Mobile App Success Strategies

[CPUFreak91]

Daniel Bigham posted a link to his experiences in a Slashdot question/article comment, titled, Secrets of App World Success.

He mentions some key strategies: Keep the design simple, keep the app simple (don't make it a swiss army knife of features), make things quickly, find a niche/need area (if making an app, not a game) and time your releases better (don't submit your app over the weekend when everyone else does too).

Have any of you followed a similar rubric, and met much much success? I have. I didn't follow the simplicity rule very well, but the quick development time rule and release timing were a big help in preventing Open Fire Gold for iPhone for being a complete flop. (We actually went a little bit above break-even).

[brandav]

Definitely agree with the niche area and design simplicity. A lot of apps just aren't intuitive. If users are forced to think too hard about how to play the game, they won't think twice about deleting the app you spent months (or years) working on.

Here's another great article:
How to Succeed With Your Mobile App

I'm not getting any results when I search for Open Fire Gold in the app store.

[RobinH]

I'm not getting any results when I search for Open Fire Gold in the app store.

I'm guessing that they didn't renew their iOS dev license, so their game(s) got pulled from the app store.

Here's my company's games, for what it's worth: https://itunes.apple.com/artist/p1xl/id336817718