There’s been a mini storm going on in the iPhone development world. The problems go as follows: To have a hit app you have get on the popular app list. To get on the popular app list you have to sell your app cheap. Therefore it isn’t worth a developers time to create an app that will retail for more than a few bucks at most. The developers seem to be blaming Apple and The Register seems to blame the users.

Placing the blame on Apple for poor sales or on the consumers for wanting something cheap misses the problem. It isn’t that it is really a race to 99 cents or even that people are too cheap, the problem is who they are merketing the apps too. Right now the iPhone is huge but it is like that weird sumo baby that used to be on the cover of Weekly World News every so often. It is big but immature.

Since the iPhone is new to the scene and the app store is even newer the must have apps, the ones you’re willing to pay the big money for haven’t been established of yet. And what apps are you willing to pay big money for? Games that suck you in, apps that allow you to create stuff other people are willing to pay for, and apps that make money for for their users. Those aren’t easy apps to create, they take a lot more than clever programming to come up with and with the power of the iPhone it isn’t clear that a really nice image editing app is truly possible. That said there is reason people (well businesses) shell out thousands for Adobe Creative Suite and a reason Final Cur Pro costs so much. iPhone apps do less and they are going to cost a lot less as long as they are all aimed at the mass market. If you’re aiming for mass market acceptance, counting on people wanting your app just because it is so great, you’re essentially hoping to win the lottery. And the odds of that are slim. Better, usually, to cater to specific users and hope it catches on.