Podcast Interview With Oceanhouse Media Brands And Their Impact On Volume and Price

Oceanhouse Media has an enviable track record:

For almost the entire lifetime of the App Store they’ve consistently had a handful of apps in the top-100. Their apps beat the averages for both volume and unit price; in fact, they won’t build an app unless they can sell five to ten thousand units at $4 to $7 each.

Just before the holidays they landed the license to create apps under the “Dr. Suess” brand; their Grinch themed Christmas offerings were a hit and were widely covered by CNN, CNET and others.

In this interview, I speak with Michel Kripalani, Oceanhouse’s founder and President, about the plan behind their success.

You can listen using the Flash player below, download the MP3, or subscribe to the iPhone Developer Podcast using the instructions at the bottom of this post.

For easy scanning of the interview, here’s what was covered and when:

• 4:00 Using “high quality brands” to tap into a userbase already looking for that kind of material.
• 5:30 Working with Hayhouse, world’s largest self help publisher (includes Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra).
• 6:30 “Discoverability” is the SEO of the App Store.
• 9:00 Won’t build an app unless it can sell 5,000 to 10,000 copies.
• 10:00 Simple != low quality. Fantastic reviews: they 4.5/5 stars across all 80 of their apps.
• 10:30 Majority of their apps $4. Some $7. Best reviewed apps are at $7! Brand affinity == higher rated apps.
• 11:45 Getting their first deal by a cold-email; importance of a working prototype at the first meeting.
• 13:30 Relationship with their partners: revenue split.
• 15:30 Getting the Dr. Seuss license.
• 20:00 Success by creating lot of apps with a reasonable effort vs. one or two with a gargantuan investment.
• 25:00 iPad plans (esp. given their content focus)
• 30:00 Pricing strategy: lower prices on apps vs. physical product, but higher than $0.99

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