The Rise of Mobile Apps Business

Always was attracted to mobile phones as a gadget and just after the course “Building Mobile Applications” at the University of Washington Department of Communication’s Master of Communication in Digital Media (MCDM) program I’ve started to realize what perspectives mobile phones can open for bright minds. It was interesting summer of 2010 to focus on mobile apps business development: iPhone 4 glitches, Android attack, Windows Mobile 7…

This background provided plenty of food for thoughts and discussions about growing market opportunities and giants’ clashes: iPhone vs Android. Among those just one thing was very unanimously accepted by almost all analysts – mobile apps as new market for developers. Currently, only US market shows real interest and serious numbers for making business on smartphone market. Recently, statistics demonstrates growing interest in Europe, East Asia and other parts of the world. Apparently, soon it will come to any place on the planet where mobile coverage is available.

Several case studies: Postage, Gist, OrderPizza, that we analyzed, demonstrated different models of mobile apps that exist on iTunes now. All of them required very hard work in post-launch period to find own audience. One key feature of a mobile app is it should fulfill mono-tasking needs and have intuitive human-centered user interface. Doubtful that smartphone users could enjoy full functionality of an app on small screens.

I’ve understood three things after exploring #UWsmartphone:

First. There are many opportunities on this market but only if you have unique idea and under-served niche of consumers. iPhone users now has the most effective and diverse options to discover the world with mobile apps – almost 300,000 apps. Competition of developers is so strong that almost anyone can find at least 2 similar applications for any tasks and often absolutely free. Therefore, the most of developers are to refocus their attention to new market Android.

Second. It’s very unusual art to find your consumer and to monetize your mobile app. Many case studies that I was researching during this summer provided very uncommon examples of marketing and promotion of a mobile app. It is not a case when a set of instruments can guarantee you a success. You should be permanently involved in promotion and be very flexible in finding new opportunities and consumers.

Third. It is very easy to create app. There are a growing number of development tools for mobile app building and they are very effective and inexpensive. You just have to need some design skills and data sources. That’s why this market is so competitive and not many big companies work there. Therefore, if you are an individual who has an interesting idea you can enter this market easily.

But be quick. The pace of changes is so fast that even in three summer months I had studied smartphones in Seattle the situation on this market started show signs of dramatic changes. The interesting fact that the book ‘The Business of iPhone App Development: Making and Marketing Apps That Success’ by Dave Wooldridge and Michael Schneider I was reading will be updated and revised soon, though it was published just in the beginning of 2010. The online discussion that I had with one of the authors Dave Woolridge revealed the necessity of self-experimentation on smartphone market, non-standard thinking and approaches. Michael Schneider has also talked about it at our meeting in the UW when he mentioned his experience of app development: start from small but main feature, try to engage mobile app’s users in discussion, ask them what they want to see in new versions.

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