[pasbesoin]

What about making it an iPhone/Android/similar application? I envision people using it not just when reloading, but at the range, when buying ammo at the store, etc. I may be completely off in my opinion, but it seems the kind of thing that aficionados would drop a few bucks on. Some for making actual decisions; others to use as an adjunct/reference in conversation. And those phones are becoming a vast marketplace. For those using it for real work, other than reloaders, it would also place it at their disposal where they most need it: In the field.

Downside: Less of a percentage as your take. Upside: You're not hosting the store.

[mahmud]

iPhone app; for some reason I don't think the intersection between gun owners and iphone owners is big enough to justify the cost of development.

[pasbesoin]

I am seeing iPhones all over the place, here in the Chicagoland area. And I'm seeing a lot of them in the hands of people I would hardly call technologists.

I think that someone who is ready to drop significant change (money) on on guns and other shooting accessories (which aren't cheap), particularly as a shooting hobby, would be plenty willing and able to spend a bit extra for a smartphone. The phones have so many other uses; I imagine they, or rather their format and capabilities, are going to become standard fare within a couple of years (with the current economic "repression" being perhaps the biggest unknown factor in this evolution).

Also, many shooters are technologists, if of a different flavor. A lot of time and attention paid to materials, workmanship, and performance. The leap to an iPhone or similar may be less of a gap in terms of mindset than might be imagined. If it's a good and useful tool, they will appreciate it.

In short, many shooters may have the phones already, before too long. A few might be nudged into the addition expense by the availability and utility of applications such as this -- though I wouldn't count on such conversions of themselves for generating a significant market for the application.

I don't know whether it makes sense for the original poster to go this route. It obviously would involve significant additional time and effort towards learning the environment and porting the application. Also some significant expense for the development environment. On the other hand, I -- again, just off the top of my head, or perhaps out of my other end ;-) -- imagine real potential in the resulting marketplace to which the application would have exposure.

I could be quite wrong, but I'm throwing the idea out there for consideration/conversation.

[pasbesoin]

Bad form, perhaps, to keep responding to myself. But, where I used the word "shooters", consider also hunters. A real need to know trajectory under varying circumstances. Also a strong interest in location and orientation, where a smartphone GPS and onscreen mapping would be quite useful. Mapping of various sorts, including not just satellite and topo, but even property ownership; if you are hunting on private land or need to avoid straying onto same, it is useful -- perhaps critical -- to know the boundaries.

This isn't all in place, yet, in a convenient fashion. But I can imagine it falling into place.

You need your phone with you, anyway, if nothing else then for use in case of accident, injury, getting lost, vehicle failure, etc. If it can do all these other things for you, well, that's the cat's meow.

If my imagination bears any resemblance to what evolves, it would seem to me to be a pretty decent market to sell into.

[ssharp]

I'd like to hear more on this cost of development. The biggest cost would be buying the developers license. His algorithms are already written, so it's just porting them to Objective C and slapping a Cocoa Touch interface to it (which shouldn't take more than a day, soup to nuts with no Cocoa experience). Plus you get the added benefit learning a useful SDK.

[mahmud]

I'd like to hear more on this cost of development.

The cost of picking up a new platform to learn. The cost of hours spent kluding an iphone development environment on whatever his current desktop is. The cost of writing said app. The cost of submitting it to Apple and waiting for how ever long it takes for approval. The cost of time spent polishing the site so it fits with the glossy, round-cornered aesthetic of the iPhone (possibly learning a graphics package or hiring a designer.) The cost of waiting for the pennies to trickle in from the huge user base of gun-owning, bullet property measuring, badass iphone users who don't know of crackz sites.

[stevejalim]

The biggest cost would be buying the developers license.

That and the small issue of having to get a Mac if not already owned...

[pclark]

got any research to back that up?

[mahmud]

I said "I think", i.e. my opinion.

But my idea of iphone owners is that they're "muggable", while gun owners are "unfuckwithable". See "ipod mugging" in google.

ipod(n): iphone without GSM chip.

[chengas123]

If going with the iPhone/Android app what would your pricing strategy be? Charge more seemed to be a popular answer for a desktop app. Does this still hold with the online market place that allows users to more easily comparison shop?