Month: December 2012

Categories
Platforms

From Mobile to TV: The companion screens opportunity and the role of apps

[This post on Mobile to TV, by Peggy Albright, guest author for VisionMobile, first appeared on the VisionMobile blog on  17 September 2012.]

[The latest trend in app development is targeting companion screens, as a way to bridge a multi-screen experience. Guest author Peggy Allbright investigates the future of app development on companion screens -and TV apps in particular – and discusses how TV advertising has found a whole new screen to engage users on.]

The Future of TV Apps

TV applications are opening up a new business frontier for the mobile industry. But we are still in the most nascent phases of the TV app industry’s formation and it needs to evolve on many fronts. Fortunately, early startup activities are revealing some of the roles that devices, apps, developers, merchandising and advertising can play in this industry, as we’ll see in this article.

The industry is well aware that consumers want to be engaged with their devices while watching TV and that many consumers are beginning to use mobile devices and apps as interactive “companions” to supplement the TV viewing experience. New research released by Google in August provides some of the latest data to characterize this trend. Google found that in a typical day, 77% of television viewers use a second device, such as a tablet, smartphone or PC, while watching TV. More than one-fifth (22%) of these consumers are using the TV and their second device in ways that complement each other, even if it is only a simple search related to the live TV programming.

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Categories
Platforms

The yellow brick road of app store monetisation

App Store monetisation
the yellow brick road

[This post on App Store monetisation by Andreas Pappas, Senior Analyst at VisionMobile, first appeared on the VisionMobile blog on  31 July 2012.]

Apple and Google dominate the app store game – but only in terms of size. Senior Analyst Andreas Pappas discusses the key success factors for app stores, why Google is lagging behind and how Amazon fits in the whole picture.

With Amazon challenging Google’s app market and Apple allegedly offering the best monetisation potential, several developers and analysts have put these claims to the test by comparing monetisation data across the three app markets. Differences in monetisation potential can have a significant impact on developer mindshare: developers will seek to leverage platforms that will make them more money.

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Categories
Platforms Tools

Mobile Platform Wars: Winners & Losers in 2012

Mobile Platform wards

[This post first appeared on the VisionMobile blog on 9 July 2012.] The game of ecosystems is in full bloom, with each player attempting to draw as many developers as possible around their platform. As we finally see some signs of consolidation, VisionMobile Senior Analyst Andreas Pappas, talks about mobile platform wars, the rules of engagement and identifies the winners and losers in this game of ecosystems in 2012.

Moreover, we’re proud to introduce VisionMobile Visualisations – live. These are interactive graphs with tons of data from the Developer Economics 2012 research!

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Categories
News and Resources Platforms

Appsfire Infographic illustrates once more difficulty to get to the top

Appsfire Infographic

Appsfire Infographic shared figures for the iOS App Store in 2012.

  • The growth in the amount of apps, while still high, seems to be slowing. This might indicate that the market is maturing.
  • Only 1 in 10 apps gets any reasonable traction at all. Only 1 in 1000 manages to get to the top 10 of the App Store. For non-games, only 1 in 1690 reaches the top.
  • The percentage of paid apps has dropped dramatically.
Categories
Platforms Tools

Cross-Platform Tools – Functionality and Trade-offs

CPTs components

Cross-platform tools (CPTs) are a class of developer tool that aim to enable a single implementation of application functionality to run across multiple platforms. If that definition seems very broad it’s because the category covers a wide range of use cases, technology approaches and forms of app deployment. In our analysis of this sector from February 2012 we identified over 100 tools across three forms of app deployment (native vs. web vs. hybrid) and five different technology approaches.

Fundamentally the various platforms are not compatible and the use of a third party tool to solve this issue comes at a cost. The effort saved through a CPT often has a financial cost but more often the largest trade-off is against a loss of flexibility, control or performance. Different tools produce different compromises. In many cases what is lost is not required to deliver the desired experience, so it’s worth understanding the different approaches and choosing the right tool for each project.

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Categories
Tips Tools

Mapping Cross-Platform Development Tools: Technology Approaches

cross-platform development tools

In our 2012 analysis of the cross-platform development tools (CPT) sector, we have identified five distinct technology approaches being used:

  • JavaScript frameworks
  • App factories
  • Web-to-native wrappers
  • Runtimes
  • Source code translators

Each technology targets a slightly different developer audience – from non-developers to seasoned programmers – and addresses different application use cases. These technology approaches are not mutually exclusive; many tools use a combination of technologies. For example some runtime-based CPT solutions are adding a webview component, which enables them to create hybrid web app wrappers.

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Categories
Business Platforms

How to select a cross platform development tool

development tool

With the wide selection of cross-platform development tool (CPTs) available in the market, how should a developer select a development tool? The exact selection criteria will vary depending on the project and the individual developers involved. However, it’s valuable to look at the criteria other developers have used to select development tool and, even more importantly, the reasons they’ve stopped using them. Fortunately, we have this data from our cross-platform tools survey earlier in the year.

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Categories
Business

The changing landscape of app discovery

App discovery

[The explosive growth of app ecosystems is creating serious bottlenecks in app discovery that only popular apps can overcome. Having 700,000 apps is great for platform vendors, but not so great for developers, whose apps are lost in the heap. Andreas Pappas takes a look at the app discovery problem and considers whether social discovery is a better solution than the alternatives available today. This post also appeared on the VisionMobile blog. Follow Andreas on Twitter: @pappasandreas]

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Categories
Business Platforms Tools

Is the Era of Microtransactions in Free Mobile Games Over?

Mobile Games

W3i, the in-app offer exchange provider, released a report on December 6th showcasing recent trends in mobile app monetization. The W3iNSIDER Report breaks down data from its hundreds of game developer partners and 66 million monthly active users across iOS and Android.The data shows that smaller microtransactions ($0.99-$1.99), long thought to be the backbone of the freemium model, actually contribute significantly less revenue to mobile games than more expensive in-app purchases that range from $9.99 to $19.99.

When surveying the in-app purchase price points and how they contribute to the overall revenue of a sample of games, W3i found that, on average, 47 percent of total revenue comes from purchases costing $9.99 to $19.99. Smaller purchases from $0.99 to $1.99 only contribute an average of six percent to total game revenue.

The freemium model emerged as the foremost business model in mobile gaming with premium and subscription business models declining. The freemium model is built on the back of microtransactions with gamers spending a dollar or two to unlock virtual goods.

W3i is also reporting in-app purchasing trends from around the world:

  • The highest-spending region in the world is the United Arab Emirates- with 77 percent of revenue of revenue coming from $19.99 (55 percent) and $9.99 (22 percent) IAPs (as of Oct 2012)
  • The UK has the highest number of whale spenders- with eight percent of revenue coming from $49.99 IAPs sizes as of Oct 2012
  • $.99 IAPs sell the largest volume in China and Canada where they each make up about three percent of purchases

“Although the U.S. learned about freemium gaming from Asia, it’s apparent that Americans are taking their own approach to it,” says Robert Weber, co-founder of W3i. “Where mobile games in Asia still depend on microtransactions, U.S. gamers play more like whales- spending larger amounts of money in mobile games.”

Categories
Business Platforms Tips

App Promotion: make or break your app

app promotion

With well over one million total apps available on Apple and Google app stores combined, plus hundreds of thousands on the other platforms, the competition to get on consumers’ handsets is fierce. As hundreds of apps are added each and every day, app discovery remains a largely unsolved challenge which is only getting worse. With a rapidly changing landscape of app store ranking algorithms, mobile advertising products, cross-promotion networks and specialist marketing services it’s very difficult to decide how to begin app promotion which is cost-effectively. The one very clear piece of advice we can give is what you shouldn’t do – nothing.

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