and design, testing costs as well as testing. Craig estimates all of this at around $ 16.
That is, the total costs of programming, designing and producing an application Twitterrific It is about 250 thousand US dollars.
Craig points out that this number is close to the same number of costs for the application of US President Barack Obama's election campaign to the iPhone, which took about 22 days to complete and the working hour in it ranged between 50 to 150 US dollars. (That is, its costs can be estimated at about 200 thousand dollars!).
A final point, some applications need what is called a backend server, any additional programming on the web in order to store data or perform some operations such as notifications and others, and this I calculated is different, so the costs of programming and designing some applications for the iPhone and iPad may reach from those large to about half Million dollars!
In general, the matter varies according to the value of the hour of programming from one country to another, but in general programming for the iPhone is not easy and takes a lot of time and effort. Of course, this is for professional programs that are already competing and that professional developers are working on, so did you imagine that creating programs requires this effort and cost?
Source: Adapted from: StackOverFlow
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