Chile Forum

After living in Vina del Mar from February to July 2009, I'll be back in Chile in two weeks to teach in La Araucania through December. My job is practically unpaid, apart from some living expenses. I co-own a political consulting firm in the USA that specializes in online strategy, including web design and iPhone/iPad app development. Our prices are very, very competitive (that means cheap ) for the US, but I am not sure how they would compare for Chile. Of course, I would be willing to adapt to make things work.

It would be great to find a client or two to help pay the bills while in Chile. I suspect there are plenty of web designers (though from my first time in Chile I remember a lot of flash heavy sites that werent all that impressive) but not many people developing apps for the iPhone and iPad. Anyone think thats a legitimate niche to try to fill in Region IX?

Thanks for help in advance, anything and everything is appreciated.

I don't think it is a real niche anywhere in Chile. The Iphone is for the super rich in Chile. You would spend a lot of time and money targeting a very very small market. Yes, it would be targeted at a high pricetag market, but still a relatively small one by international standards.

back of the napkin numbers:

16 million or so people in Chile

Less than 1 million with the disposable income to buy an iphone.

likly something less than 1% of that would be disposed to buy an iphone over some other phone (e.g. blackberry or whatever).

Less than 1% of that would likly buy the application or visit the website without investing a mass of money on other mass media to get them there in the first place.

So, you are likly talking something around 10,000 to 100,000 eyeball market for blue, green, and orange widgets you might be selling (total).

Those are obviously just guesses, but likly not far from the market you would have if you did a formal study. Perhaps selling cars or some really really big ticket item it might be worth it, but selling small whatever it would not be worth it for whomever was selling.

Limit yourself to the 9th region (or most any region outside of Santiago), and those numbers become some fraction of pie.

I think in Temuco, other than my wife, I have never seen anyone really talking on an iphone (not like I pay all that much attention). Still it is not that common. That and we are dumping it this month because it is rather useless flashy toy that seriously costing way more than just the price in productivity because of all the limitations (e.g. no qwerty keyboard, terrible battery life, unstable OS, flaky signals).

Thank you for the excellent advice. That all makes a lot of sense. I have been surprised to find that some Chilean companies do offer iPhone apps, such as La Prensa' Futbol app. I cannot imagine too many people have downloaded the app, although it is actually of a fairly high quality and has been through some fairly elaborate updates before, during and after the World Cup. It is also clear that La Prensa's app is not on the cheap side of the app development being done right now.

The numbers you put forth make it clear that it would be an unquestionably bad investment for any Chilean company, based on population numbers alone.

austin87 wrote:Thank you for the excellent advice. That all makes a lot of sense. I have been surprised to find that some Chilean companies do offer iPhone apps, such as La Prensa' Futbol app. I cannot imagine too many people have downloaded the app, although it is actually of a fairly high quality and has been through some fairly elaborate updates before, during and after the World Cup. It is also clear that La Prensa's app is not on the cheap side of the app development being done right now.

The numbers you put forth make it clear that it would be an unquestionably bad investment for any Chilean company, based on population numbers alone.

this is a country where 74% of business software is piratead..... very very hard to make money from software here, im speaking from first hand experiance, i work for a software development company...

What you can do here is use the cheapish labour to make software to sell offshore.....

The Iphone is for the super rich in Chile

LOL, mine costs me around US30 per month (including paying off the handset) through Entel. My nana is thinking of getting one!