Iron Ink Media: Inked Up

The New York Times, which just won five Pulitzer Prizes for journalism, broke another important story today. Some dude who made an iPhone app is going to be running the Boston Marathon in an iPhone suit.

Mr. [Jason] Jacobs, who has plantar fasciitis, has been training for only three weeks and managed to snag an official entry slot just a couple of weeks ago after a desperate Twitter post.

Still, he is confident about the race, and about his costume, a breathable stretch-Lycra getup that shows an iPhone screen with the RunKeeper application on it.

The app tracks runners’ distances and speeds, and it has been downloaded more than 300,000 times from iTunes — there is a free ad-supported version, and an ad-free one, with extra features like audio updates, that costs $9.99. Still, Mr. Jacobs, the sole employee of the app’s parent company, FitnessKeeper, says he isn’t rolling in money.

Could his lack of cash be due to the fact that he had an expensive Lycra iPhone suit created? Hmmm…

Fortune has a great article out today discussing the life span of iPhone applications. If you’re a developer, or are just interested in the App Store phenomenon, you know that there are two types of money-making apps: ones people pay for and ones that are free but have advertising in them. So, which is the way to go?

Philip Elmer-DeWitt breaks it down:

In a slide show packed with hard-won insights, Jesse Rohland and Greg Yardley of Pinch Media offer the results of a statistical analysis of 30 million App Store downloads. Among their findings:

* Users tire of applications pretty quickly; fewer than 20% ever come back to run a free app the day after download.
* Time spent on any app declines by almost 1/3 in the first month, stabilizing at just under five minutes.
* Paid applications see slightly more use than free apps and are used for slightly longer periods.
* The biggest usage differentiator is category — games are used for longer periods than any other type of application.

Behind these general observations are some very useful stats:

* Appearing on the top 100 list increases daily new users 2.3 times.
* The average price cut increases demand by 130%
* The average price increase drops demand by 25%

Bottom line: only a few of the stickiest applications — less than 5% — are suitable for advertising at the current ad rates, and a developer won’t know if he or she has got one until after launch.

Hello blogosphere,

We are Iron Ink, a new company that’s dedicated to bringing you the best iPhone apps on the face of the planet. Ok, maybe not that good, but we still think we’ve got some cool stuff in the pipeline.

We are in our infancy and this blog will be dedicated to talk about iPhone apps. We develop them. We market and promote them. So we’ll keep our eyes out for any news and information related to the iPhone.

We are Micah Warren, Lindsey Gardner and Marc DePoe and you’ll be hearing from us shortly.