Popular iPad Apps Plagued By Poor Server Performance

With the growing popularity and ownership of iPads a major problem is brewing for some of the new app development companies and independent developers – sever performance.

Many new apps have been released over the past few months, a lot of which have been first time releases on the iOS platform for developers.  Some of the most voiced complaints from iPad owners is poor server responsiveness and not being able to connect.

Some new applications have suddenly shot to huge popularity overnight and it seems that some developers cannot keep upgrading and adding new servers as fast as the apps user base grows.

This can potentially have a negative effect on an otherwise popular app as users become tired of slow response between actions and being unable to connect to the apps servers at all during peak times.

DPS Computing recently reported on the problems that Mafia Wars : Shakedown seemed to be experiencing.  Although there has been no official word from developers Zynga on this, it is likely that the cause of the problems are down to server load.

Other apps are facing more intermittent server performance problems where they are unavailable for short periods of time on occasion.  One example of this is the Chronicles of Merlin game app, which is also a popular but fully independant game on social networking site Facebook.  The problem reported with this game today were however, relatively minor.  Players reporting that they could not connect to any of the apps servers for a period of 10 – 15 minutes.

The problems with server performance also seem to be disproportionately affecting developers of free apps.  One possible reason for this is the lack of a revenue stream from app sales likely means that funds for server upgrades are much smaller than developers releasing paid apps.  To compound this, free apps will usually acquire a much bigger user base, much more quickly than their paid counterparts.

Have you been experiencing any problems with any iOS (iPhone or iPad) apps recently?  Let us know!