We have worked long and hard developing our mobile app. We think that it's great and has true value for users. We had planned to soft-launch and make it better as we learn from users. But every single app expert we had talked to has told us our success will be as good as the amount of noise we make when we launch. Death, they say, is a place in the long tail of the app store. What say you?
You can find plenty of exceptions, but what the 'app experts' are telling you is generally correct, at least about the Apple ecosystem. Bunching up a lot of downloads into a small time period right after launch maximizes your chance of showing up anywhere users might actually browse to and discover serendipitously.<p>The Android marketplaces are a bit better for iterative learning. Although iOS then Android is the dominant pattern, you wouldn't be the first company to launch quietly on Android, iterate, and then come to iOS with a product informed by what they've learned from their Android launch.
I'm not a mobile developer, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but as a user, I don't care about an app's age or whether it had a soft launch. Most apps are little more than opportunities to provide a bad user experience to an impressive Web-based service. As long as your service is on point and your app on my device is better than just using your mobile website, do whatever.
I've had no hype, probably because I'm boostrapped, but I'm in this for the long haul. What would be the point of giving up six weeks in because I only have X users and the experts say I should have 1000X? The experts are not financing me. If they were, then I could afford to create hype.