The golden era is over. Some readers/developers will argue it was over a while ago. I know I know. But this problem was confirmed as I read this article on BusinessInsider: it takes 107 swipes to get to the hottest app in app store.
Don’t get me wrong, Apple is still evolving and innovating on this space, with the new iPhone 5s, motion sensor (FitBit app), iBeacon (for retailers), the only thing is the momentum is definitely slowing. All these changes even Siri is not that impressive in my opinion. I do like Facetime, though, esp. I noticed an article talking about Facetime audio which essentially allow one to call other phone over Wifi fore free. Btw, I noticed the article over Zite.
For me personally, I have created 3 apps, and one (myNestEgg) of the 3 still have decent downloads. The problem there is two folds: 1) I did not spend enough time to work on some features to make the user happy; 2) Not many paying customers. I think I will still put some effort on it in the future, but I won’t put a lot hope there. Need to find something more interesting or scalable. It’s too hard to stand out from a million apps. Or even out of 50 and 100 apps in the category.
Competition
Another sign the iOS app developers has to expand their horizon, noticed the No. 1 iOS tutorial website (ebook producer) is doing the Android tutorial? Actually it’s not the first Android tutorial at RayWenderlich.com, I noticed this very first one here. So technically the new one is second series, but it actually helps confirming the popularity of Android platform.