It’s no surprise that the giant East Indian corporation Tata, or actually one of its many divisions, is one of the two firms in negotiations with Apple to carry a CDMA version of the iPhone. The GSM version is already available in India through Bharti AirTel Ltd and Vodafone Essar Ltd., but 20% of the mobile handset market there uses CDMA phones. Does this greater availability of the iPhone mean more threat for N. American iPhone apps developers? Probably not.
Now I’ll admit that when I first saw the headline at WSJ, I was thinking, “Great, more iPhone development competition for me; should I get out of this now?” However, iPhone price points in Indian and Pakistan will naturally limit handset purchases and, indirectly, development competition. The cheapest iPhone in India is reportedly about US$680 and nearly half the country’s earners make about half that in an entire year, so I can’t see much opportunity there for Apple, and even most Indian developers probably wouldn’t want to shell out that much when they can test much of their iOS code on a simulator.
Now if you’ve done any iPhone apps development, you’ll know that you can get away with a lot of code being tested on a simulator, but if you have to develop for distribution, you’re pretty much going to need to test on a device. As for a dev environment, unless an Indian iPhone dev is working for a company, they end up likely using a Hackintosh, created from an Intel-based PC/laptop running Mac OS X, which Apple views as being against their TOS. I’ve done extensive research out of curiosity, and even for a long-time programmer such as myself, who’s comfortable taking apart a desktop PC and tinkering, building a Hackintosh does not seem to have a guaranteed ROI. There are too many problems, and using the right computer is important to begin with. At least for N. American devs, it’s probably not worth the time to build a Hackintosh. For a lone Indian dev wanting to work nights and weekends, it’s a necessity, but even just a Windows-based PC can cost a considerable portion of their monthly salary.
For cost and other reasons, many Indian mobile dev houses are likely partnering with a N. American consulting firm — which reduces competition from individual developers. My own experience is that too many offshore companies are underbidding on projects and end up doing poor jobs because they’re not partnered, leaving a sour taste in clients’ collective mouths. Other problems are time zone differences. If you’re in continental N. America, you’re between 9.5-12.5 hours behind India, and it is not easy working with a remote team. It also seems that with all the job-hopping going on there, resources are often lacking and newbies need too much handholding.
Being of Indian origin myself but growing up in Canada and the U.S., I feel I can get away with saying that, and it’s a harsh reality for clients. On the other hand, if you understand Indian culture enough and have reliable contacts in India, if you have more than enough work that you might otherwise turn away, you could consider working with a remote team there. From my own experience, I’d suggest redundancy of personnel, but at relatively low salary costs, it’s still affordable to have two different developers do the same work and for you to choose the better code. The only drawback is that you’d likely have to purchase Macs here and have them shipped over. Oh, and in many parts of India, you’d probably want to have a UPS (Universal Power Supply) box, to avoid downtime when the electric grid goes kaput. (From my own home state, that can happen every single afternoon, especially during monsoon season.)
Links: WSJ.