Author: George Karavias

George Karavias is co-founder of Anlock that has released more than 50 kids’ educational apps over the past two years. Both Microsoft and Apple have featured Anlock apps and one of them has even been installed on Jessica Alba’s Windows Phone airing across all major US networks. Anlock is currently incubated at the Microsoft Innovation Center. George is also heading App Friday; a weekly promotion that highlights educational apps published each week.

Categories
Business

Developer Corner: Why successful indie developers are becoming a dying breed

I started developing iOS apps 5 years ago, which can be loosely equated to 50 years in a different, non-tech industry, where the pace of growth is much slower. As a sign of the warp speed at which things are moving within the app economy, simply consider that when I started, back in 2010, there were only 300.000 apps and those were only in the Apple App Store; right now there are over 3 million apps across all stores, which goes to show the phenomenal pace with which the app economy is skyrocketing. During this time I’ve developed over 12 apps at Anlock as an indie dev, which have seen 2 million downloads, and more than 4.000 reviews with an average rating of 4.0 across 110+ countries.

indie-devs

Aside from app development, I’ve also been very active in the kids’ educational developer community, starting as a member of Moms with Apps in 2011. Later, I co-founded the Know What’s Inside™ program, dedicated to helping family-friendly app developers implement best practices around privacy and complying with privacy rules. And for many years I was head of the App Friday program, which was created by family-friendly app developers who simply wanted to raise visibility around kids’ educational apps.

Due to this active involvement, I have seen many fellow indie developers come and go. At first, some of them made it big for no reason that I could fathom, but later, as the industry matured, it became increasingly harder to succeed and a very small number of indie devs actually made it. [tweetable]Success in the app industry is the product of hard work and continuous efforts[/tweetable], and most of the indie devs I know eventually tire out and throw in the towel; a couple of months ago it was my turn.

Because of this extremely fast pace with which the industry is growing, I have always been on the edge, trying to cope with the curveballs the App Store has been throwing. At the beginning, the challenge was simple – all you needed to do to succeed was put together a decent app that was centered around the revolutionary concept of users interacting with content through touch on their phone screens. Soon the challenge shifted and the focus was on having appealing graphics and marketing your app. Very quickly, marketing become predominant, if you did not have a marketing plan in place before you even started developing your app you had no chance. At the time, that meant actively using Facebook (before its IPO, when posting was free), Twitter, YouTube, cross-selling between apps, etc.

And then, a few months ago, I realized that the last curveball the market had thrown was beyond our small team at Anlock. Having a good idea for an app, a good UI/UX execution with excellent coding skills and a marketing plan was simply not enough any more. The app idea itself had to be exquisite and its UI/UX execution brilliant to even have the slightest chance of success. Which absolutely makes sense when you consider there are 3 million apps out there. Of course there will always be Flappy Birds that are beyond “logic” and hit a nerve with users and go viral, but that is one app in 3 million, quite literally.

As far as I was concerned, [tweetable]the app market has just reached that hyper-competitive stage[/tweetable] that was simply beyond our team at Anlock, despite our years of experience, our extensive app portfolio and our 2 million downloads. So, when the opportunity presented itself I opted out and left Anlock.

There I was with 5 years of solid iOS development faced with either having to start all over again in a hyper-competitive market or get a job as a freelance iOS developer. Having closely followed the debate about tech talent shortage the past year I decided to go freelance.

It only took me about a month to realize that are a lot of job openings out there and I actually got to pick the role I found most fascinating and challenging. I have now joined Daredevil Project that “makes mobile social games for the ‘real word’”, in charge of the iOS development of Duel that will be launched in the coming months, effectively putting an end on my indie years … for now at least!

Categories
Platforms

Kids’ Educational Apps – An Indie Dev’s Final Frontier

VM_010

I am wondering if you know that there is an SXSWedu event. Well I can’t blame you if you don’t, it is the third year it is running and it sounds a bit off when you think of SXSW and “Keep Austin weird”. If you don’t then it will even come more as a surprise to learn that Bill Gates delivered the closing keynote to a standing-only room of 2,500 people.  On top of that, Apple revealed to TechCrunch a couple of weeks ago that they have sold more than 8 million iPads to educational institutions worldwide (4.5 million to U.S. schools).

You might have started thinking that putting together an educational app may not be such a bad idea, I mean how hard can it be? How about checking out the App Store’s top 200 paid list of iPad educational apps? Just by going through it, even if you don’t know who is who, you will see a lot of indie developers. Let me save you the trouble and give you the rundown. Of the top 200, 70% are kids’ educational apps. Out of these, roughly 80% are by independent developers, and only 20% from well-known publishers like Disney, Nickelodeon, Sesame Street, etc. This is really impressive to say the least.

But before you team up with a teacher and start coding that idea, hold on. For every developer who is succeeding, there are 20 who are struggling to see noticeable sales. To make matters worse, only 20% of the developers present in 2009 were still active in 2012 (iLearn II – “An Analysis of the Education Category of Apple’s App Store”).

All of this translates to the indication that there are still great opportunities in kids’ educational apps right now, but there is also a lot of risk. That is why the kids’ educational apps market is an indie dev’s “final frontier”. So before you set off to “boldly go where no man has gone before”, here is a survivor kit to keep in mind when navigating those treacherous waters:

1)    App stores lack specific categorizations

No single app store has a separate category of kids’ educational apps. So kids’ educational apps are all scattered in a number of categories. In the Apple App Store they are scattered across Education, Games/Educational, Games/Kids, Books, etc., and in the Windows Phone Marketplace between Education and Kids + Family. Keep that in mind as you pick your category and since there is no right or wrong,  don’t be afraid to experiment.

2)    Never ever forget market segmentation

It is an easy assumption to make but it is one that you must always keep in mind. Education differs across countries considerably, it is not only the language and cultural barriers, but also that educational topics are approached in different angles. In the US the past three years the Common Core Standards initiative has been put together that provides a clear understanding of what students are expected to learn so teachers and parents now what to do to help them. CCS can be a very useful roadmap when you are thinking of your app. Lastly always factor in that localization will not be easy and it will cost more than it would normally do.

3)    You have limitations on your monetization strategy

With stories of a 5 year old spending $2.500 on iPad apps in 10 minutes hitting the news frequently be very careful of your monetization strategy. I am not arguing to exclude In App Purchases but be very cautious about your implementation and disclose this information to parents.

4)    Be wary of COPPA

Talking about disclosures you need to get up to speed with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. You need to have a privacy policy, provide disclosure about data practices and take responsibility for data practices of 3rd party code. Lorraine of Moms With Apps has put together a great reading list on the subject here, which is always updated.

If then you are up to being one of the risk-takers that Bill Gates mentioned in his speech, help change the face of education and make money on the way keep in mind his closing words “In this space, we either improve the quality of education or we stay flat, like we have for the last few decades”, put your soul into it and make great educational apps.