I think it has a lot less to do with release delays in the App store than it does with the attention span of the typical customer. You can iterate all you want but if they've already formed an opinion of your product based on a first impression they're unlikely to give it a second look. All the apps I've released have had a big initial sales spike over the first week or so and never again climbed back anywhere close to those numbers, despite a large number of functional and aesthetic improvements.
You can release multiple products with different names and even different brands (you use different accounts if needed). It may not be cheap, but it is possible. This way you will have the huge spike over and over again (you may change name/logo for different experiments). And please don't use vanity metrics[1] for measuring the outcome.
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I think it has a lot less to do with release delays in the App store than it does with the attention span of the typical customer. You can iterate all you want but if they've already formed an opinion of your product based on a first impression they're unlikely to give it a second look. All the apps I've released have had a big initial sales spike over the first week or so and never again climbed back anywhere close to those numbers, despite a large number of functional and aesthetic improvements.
You can release multiple products with different names and even different brands (you use different accounts if needed). It may not be cheap, but it is possible. This way you will have the huge spike over and over again (you may change name/logo for different experiments). And please don't use vanity metrics[1] for measuring the outcome.
[1] http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/30/vanity-metrics/
This interview directly talks about iphone apps and MVPs on its first 5 minutes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Z...