The Localytics Blog

Notes from Mobile Software Devs’ Meetup (3/4/09)

Last Wednesday, Localytics hosted a fantastic Meetup for mobile software developers in the Boston area (join the group at http://www.meetup.com/massmobile). Thirty people showed up and we had a very strong discussion.

The agenda for the meeting focused on Business Models (monetization, app stores, future platforms) and Development Platforms (platform limitations/comparisons, porting apps across platforms, etc.).  Here are our notes from the meeting:

Business Models

Free vs. paid apps

• Free apps typically a promotional vehicle for paid/pro versions of the app
• This model works well with games because you can offer a free version with only a few levels, and require that users pay to get the rest
• Many developers feature themselves out of paid/pro versions by making the free apps too good
• Some developers try to make free versions intentionally crippled or annoying
  • Hard to do this with iPhone because of Apple’s approval process
  • “Try to Buy” apps are also discouraged on the app store
  • Counter-productive to annoy users unnecessarily
  • Important to use analytics to understand conversion rates from free to paid

Advertising

• Monetization through advertising is likely a long way off
• There are very few app developers making real money from advertising
• Rates are extremely low; very low demand as advertisers don’t know what they’re getting from mobile ($0.20 CPM for one developer)
• Direct models (create relationship with advertiser directly) will generate higher rate, but requires

App Stores/markets/worlds

• iPhone App Store

  • App store is like a record label; always working on getting the next hit
  • iPhone nailed three things: Discovery, Payment, and Delivery; there is skepticism that other app stores will be as smooth
  • More pricing flexibility would help; for example there should be way to connect free apps to a subscription model via the App Store

• Android Market

  • Paid apps are new, but where a free app may get 200,000 downloads, the pro version might get 50
  • Currently, you can only sort apps by date and rating

• BlackBerry App World

  • BlackBerry users are more likely to buy more expensive items; developers can charge more for good business-oriented apps ($2.99 minimum for apps, which eliminates many of the ‘stupid’ apps)
  • Blackberry to use PayPal for payment; this may be a shortcoming (by limiting its audience)
  • Some uncertainty about the Blackberry target customer (50 year old CEO or young professional?) and what their app buying behavior will be
  • Suggestion on selling to enterprise: 1. Develop free client app sold through an app store, 2. Make this free version of the service limited, 3.Push enterprises with many users to purchase paid/pro version

• Nokia Ovi

  • Millions of devices will have access
  • Will likely allow selling of flash content in future
  • China and India have become Nokia’s biggest markets

• Windows Mobile Marketplace (formerly Skymarket)

  • They have promised one for years – one of the participants talked to Microsoft years ago about building one for them
  • Are they too late?

Future Platforms

• Flash

  • Potentially solves the multi-platform problem, and can be pushed through browsers so can be store-agnostic
  • 1 billion devices will have Flash
    • Palm, Android, and WM have Flash support; Windows Mobile 7 will most likely ship with Flash support in the box, as will Palm
    • Adobe got rid of all licenses on Flash to make this possible
  • There will be two versions of Flash; Flash Lite very minimal and would work on feature phones, while Flash Mobile will be optimized for smartphones
  • Video is the future of Flash Lite’s growth

 

• Palm Pre

  • Most apps expected to be web based
  • Much lower barrierto entry for web-based apps, as anybody can develop them (regardless of region and whether they have the device)

  .

Development across different platforms

• Comparison of platforms

  • LiMo seems to have lost all its steam because of Android
  • Programming on all platforms is beginning to converge; similiar feeling APIs, functionality
  • Symbian still feels the most proprietary, as though it were designed with specific devices in mind
  • Platforms limitations on the iPhone are mostly business imposed, for example background threads are completely possible; push notification on iPhone will probably be shelved

• Emulation important, but not enough

  • DeviceAnywhere and Nokia’s RDA can be used for emulation
  • However, emulation is not good enough; need to have the actual devices
  • This is a barrier to entry, which some feel is good because it limits the garbage apps to sort through (desktop example - shareware apps are usually really bad)

• Proliferation of Android devices is coming

  • Open questions - will they have different versions of the OS?  Will they have different tools?
  • How will developers verify your app works on all Android phones?  This is a very difficult, not just for graphics, but also for sound, speed, etc.
  • Risk of fragmentation of Android software/hardware
    • HTC has 300 developers working on Android; their work will probably not be open
    • A lot of Taiwanese and Chinese manufacturers are taking advantage of the fact that Android is free to make their own android phones
  • Motorola has committed to going ‘all-in’ on Android (for consumer market, they will still do Windows Mobile for enterprise devices)

• Some cross-platform development code available

  • Webkits exist for making cross platform apps
  • VixML’s (http://vixml.com/vixml) goal is to enable creation of simple apps for non-programmers
  • VMware has mobile emulators; disagreement on how far out this really is

 

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