Later this month, iPhone and iPod application developers can expect to see sales drastically increase by as much as 300 or 400 percent over the course of a couple days.
They’ll also be unable to change their applications, change marketing materials or download sales reports during much of this time. iTunes Connect, the interface that allows developers to manage all their applications in the App Store, will be unavailable from December 23 – December 28, 2009.
The same downtime occurred last year and caused some consternation within the developer community.
“I guess iTunes Connect [team members] want a break too,” wrote one developer, “but come on, closed for the holidays when people have a lot of time on their hands to buy apps ?”
Another dev shop, Bottle Rocket, wrote, “Apple is taking the next 4 days off. Good for them. So, should we take the hint and lower the shades on Bottle Rocket for at least a few days? The answer is, well, no comment.”
Here’s a graph showing the kind of traffic and sales pattern app developers can expect to see right around Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and the ensuing week or so. This is a visualization of data from iPod Touch devices last December:
So, once again, during what may be some app developers’ biggest sales spike of the entire year, they will not have access to information on sales performance or other metrics, and they won’t be able to tweak their marketing materials or create new incentives as the year’s biggest gift-giving holiday approaches.
In the interest of maintaining our holiday spirit, we will refrain from comment on whether or not this is a lame move and instead caution our application developer friends to get their ducks in a row before iTunes Connect is out of commission.
