ISBX Blog

I recently wrote to California's 36th District Respresentative, Congresswoman Janice Hahn regarding my thought's on SOPA.  Her response below:

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We recently launched “Happy Feet Two: The Penguin App” in conjunction with WarnerBros and Slam Media. It was an instant success with placement on the iTunes Homepage under News and Noteworthy as well as placement within the Top Free Apps list. Over the first weekend we saw over 150,000 downloads. The app is expected to hit well into the millions through the life of the app.

We've been receiving quite a volume of calls and emails from some inquisitive entrepreneurs and companies.  For the most part the initial part of the conversation is centered around a single, almost universal, theme.

How much does it cost to build a mobile app?

I suppose the answer to this question depends on who you ask.  For ISBX, we generally start at around $20,000 for a single platform application. 

Why does it cost so much?

Once again we were selected as one of Apple iTunes App Store Staff Favorites. This time the featured app is HomeProjects, a home improvement community app. The app was launched October 2010 and since then has attracted a small dedicated audience and growing. The app is moderated and maintained by our product marketing team.

ISBX recent took on the challenge to help Platinum Studios and Orbit Media Group and Hub4Content bring their vision for the “Cowboys and Aliens – The Kids” to life as a highly interactive and animated Application experience. 

This year we put an emphasis on Android. First with the Picturizr Android version launched in March, which saw a 5x increase in user traffic over iOS. Second, we launched FaceSmash for Android in May and saw a 3x increase in user traffic. We attribute the surge in traffic due to Android now having a larger user penetration over iOS as well as the large young demographic that have Android smartphones over iOS devices.

Leveraging our successful Picturizr photo manipulation platform we created a fun social game allowing friends to challenge each other through a face smashing mobile app.  The app allows you to take a photo and using the touch screen combined with the shake gesture of the iPhone to launch punches causing various image distortion effects. Face smashing effects depend on how fast you swipe your fingers across the screen and how hard you shake the phone.

OTG, a restaurant management group is one upping their competition by doing something very cool – providing access to mobile applications at selected dining locations throughout JFK International Airport in New York.  The restaurant group provides Apple iPad’s that are semi-permanently affixed to each table, pre-loaded with a suite of useful apps, including, their very own branded app.

Today we have reached new heights with our Build-a-Card line of mobile apps. The iTunes App Store has featured our Build-a-Card app as #1 Staff Favorites for both the iPhone and iPad store front.

In the past we've had several successes with our apps featured on the "New and Noteworthy" and "What's Hot" sections of the App Store. Now with the Staff Favorites we're continually showing the popularity and quality of our apps and how they stand out among the competition.

We've got plenty more to come! Stay tuned!

We’ve been getting a lot of calls lately from local businesses inquiring about mobile app development.  Not just because we rank on page 1 for almost all the local keywords (How did we do this?