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Business

How Price Changes Can Improve Revenues

Distimo recently published an interesting report (free, registration required) on how app price changes affect revenue for iPhone & iPad apps. They give a breakdown on the scale of price changes but only give the really interesting results – the download and revenue impacts – averaged across all price changes. The key result is that download volumes and revenues are significantly positively impacted by price drops and negatively impacted to a lesser degree when the price rises again.

Although not specified by Distimo it’s likely that the vast majority of price rises are simply prices returning to normal after an offer ends. In this context it’s worth bearing in mind that e.g. an app with 1000 downloads/day increases on average to 9710 downloads/day after 5 days following a price drop. When the price goes back up again, the downloads fall by 57% of the increased total, e.g. back to 4175.

Demand at zero price

A factor that is not accounted for in the Distimo analysis is the discontinuity in demand at zero price. Ideally the effects of price changes that make an app free should be analysed separately from those which do not. In the former case, demand at zero price is typically multiples of demand at any non-zero price; a free promotion also relies on generating revenue from in-app purchases, advertising or subsequent increased demand after the promotion ends. On the other hand, price changes which do not make an app free are trading off price against volume. Developers can experiment with these changes to find the price point which generates maximum revenue. For most apps the marginal cost of serving additional users is close to zero and certainly dwarfed by the cost of creating the app. In this scenario, maximum revenue equals maximum profit. The zero price effect also suggests that any price drop intended to increase downloads for the purposes of increased visibility in the store should be a free promotion for maximum impact.

Longer term impact

The Distimo report shows revenue growth (purely from downloads and in-app purchases) continues for at least seven days from a price drop, reaching an average of 71% increase for the iPad and 159% for the iPhone. Beyond seven days we have a much smaller dataset from the App Rewards Club (and their analysis of Free App A Day) which suggests an initial revenue spike follows the end of a free promotion but the longer term increase in revenues is only minor, questioning the fees charged by some free promotion services.

Beware frequent sales

If a key component of your revenue model is paid downloads and temporary price drops create spikes in revenue, along with slightly increased revenue in the long run, it’s tempting to think that frequent sales will ratchet up your earnings bit by bit. The truth is likely the opposite since there are multiple services that allow consumers to check the price history of a premium app; if there are regular sales many users will simply wait for the next one. There was a good review of the issues with sales on the app store last year, however, ignore any claims that it’s impossible to succeed with premium pricing – even in the most competitive category, games, one of the most successful apps is MineCraft, priced consistently at $6.99. Most of the other top ranked premium apps either don’t have sales at all, or only do so around significant events (new major versions, holidays, new device launches).

All of this data was for iOS. According to Distimo, Google Play also shows similar effects on price changes but of a smaller magnitude due to the greater difficulty of reaching top rankings. However, the subject of price promotion on Android is much less relevant, since paid downloads make up such a tiny fraction of overall revenues.

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Business Platforms

The Darker Side of App Store Optimization

As long as there are algorithms impacting revenues there will be people trying to game them. In the world of mobile apps there are two sorts of algorithm that can be routes to success, chart rankings and search rankings. Chart rankings are very simple and typically just use some time-weighted download volume. Search rankings are much more complex, involving keywords, reviews and other social or similarity-based data as well as downloads. Developers can use a range of tactics to improve their ranking in these algorithms, some of them much more legitimate than others.

There’s no such thing as a bad download

Whilst there are very good practices for optimising search ranking, such as using tools that monitor competitors and analyse their keyword usage to suggest improvements to your own, the single most effective way to improve all rankings is to increase downloads. For paid apps, all downloads generate revenue, whether the app gets used or not – temporarily reducing the price or making the app free is an effective technique for boosting downloads, which boosts rankings and subsequent revenue when the price is returned to normal. For apps that are free anyway, it can similarly be worth spending some of the revenue earned through advertising or in-app purchases to increase downloads. On one level this is obvious, it’s worth spending money to market the app and try to reach new users. However, the winner takes all nature of app store discovery at present makes it worthwhile for some developers to chase downloads purely to enhance their rankings. Even users who will never open the app are worth attracting if they can be acquired for a low enough cost.

Paid placement

There are lots of advertising options available that drive users to your app in the store. The vast majority of them are pay-per-click and thus cannot be used cost effectively to inflate downloads of an app that doesn’t generate significant revenue per user anyway. Most of these are clearly advertising products, others look like app discovery tools to end users. Hooked is a good example of an app that blurs the line between discovery and advertising. They have a popular social discovery app for Android games where developers can pay to generate installs. For developers this is a very logical option because they have a fixed cost for installs which they can compare against average revenue per user. On the other hand, users may believe they’re getting a recommendation when in reality they are seeing an advert. It’s the same argument that surrounded paid placement for search results in the days before Google launched AdWords.

Cross Promotion

Another way to reach users is through similar apps. Apps promoting one another is a great way to reach a common user base. There are several cross-promotion networks with a variety of business models. Ironically the one with the name most suggestive of ranking manipulation, Chartboost, is at the most ethical end; they provide completely free technology for developers to organize their own cross-promotions and also a marketplace to connect developers where they take a cut of the transactions. At the same time, the most popular cross-promotion network (according to our latest survey), Tapjoy, plays much closer to the lines of acceptable conduct. One (and in fairness it should be emphasised only one of several) of Tapjoy’s services is incentivised downloads, a practice that Apple have repeatedly cracked down on – they pay users (in virtual rewards such as in-game currency) to download apps which have paid for that service (in cash). Clearly a large fraction of people who will download other apps to earn a bit of virtual currency are those unable or unwilling to pay for the same. These users almost by definition are unlikely to monetize, so the only obvious reason to seek them out is to increase rankings in order to be discovered by other paying users that would be more expensive to reach directly.

Shuabang!

At the extreme end of ranking manipulation, with no pretence of being anything else, is Shaubang. This manipulation is primarily practiced on Apple’s App Store, made possible by the fact that a credit card is not required for an iTunes account in China. Companies with millions of accounts make use of extremely cheap local labour to pay people to download and review apps. These services often guarantee to boost an app to a desired category ranking for a fixed fee. This practice is heavily frowned upon by store owners but also extremely hard to police, since it involves real users (sometimes bot-assisted for efficiency) with real accounts.

Where’s the harm?

Users are mostly getting what they want out of these deals and so are the developers involved. Store owners have higher download stats to boast about. Even at the extreme end we have job creation in China. The main people losing out are the developers not taking advantage of these strategies. However, if ranking manipulation becomes the norm rather than a fringe behaviour then two problems become very serious. First, the top ranked apps are simply the ones that paid the most to be there, rather than the best ones – this makes discovery of genuinely great apps harder and reduces the overall perception of app quality. Second, a feedback cycle further concentrates revenue at the top of rankings – only those who pay to be at the top can afford sufficient manipulation to stay there and the rankings will begin to stagnate. App store owners need to ensure their markets are as honest and fair as possible, or users and honest developers will suffer in the long run.

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Business News and Resources

Two Important App Market Trends to Watch in 2013

2012 was another big growth year for the app market. Apple continued to launch new products, sell them in ever greater volumes and distribute more revenue to developers. Meanwhile Google overhauled their market and developer revenues climbed sharply. Android developers also saw the Amazon Appstore expand and become a serious second revenue source. Developers who created quality apps and marketed them well were richly rewarded. However, for many developers the major challenge of getting their apps discovered by users only got worse. How is 2013 likely to compare and what are the most recent app market trends? Will app revenues continue to grow at similar rates and will those revenues keep concentrating in the hands of fewer publishers?

App market trends: Continued Growth

According to Distimo’s 2012 report, Apple’s daily App Store revenue grew 21% in the four months to the end of November. Google Play revenue grew 43% in the same period. During November the average daily revenue from the App Store was $15m while for Google Play it was $3.5m. So Google has more than double the growth rate, although from a much lower base.

The graph below extrapolates those four month growth rates exponentially through 2013. This illustrates the effects if those growth rates continued – this is not a prediction.

The Apple daily revenues and growth rate figures were taken during a double new product introduction spike, so the actual 2013 growth is likely to be significantly lower. According to App Annie, iOS revenue growth for the first 10 months of 2012 was only 12.9% total.

Similarly Android’s revenue growth in 2012 was from a very low base, it will be important to watch how it changes as the absolute revenue levels increase. The likelihood is that Android revenues will be significantly closer to iOS revenues by the end of 2013 but iOS revenues much closer to where they are now than the graph above suggests.

In the biggest spending app markets around the world, smartphone penetration is above 50%. A large proportion of smartphone purchases in those markets in 2013 will therefore be replacement devices running the same platform. With iOS a new device can download purchased content and restore in-app purchases at no extra cost. On Android it’s entirely up to the developer whether existing purchases can be used on a new device but by default, paid apps can be downloaded to new devices and in-app purchases will not be restored automatically without charge.

App revenue expectations

Will users continue to spend on apps at the same rate on replacement devices, or will the app revenues in the most developed markets start to fall? There’s likely to be some variation here across platforms and app categories but this may be the first year that the total market growth doesn’t obscure this important user behaviour trend.

App market trends: Revenue Distribution

Although the app stores are generating millions of dollars in revenues every day, those are not distributed at all evenly amongst developers. Canalys recently highlighted that 50% of revenues are earned by just 25 publishers in the US. Although we already pointed out that this is not as bad as it sounds, since those publishers have well over 1000 apps between them, at the very top, the concentration really is that extreme and getting worse.

According to the 2012 report from Distimo linked above, 7 apps were responsible for 10% of revenues on the iPhone in November, for the iPad it was only 6 apps and on Google Play just 4. At the very top on iOS we know that Supercell were grossing $500k per day from two games in early October. At the time Hay Day, the lower ranked of the two, was below position 20 in the top grossing chart, while it is now rarely outside the top 10. Clash of Clans has consistently been in the top 2 since that report. We can guess their revenue is even higher now and that the number 1 grossing spot is worth somewhere around $300-450k per day (about 2-3% of total iOS revenues) before Apple’s 30% cut.

In January 2012 the top 11 apps for the iPhone were responsible for 10% of revenues while on the iPad it was 8 apps. It’s tempting to speculate that the greater increase in revenue concentration on the iPhone is due to the changes to the App Store in iOS 6. However there is very little overlap between the top 10 grossing apps and the top 10 paid or free downloads. Whatever the reasons for this increased concentration of revenue at the top, this is an important trend to watch in 2013.

If revenues aren’t more evenly distributed amongst a larger number of developers then investment in new app projects must eventually start to decline. Otherwise, developers will need to find more business models that aren’t dependent on direct monetisation of their apps through stores.

If you are interested in more recent trends, have a look into our App Developer Trends from Q1 2015.

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Business Platforms

Multi-Platform Developers Are Better Off

Our latest survey shows a concentration of developer attention around the iOS/Android duopoly. Given the reach and revenues available on the two leading platforms compared to the competition, it’s unlikely that developers will find significant success without targeting one or both of them. However, our survey data also shows that developers should not limit themselves to those two platforms. There is a strong correlation between average revenue and the number of platforms targeted.

Developer Economics 2013 - Multi-platform developers generate higher revenues

74% of developers use two or more platforms concurrently. At the same time, developer platform choices are now narrowing. On average mobile developers use 2.6 mobile platforms in our latest research, compared to 2.7 in 2012 and 3.2 in our 2011 research. The Android-iOS duopoly in smartphone sales is gradually creating a concentration of developers around these two platforms: 80% of respondents in our sample develop for Android, iOS or both, making them the baseline in any platform mix. Developers that do not develop for one of these two platforms generate, on average, half the revenue of those developers that do, leaving little doubt as to the concentration of power within these two major ecosystems.

In our Developer Economics 2013 survey of over 3,400 developers we found that 49% of developers use just one or two mobile platforms concurrently and 75% use up to three mobile platforms. The number of platforms developers use depends to some extent on which is their lead platform. In mobile development, loyalty to one platform is not something that pays off. Our research shows that the revenues are higher when using more platforms. For example, an iOS developer porting an app on Android is likely to experience some growth in revenue. At the same time, for developers working on four or more platforms, higher revenues are probably the result of extending an already successful app to more platforms. Obviously, this is not something that all developers can afford to do; it is a strategy more suited to large publishers or commissioned developer teams that are large enough to support a number of platforms.
[doritos_report location=’DE13 Article – Mulit-Platform’]

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Community

Developer Economics 2013 Survey: iOS vs Android shoot-out

iOS is the best platform for generating revenue,
Android provides a better development environment

Developer Economics 2013 - Android vs iOS shoot-out
We asked developers to pick the top platform, among all platforms they have used or are planning to use, on a number of different aspects of mobile development such as discovery, learning curve and monetisation. We then compared how iOS and Android fare against each other, based on the opinions of developers using both platforms.

The outcome is a tie when it comes to user base, with developers’ opinions divided between the two platforms. However, iOS was ranked higher on 4 out of the six remaining categories, with a clear advantage on app discovery (50% iOS vs. 23% Android) and revenue potential (66% iOS vs. 12% Android). The perception that iOS provides better monetisation opportunities is well engrained with developers and is backed by Developer Economics 2013 survey data. App discovery has developed into a problem for both platforms given the size of their app stores, which now well exceed 700,000 apps. However, despite some initial complaints about the new curation model on App Store, the developer verdict is quite clear on app discovery, which goes to iOS. iOS also leads, but with a smaller margin on development environment and documentation & support.

Android has a clear advantage on development cost (32% Android vs. 14% iOS) and a small lead on the learning curve ( 26% Android vs. 20% iOS). However the total score for the two platforms on the latter two aspects was lower than 50% indicating that most developers that use both Android and iOS believe that neither is best in these areas. In fact 24% of developers among those using Android and iOS indicated that HTML is the best platform in terms of learning curve while 7% indicated that its Windows Phone.

For most developers, the platform perceptions boil down to a decision about which platform to prioritise, i.e. where to invest more resources and which of the two platforms to develop for first. Several other factors may come into play when making a decision on the “lead platform”, such as prior experience or local demographics, but it is fair to say that iOS comes out as the winner in developer perceptions. This is consistent with our figures on lead platforms: among developers using iOS and Android, iOS is the lead platform for 42% of developers, while Android is the lead platform for 31% of developers.

[doritos_report location=’DE13 Article – iOS vs Android shoot-out’]

Categories
Platforms

Windows Phone: buy it and they will come

47% of developers want to adopt Windows Phone,
poor consumer adoption is holding them back

Intentshare-Jan2013

Microsoft’s Windows 8 & Phone 8 strategy brings a unified Metro interface to all devices and enables significant code sharing between apps across PCs, tablets and smartphones. However these synergies have yet to pay off and Windows Phone is facing a bootstrapping issue despite Microsoft’s multi-billion-dollar investment in the platform. Lack of developer interest is not the issue here, as highlighted by the high levels of Intentshare. Developers seem to be on standby, waiting for the market signals – the consumer adoption – that justify an investment in the platform. The 55% intentshare from the 2012 survey has not resulted in a single percentage point increase in mindshare (still at 21%). Moreover, Microsoft’s attempt to fund development of Windows Phone apps created misalignment of developer incentives. Instead of focusing on consumers, developers were focused on getting the easy money, which resulted in sub-par apps. As we have said before, you can’t buy developer love.

The majority of mobile developers have already adopted iOS and Android, hence the relatively low Intentshare among those platforms. However, among developers that have yet to adopt one of these two platforms, interest is quite high: 77% of developers in our survey that have not yet adopted Android, plan to adopt it – for iOS the figure stands at 61%. So these two platforms are still on the radar for developers that have yet to adopt them.

Beyond iOS and Android, mobile developers are showing interest in Facebook, with 23% of mobile developers indicating that they plan to adopt the platform. Facebook offers little in terms of mobile app development at present but it provides unprecedented reach. With around 1Bn active users, it is one of the widest reaching digital platforms on the planet.

The considerable levels of Intentshare for Windows Phone (47%) and BB10 (15%) indicate that there is still developer interest in a viable third app ecosystem.

[doritos_report location=’DE13 Article – Windows Phone: buy it and they will come’]

Categories
Business

The Six Biggest Challenges for App Businesses (and what to do about them)

In our Developer Economics 2012 survey, we asked developers about their biggest challenges. Here we discuss six of them, with some basic tips on what to do about them. The challenges are split between marketing and post-launch app and user management. The three biggest marketing challenges were: keeping users engaged, targeting the right users and identifying the right revenue model. The three biggest post-launch challenges were: Tracking bugs and errors, getting users to review your app and updating applications in the field.

Keeping users engaged

Keeping users engaged was the challenge cited most often overall, by 39% of developers, irrespective of primary platform. This is consistent with data from analytics firm Flurry, who report that user engagement falls sharply over time, with only 24% of consumers continuing to use an app after three months from download. “Developers must focus on tracking user engagement & usage patterns rather than just on downloads” notes Jai Jaisimha, founder of Open Mobile Solutions, a brand-to-developer matchmaking service.

There are many techniques for improving user engagement and retention. Social buttons like Follow or Like, especially when integrated with social networks are known to increase engagement. “‘Follow is the most common social feature used by our users” notes Yiannis Varelas, co-founder of Weendy, a weather app for surfers, with 6,500 monthly active users and 80% retention rate (in May last year). Where direct social integration doesn’t make sense, push notifications are another tool to help keep users engaged.

Gamification is another retention technique that rewards users for achievements (e.g. FourSquare-style badges) or for inviting other users (e.g. for each user you invite to Dropbox, you get another 250MB free storage space). Moreover, Tom Hume, founder of Future Platforms, argues that developers need to fundamentally rethink user retention. “To improve retention, developers need to build up value for the user that increases with usage. A natural way to do this is to build in a history of usage data – for example in the Nike Plus the value and stickiness of the application increases as more data is recorded in the application”.

Targeting the right users

The second most oft-cited challenge is targeting and getting through to the right users – mostly because existing app stores offer little in the way of user targeting. App stores, for example, provide no means for developers to reach existing customers or gain information about them. The only way developers can target users via app stores is via coarse-grained methods based on app categorisation or keyword selection.

Consequently, we found that developers using app stores are more concerned about targeting (39%) and engagement (46%) than developers using most other distribution channels. The situation in carrier portals is even worse: around 55% of developers using them are challenged by targeting and engagement.
Customer information, as with any business, is a key source of competitive advantage. As such, app stores have little incentive to share customer data with app developers. Apple has done so in part, after considerable pressure, but only to Newsstand publishers, and only where customers opt in. There’s more to it than just control: app store owners are loath to jeopardise user privacy contracts, lest their platforms become marketing “wild wests.”

The inaccessibility of customer information will likely remain a thorny issue, and one that hampers developers’ marketing potential. For the moment, it generates a flurry of innovation, as evidenced by the proliferation of in-app and external app marketing channels. However, seeing as this will remain a pain point, there may be opportunities for app stores to differentiate, if they manage to balance their priorities against those of developers – as Apple arguably has with Newsstand publishers. In the meantime, app developers would be wise not to wait for the app stores to fix this. Try to reach the right users for your app wherever they are currently, via blogs, forums and more traditional media. Arrange cross-promotions with similar but complementary apps. Experiment with alternate discovery solutions and find out what works for your app.

Identifying the right revenue model

Developers were becoming increasingly confused (36%) about which revenue model to use. There are over 10 revenue models to choose from and no guarantees as to which revenue model will work best in the long run in terms of reach vs. monetisation. Moreover, the revenue model needs to be optimised to the platform and app category. The decision should also take into account factors such as customer paying propensity (which varies across platforms), competitor pricing and positioning (which varies by app category). For example, paid downloads are extremely unpopular on Android, whilst apps aimed at children often need to use that model, since parents are very uncomfortable with in-app purchase or advertising based models for apps their children are using. User needs should also come into perspective when considering
your pricing strategy. “You may only need one Facebook, sports or weather app, but you will want to play many games. Mobile games are like movies – users are always looking for the latest one,” notes Markus Kassulke, CEO at Germany-based HandyGames.

Overall, we found that pay-per download was the revenue model used most frequently, by 34% of developers irrespective of platform, followed closely by advertising, which was used by 33% of developers. Wherever possible, the best advice we can give for now is to try some sort of freemium or virtual goods model using in-app purchases. The growth of in-app purchase revenues across iOS and Android is significantly outpacing paid downloads.

Tracking bugs and errors

Tracking bugs and errors was, by far, the most frequent post-launch headache, as reported by 38% of developers in our survey – and particularly so for WP7 developers. There is no direct feedback channel between users and developers, and no out-of-box
means to monitor the performance of an app. App reviews work and feel more like post-mortems, rather than a live feedback tool. As a result, developers will often find out what’s wrong with their app too late, through users’ negative feedback. “Our biggest headache after launch is the lack of a two-way communication channel with our users” notes Hong Wu, Director of Android Engineering at Peel, makers of a personalised TV guide app.

The first line of defence here is to remove as many errors as possible before launch, both through good engineering practices during development and extensive beta testing. The second line of defense comes in the form of crash analytics and bug tracking services. These services track app errors by monitoring crashes and reporting the type of error, platform, device and environmental variables like location, time and transaction flow. As such, they can provide useful insights, helping find and fix errors before they drive users away.

Updating applications in the field

Updating apps was highlighted as a challenge by 25% of developers irrespective of platform. Interestingly, the difference in the update process between iOS and Android has no impact on developers’ attitudes – as both iOS and Android have their own update challenges. On iOS the process requires full certification and approval by Apple, plus explicit opt-in by the user. On Android, the update process can be automatic and near-instantaneous. This however requires that users opt-in for automatic updates for specific applications. In effect, these challenges with the update process on both iOS and Android increase the average application “age” and escalate both code maintenance and customer support costs for developers.

One solution to this is to have the app check for the availability of a newer version at launch. Although it may not be possible to have the application download the update, it could prompt the user to do so. Another option here is to track application versions via analytics and send push notifications to users with sufficiently old versions, highlighting the benefits of updating to the latest version.

Getting users to review apps

Last but not least, another frequent post-launch challenge was getting users to review apps, reported by 30% of developers irrespective of platform. At the same time, there have been some success stories of apps boosting their review numbers, usually by nagging users after they have used the app for some time. For example, to solicit reviews, DrawSomething shows a motivating alert where “Rate 5 stars!” and “Remind me later” are the only two options, wrapped in a friendly pop-up box. The example shows that the runaway success of DrawSomething was more science than luck. However, DrawSomething’s grossing ranking was declining in the run-up to the all-important Christmas sales season, showing that even successful and well funded apps with highly social components can struggle with our first challenge – keeping users engaged in the face of all the other shiny new offerings in the app stores.

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Platforms

Our 2012 Platform Shootout and Implications for 2013

In our 2012 Developer Economics report we included a developer sentiment barometer for the various mobile platforms. As we move into 2013 several new platforms are on their way but all of them look very similar to existing platforms from a developer perspective. We can use this existing data to predict how developers will perceive the new platforms.

Here’s the key developer sentiment table:
Developer-Sentiment-2012

Not all factors are equal in generating developer activity

The iOS scores show what really matters to developers in a relatively healthy ecosystem. While  learning curve and development cost are important pain points for iOS developers (here developer sentiment echoes the difficulty of Objective C and the cost of buying a Mac to develop for iOS, respectively) and ease of coding and prototyping is poor, there is good access to APIs and reach and revenues are great. As long as those factors stay positive we can expect the iOS ecosystem to continue to thrive.

Android had healthy developer activity in early 2012, mostly due to great growth of the platform and developers’ belief in its future. The good API access has only improved and Google & partners took steps that have significantly improved the revenue generation issues. Android v4, launched in 2012, was the first version to ask users for a credit card on sign-up and the Android Market was overhauled and then relaunched as Google Play. Android looks set to continue to grow developer activity in 2013

Windows Phone lies at the other end of the spectrum. Developers are very happy with the ease of coding and prototyping, cost of development & learning curve, whilst access to features was only average. Unfortunately, although developers enjoy building apps for the platform, reach is bad and revenues are poor. There don’t appear to be any major issues with the Windows Phone Marketplace compared to rival stores and competition for user attention is lower, so we can assume that revenue issues are primarily due to the lack of reach. Although the introduction of Windows Phone 8 has improved access to features, early indications are that it has not meaningfully impacted the reach issue yet. Microsoft and partners have had to financially incentivise a significant amount of the developer activity for Windows Phone and that is likely to continue unless the platform gains much greater traction with consumers.

New Developer Platforms for 2013:

BlackBerry 10

BlackBerry 10 is due to launch at the end of January. From a developer perspective, the platform is cutting off the existing installed base of devices by not providing support for the legacy BlackBerry Java environment. Instead, BlackBerry 10 supports a native environment with an optional Qt-based application framework, an Android runtime and mobile web apps. The Qt platform was very popular with community of developers using it when it was Nokia’s primary environment and the developer satisfaction is reflected in the scores in our table above. It was one of the strongest platforms all round with the main weaknesses in reach and revenue. As the BlackBerry 10 platform is starting from scratch, reach is going to be an even bigger problem there and thus lack of revenue will also be a major concern for developers, despite BlackBerry App World’s historical record in this regard. The addition of the Android runtime gives developers a lower cost entry to a curated app store with lower competition, extending the reach of their existing investment. This suggests the Android runtime will be the most popular option for developers on BlackBerry 10, unless they can get an excellent start to sales of the new platform, driving developers to invest in native apps to establish themselves early with a superior user experience.

Firefox OS and Tizen

Mozilla’s Firefox OS and Samsung’s Tizen are both expected to debut this year and both aim to run mobile web apps as first class citizens. The Firefox OS has some backing from network operators and targets low cost smartphones. We’ll have to wait and see whether Tizen does better than Samsung’s last platform, bada, which had a promising start but little developer traction. Both platforms add more API access for mobile web developers and if they achieve any scale in the market, should also improve revenue generation. Overall, success for either of these platforms should make mobile web developers happier. The key question here is that if the web runtime is not offering a sufficiently compelling user experience on the existing platforms then how likely are web-only platforms to succeed, particularly with lower cost hardware. This strategy didn’t work for Palm with WebOS – can it work in 2013 or maybe 2014? Games are the most popular category of apps and they typically require the performance that only native apps provide.

Sailfish

The Sailfish OS from tiny Finish startup Jolla is due to launch a first device early this year. It’s also pinning its app ecosystem hopes on a native Qt-based application framework and Android app compatibility, much like BlackBerry 10. Developers should be very happy with the technical aspects of these environments. Jolla’s challenge is a lack of resources to get reach and thus solve developer revenue issues. Their plan for this relies on alliances with Chinese OEMs and networks, with western open source fanatics as a smaller secondary market. The ability of this platform to survive depends upon Jolla’s ability to do deals in China far more than their technical execution.

Ubuntu Mobile

Last but not least, newly launched Ubuntu Mobile also has a Qt-based application framework, this time paired with mobile web apps as first class citizens. As you can see from our table this is probably the best combination for developer satisfaction but they currently have no concrete device plans to share and don’t expect anything to ship until 2014. They do have a much bigger existing brand in developing markets than Jolla and theoretically a similar offering (both in terms of user experience and technology).

Developer Platforms: Conclusions

Android and iOS look set to continue growing their application ecosystems. Windows Phone appear to have another year of uphill struggle to gain acceptance. For any of these new platforms to generate developer activity on a similar scale to iOS and Android they need to achieve massive reach. That seems highly dependent upon Chinese OEMs deserting Android in search of differentiation (for all but BlackBerry 10) and consumer acceptance of platforms that, at least initially, have much smaller app ecosystems in every case. We’re not expecting any of these to gain major market share in 2013. If one of them does take off, history suggests that the developers who got in early will have an advantage. However, with so many relatively similar offerings on the way, it’s not clear where developers should invest their effort.

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Platforms

How Much Time Could You Save With Backend-as-a-Service?

Backend-as-a-Service (Baas) provider Kinvey published an interesting infographic on the average time taken to build an iOS or Android app (with a backend service) this week. The data comes from a survey of 100 developers with their estimates averaged. Before interpreting the data, it’s worth bearing in mind the following:

  • This is only to build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) – it’s nowhere near the total that would be spent on a successful app.
  • The features included create an app with a relatively rich backend service and a fairly basic client.
  • This is only building a client app for one platform rather than several.
  • Building a robust API versioning system would not normally be part of an MVP.
  • This survey has been created specifically to promote the benefits of BaaS.

Even so, the the items included in the infographic would be common to a wide range of applications.

Categories
Business

Growth Lessons from LinkedIn

Elliot Schmukler from LinkedIn spoke at a recent Growth Hacker conference about the strategies they’d used to grow the site since he joined in 2008. His advice was very helpfully summarised by Sandi MacPherson, Founder at Quibb and is general enough to be applied to mobile apps. Here’s our take on his main points.

Before you get started: Understand your channels

It’s important to understand how new users come to your product. Although it may be distributed exclusively through an app store, if that’s the only way users discover your product then you’re unlikely to succeed. This aspect of app marketing is still evolving rapidly, so keep testing different channels but focus your resources on the ones that generate the best results for you.