I found this statement baffling (article):
Developing applications for the iPhone and iPad is expensive, he said, because iPhone OS uses the Objective C language rather than Microsoft’s more pervasive .NET platform.
What I think this means is that, for a company that wants to develop applications for a mobile device, it’s cheaper to hire developers who are experienced in the namby-pamby world of .NET instead of a language that makes you deal with memory and asynchronous programming, and actually have to be good at programming to use. Go ahead and develop in .NET. Sure it’ll be unusably slow and will drain my battery, and buggy as hell because the people developing it don’t know how to program, but it’ll be cheap. That’s the Microsoft way, right?
Anyway, for independent developers, developing for the iPhone isn’t terribly expensive at all. In fact, for independent developers and small companies, iPhone development is very cheap, given the revenue an app can generate. It basically costs you time, the idea, equipment, and an enrollment fee. Yeah, Apple takes a lot of control over the system, but because of that you get distribution, advertising, and sales management. That’s a huge amount of stuff that you just plain don’t have to worry about, and spend the time or money on. Apple has policies and practices that don’t always work in your favor? Tough tits; it’s their game, but they’re letting you play.