iPhone app development in Kuwait: what to know before you start

iPhone only, or iPhone and Android?

Most businesses in Kuwait need both. Your customers use both kinds of phone, and an app on one store leaves part of them out.

That no longer means paying twice. Apps are now usually built from one codebase that runs on iOS and Android, so both versions launch together and get every update at the same time. If you want to start with the iPhone only, the same code can go to Google Play later without a rebuild.

What decides the cost

An app is priced by what it has to do, not by how many screens it has. The things that move the price most:

• Accounts and sign-in: guest use, sign-in by phone number, or full customer profiles.
• Payments: KNET, cards, Apple Pay, or instalments.
• An admin panel, where you manage products, orders, bookings and content without an app update.
• Connections to other systems: a POS, an ERP, a delivery company, or your existing website.
• Arabic and English: two languages, with right-to-left layouts designed for Arabic rather than mirrored as an afterthought.
• Notifications, maps, bookings and loyalty points: each a feature with its own work behind it.

Common apps, such as a loyalty app or a store with its own iPhone and Android apps, can be offered as fixed-price packages. Ours are on the mobile app development page. A custom app gets a written quotation.

How long it takes

A packaged app can launch in a few weeks. A custom app usually takes a few months from the first design to the store, depending on its features and on how quickly decisions are made.

Plan for the time Apple and Google need as well. Store review often takes a day or two, but a rejection means a fix and a new submission, so leave room before any launch date you announce.

The Apple developer account

An app on the App Store is published under a developer account. For a business, that should be an organisation account in your company's name, so the app, its reviews and its customers belong to you.

Apple charges a yearly fee for the account (USD 99 at the time of writing), and organisation accounts need a D-U-N-S number for your company, which Apple uses to verify it. Request it early: it can take several days to arrive.

Google Play has its own developer account, with a one-time registration fee.

Getting through App Store review

Apple reviews every app and every update. The reasons a first submission gets sent back are mostly predictable:

• The app is a website in a frame. Apple expects an app to do what apps do, not only show a web page.
• Accounts can't be deleted. If customers can create an account in the app, they must be able to delete it from inside the app.
• Privacy details are missing. Apple needs a privacy policy link and an honest list of the data the app collects.
• The reviewer can't sign in. If the app needs an account, the reviewer needs a working test account.
• Screens are empty or broken. Every button the reviewer taps has to lead somewhere real.

A team that publishes apps regularly builds for these from the start, so review is a formality rather than a cycle of fixes.

After launch

Apple releases a new iOS every year and updates its rules with it. An app that isn't maintained starts to break, looks dated, or gets blocked from updates. Budget for maintenance from day one, as you would for a shop or a car.

And plan how people will find the app: a link on your website and Instagram, a QR code in the shop, and a reason to download it, such as loyalty points or faster ordering.