So Where is Bouncity for iPhone?

On Friday Bouncity launched its long awaited Android app. While the location based activity game had only one app until this point, which is for BlackBerry, it had also been available as a mobile web version since August. At Bouncity’s launch in early June, the team had promised to release the iPhone and Android apps by the end of July but clearly both were delayed.

The decision to launch the BlackBerry app before any other version had been due to the significant number and activities of social network users in Indonesia being on BlackBerry phones. The majority of Indonesians with mobile Internet however, are not on smartphones but they may not necessarily be the market segment that Bouncity is after anyway.

Back in July, CTO COO Kevin Osmond had shown screenshots of what the iPhone app was going to look like but he admitted that the app was likely to be a few months away though he did not elaborate the reason for the delay. Just over a week ago I was told that the Android app was actually going to arrive sooner than the iPhone app, which surprised me a little as the team had been working on the iPhone app much earlier. In fact the iPhone project began as soon as the BlackBerry app was available, so what is causing the delay?

Speaking to a number of company insiders, none had been forthcoming as to the reason but they all showed a level of frustration at being unable to ship the app in time and one person said iOS 5 contributed to the reworking of the app but declined to elaborate further.

Will the release of the iPhone and Android app help the spread and use of Bouncity? It’s difficult to say for now and as far as adoption is concerned, there doesn’t seem to be enough traction for this location-based game to be widely adopted. Are people simply too disinterested to perform the challenges? Are the rewards or incentives not appealing enough? Are the challenges too demanding?

Another perspective into this is whether there’s way too many online services that are vying for people’s attention. We have Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Foursquare, BBM, Tumblr, Koprol, Instant Messaging, blogs, as well as various websites that seek our attention that people are beginning to lose interest in picking up yet another online activity. Have we reached Internet fatigue, or Bouncity simply has yet to figure out the formula?