My notes from Mashup Events "
What Your (Mobile) Apps Strategy" session:
First up was Jon Moore of the Guardian
Guardian app is £3.59p, it gives you content you can't see for free on the Web. My colleague Paul lancefield (writer of our first iPhone app) is impressed with it. His key lessons are:
Lesson 1 have ambitious objectives
Lesson 2 know your audience for App and test
Lesson 3 Delight your audience the Apps store is the thing you have to influence -would one put this on their home screen
Biggest problem he sees going forward - too much crap on iStore
Then Charles Weir Penrillion looked at the various options
iPhone - Only viable market today, but this is a tough market - expensive and difficult to market apps (huge number, very few are making money - string power law)
Symbian big market, but OS is cr*p at apps
Android - operators love it as it breaks Apple monoploy but still nothing really there
Blackberry - Corporates and low end youth smartphone Market - could be promising
Others - small beer
Mobile applications re still bedevilled by the problem of interoperability on different platforms - Its a big cost to port to all the platforms as there is no single language to write it in - so some functions are only available on certain devices. iPhone is the most promising market but deployment is an issue with so many apps on it, its impossible to find one App without a lot of marketing effort. There needs to be a way of finding good apps. However, he believes the iPhone model is how Apps will be sold in 3 years
Gerd Leonhardt - Futurist
Some soundbites:
- It's not about technology it's about emerging practices - that's where the money is
- IPad - the way we interact with it will define what it does
- With Apps, it's about packaging
- Social Media is not the thing, the key to its value is what it actually does for you
There are no clear answers in current Market, but feels that Mobile + Social = money . Also, loads of mobiles on low cost data plans will change the way mobiles are used
Panel - chaired by Vicky Chowney, it had the above speakers also and two more people on it:
Taron Maberry, BT
Mark Curtis, Flirtomatic
Panel Questions
Is mobile app same as net?
- Fragmentation is back thanks to all the players
- Android firmware always changes, Apple then Blackberry priority
How do you make money?
- Freemium will dominate in early days where ads don't work - but challenge is conversion
- Added value of community is valuable
- If you want to monetize today it's Apple as the only ooption
- Ad market moving to mobile/social but still ~ 1%
- If you have nothing on the edge you can't do freemium (Leonhardt - not sure what he means)
- Customer Acquisition have to get customers into the door not anything else, upselling is a % game
- Mobile allowed Guardian to access new Market (Ovum comment from floor - the real story is that you can't get people to pay for Guardian online but they will pay on mobile)
iPad?
- based on iPod technology, see it as a market extension of existing technology
- IPad won't work as a scaled up iPhone
Sustainability ?
A chap from Natwest noted they launched an iPhone app, and in weeks a fake Natwest app on Android was launched
Role of App Store?
- At the moment it's near useless - too many apps, too hard to find
- Today, the Twitter/Social media audience has close correlation to Apple demographic Algorithm drives early marketing success when app hits appstore
- GetJar is a good alternative approach
- There is a risk that iStore will get games by "Disposable Apps" ie Appstore becomes like 2nd Life, where Coporates have to prove they are "Groovy"
How do we build engagement?
- What is it for your audience/Market ?
- Does it fit your aims?
My Conclusions are:
1. Planet Mobile still suffers from the fundamental problem of too many sub-scale platforms. Nothing has changed in 10 years. The iPhone is the best bet, but is still subscale (as Charles Weir showed, even the biggest selling apps are not making the sort of money that can sustain an industry (for consumers anyway - we think SOHO/SME may be different as there is revenue from other sources in the value chain - more on this later).
2. The iStore model falls over at the moment as once too many applications get on it, its very hard to find (i) what you want, and (ii) which is the best option. This is because the meta-services we see elsewhere on teh Web (comparison sites etc) have not yet emerged. This seems to be a useful area for growth.
3. The market is still in massive flux, smartphones are only just getting smart enough to do more than browse the web, form and function are being experimented with still (iPad, multiple .
4. At the moment, the best way to ensure an application works across all platforms is still web access.
Planet Mobile - the more things change, the more they stay the same.........
