I am an account exec at a web and mobile development company and hear this question everyday. Unfortunately, iPhone apps are not cheap. You can expect around $100 per hour if you are staying on US soil. I have seen some offshore Indian developers out there for as low as $20 per hour. It all depends on the number and complexity of the functions you wish the app to perform. Simple one function apps are normally around 4-5k. They are so expensive because you are paying a team of people a healthy hourly wage and any type of raw prototyping, development, and coding takes time. Apps can exceed 60-100k pretty easily. Southwest Airlines making an app with a full ecommerce platform that allows you to buy tickets over your phone is an example. All of that porting into their IT is a big job.

And offshoring the project is definitely not always a better option. If you do so you better know who you are dealing with. Do not get me wrong there folks over there who do a bad ass job for a way better deal, but they are not that easy to find. Those guys could fuck around for 5 months on a simple project that would take 6 weeks here, or just not complete it at all and hand it over half finished. I have seen this scenario many times where we finish the work. The project management becomes a challenge. It can be difficult to communicate exactly what you want the app to do.

我是一名非常优秀的iPhone应用程序开发人员，我的服务收费超过每小时150美元。我在开发iPhone应用程序及其服务器端组件方面有丰富的经验。我也曾多次被叫去修复海外开发的应用程序。以下是我的看法。

Design costs money, good design costs lots of money. Expect several designer weeks of work per app screen. Offshore teams do not do design. Server development and infrastructure is critical if the app is to succeed. A slow server response, or an overloaded server will hamper your app, and crimp sales and satisfaction. The server side of the equation will cost the most and take the most time to develop. Those who offshore their server development will find that quality and uptime are both terrible, in my experience. App development if done right takes time too. A professional developer will ensure all HIG rules are followed, the app is properly structured and contains no known errors, it performs well, and it passes the app store validations. Offshore teams just cut code.

I'm just about to release a shopping app for a client. The design work was done by 2 client in-house designers over 2 weeks, quick because they had all the image assets already. Think 2 people x 10 days x 8 hours = ~$24,000. The server side had to be modified to provide data for the iPhone app. We used their in-house team and in-house platform and in-house API, 2 developers, 4 weeks, or about $50,000 and that's because they already have a web shop and API. Cost them about $400,000 to get there (excluding platform). And I wrote the app side in 3 weeks, given that a lot of my code is duplicated from previous projects, another ~$25,000, the cheapest app I ever did.

总花费:10万美元，这真是太便宜了!

他们会免费提供，这样客户就会用iphone从他们的商店购买。

对于你的应用程序，彼得，如果你有服务器、api和设计，我猜根据复杂程度需要3万到6万美元。如果你没有设计，加倍。如果你没有api，再翻倍…

有很多方法可以花更少的钱来开发一个应用程序，但通常情况下，你得到的是一分钱一分货——没有经验的开发人员留给你一堆不可能维护的意大利面条代码，或者有经验的开发人员，你必须跨越文化和语言的鸿沟与他们交流。

开发Twitterific这样的应用程序并不容易。这是一个非常精致的应用程序，非常注重细节，大多数人——实际上是许多开发人员——都没有注意到或意识到背后的努力。你或许可以通过海外开发或“与没有经验的开发者合作”，以3500美元或5000美元的价格编写Twitter iPhone客户端，但你不会因此获得Twitterific的服务，而且花这么多钱你甚至连一个像样的应用程序都做不到。

你可能会花很多时间来管理这个过程，在需求上来回折腾，争取得到你真正想要的东西，而不是他们想给你的东西。

“减价”开发也存在风险，无论是离岸开发还是使用经验不足的开发人员——你很可能最终得到无法使用的东西，或者因为崩溃或行为不稳定而获得1星评级的东西。你可能偶尔会发现开发商的低价宝石，但考虑到目前市场的绝对需求，它们不会长期处于低价状态。

By virtue of my books and blog, people often reach out to me when they need help with their iPhone applications. I get, on average, 4 or 5 inquiries a month from people asking for help fixing applications they had developed either over-seas or by inexperienced developers here in the States. In most cases, I end up having to tell them they'd be better off throwing their code out and starting over with a developer who knows what they're doing rather than trying to fix the code they bought on the cheap. If they insist on trying to "fix" what they have, I decline the work.

我不愿意承认我做iPhone应用的成本有多低，但我可以告诉你，我不会再做了。那个说“简单，一个功能的应用程序就可以做到。”(独立开发者)……5000美元”是正确的;然而，这仍然是低数字，并且假设几乎没有项目设计，平面设计或网络后端工作。

巴拉克·奥巴马的应用程序从第一个代码到发布花了22天的时间。3名开发者(尽管并非所有人都是全职开发者)。一共10个人。图500-1000工时。承包费率为每小时100-150美元。图50000 - 150000美元。将你的应用程序与奥巴马进行比较。应用和相应的规模。

iPad版《River of News》花了大约400个小时开发1.0版本，我不知道我的设计师花了多少时间(20-50个?)按照美国的劳动力价格，这至少是4万美元。但这种紧密的发展是可能的，因为它是一个人的操作。当你将编写代码的人和决定产品功能的人分开时，会增加大量的开销。

如果你打算把钱汇到海外，你最好确切地知道你想要什么。由于语言和时差的原因，在你探索可能性的时候很难进行迭代设计。