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With over 1 billion downloads across web and mobile, Angry Birds is no doubt as big as they get.  But what is also fairly well known is Rovio’s ability to merchandise the brand very quickly.  Now Amazon is out to help developers do the same, with ‘merch’ by Amazon.

Amazon is not first on merchandising in-app items. In fact, we had a guest post from French company Fabzat some time ago.  Fabzat has a thing or two up their sleeve in terms of the items you can create, with cool 3D printing of characters and more. But Amazon is of course the biggest, and as a merchandising entity goes, something that would certainly provide a welcome revenue stream for many developers.

merch by Amazon

So exactly how important is merchandising?  Well, for the movie and TV industry, merchandising hit $51.3 billion in 2013. Compare this to a total estimated revenue for filmed entertainment of about $90 billion that year, merchandising is staggeringly important.  For Rovio, merchandising was about one quarter of the revenue for 2014.

So what is Amazon merch all about?  Well for starters, it is vastly different from Fabzat as it is not in-app. It relies on you as a developer creating artwork and selling t-shirts. And that’s kind of it. Yep, pretty simple, and you’ll still have to drive traffic to Amazon to sell it (which is what they want), but it can surely be a way to capitalize on cute characters and more. Still, we kind of believe in the Fabzat model more, where you capitalize on the interest in the game while the user is playing it, in order to get them to buy merchandise. Having Amazon jump on the bandwagon puts some muscle on the business model, and we look forward to following the development of this business model for developers.

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Arturo Galván, CEO of Naranya – a Mexico based mobile internet specialist, points out in a recent article in gamesindustry.biz that “The Latin American mobile market is huge. It’s half of the size of the Chinese market – both are a massive opportunity.”  Thanks to smartphones, the population is rapidly coming online and becoming an attractive market for apps distribution. But don’t think Google Play will get you there.

Google’s issues are first and foremost related to payment options. Google offers primarily payments through credit or debit cards. But card billing will not get you far in Latin America – while carrier billing will:
LatAm Banking penetration (World Bank Financial Inclusion)Source: World Bank Financial Inclusion

Despite recent efforts by Google’s partner, Bango, they are still short of the network of payments a player like Naranya can offer (the two Mexican operators covered by Bango only have 12% market share).

The growth in mobile in Latin America is phenomenal, and the two most interesting markets from a revenue standpoint are Brazil and Mexico.  The markets not only vary in culture, but also in terms of purchasing power and how you should structure your pricing:

LatAm IAP (Fortumo)

Source: Fortumo

Keep in mind that prepaid subscriptions is very popular in the region, thus you want to make sure your charging does not drain too much of the users balance (i.e. charge less and more often instead if you can). And if your app is text heavy, and you have not invested in localization – forget it, English simply will not cut it:

LatAm English (Fortumo)

Source: Fortumo

However, if your app does not rely much on text, you can concentrate your efforts around your marketing assets. Translating your text from English to Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese should cost you on average no more than $75-$150. Of course it depends on the length of your text, but if you use partners like Tethras.com (who are also integrated with CodeNgo – you can order your translations directly), you are sure to get it professionally and correctly presented (yes, we do not like automated translations. Not at all).  This is well worth the investment in order for your app to succeed in this huge market.

We are happy to announce that we will soon be supporting the Naranya market in our suite of stores.  Stay tuned!

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Vision Mobile’s latest State of the Developer Nation paints a grim picture for female developers, with less than 10% of developers in the survey were women. So are mobile app developers like what Silicon Valley has often been criticized for? A frat like club for boys, mostly fresh out of college, that seem to want to hold on to that frat experience waaay too long into their professional careers?  What is the problem in that you may ask?

First, let’s look at the extent of the problem across geographies:

Developer Nation - Gender bias

 

Based on the Vision Mobile data, the gender bias is actually worse as you get outside the US. If you are a female in Latin America for instance, you are almost guaranteed not to be a developer. What does that mean for a business, or for the tech industry as a whole?

The main problem is obvious: When you effectively exclude/freeze out 50% of the working population, you miss out on key talent to grow your business and you ensure salaries are artificially inflated due to lack of supply of software engineers.  That is a lose-lose situation.

Fixing the problem is easier said than done.  First, there are clearly more male graduates in computer science, so from the pool of developers to pick from, the choice is slimmer. But that’s not the whole story. It can explain a lower percentage, but nearly NO representation as the Vision Mobile study shows there has to be a different reason, as at least 25% of graduates with a computer science degree are female.  Once in the workplace, gender biases feed of each other, making it even more difficult for women to rise through the ranks and get treated and paid fairly, and only defined action plans can help this. It is naïve to think that an industry will solve this by itself, but of course therein lies the opportunity for companies who recognize the importance of bringing on talented female engineers as a competitive advantage. They need to understand that the ‘brogramming’ culture needs to be changed (no, not everyone loves foosball, beer pong on Fridays, and playing basketball at lunch – not even among guys) and they need to ensure equality, fairness and flexibility should be the cornerstones of the company culture.

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India is a big country. Very big. But did you know that they are now approaching the level of internet penetration that led to things exploding in the US and China? With 232 million internet users, it is the 3rd largest online market, and adds over 60 million users per year. And of course the action is on mobile. But Google Play is certainly not your only bet in this market.

Evidence certainly indicates India is at the verge of taking off:

Internet user penetration curve - US China India (Source: KPCB)

Source: KPCB Internet Trends 2015

If history is any indication, India is set to become a giant in online. China has officially surpassed the US in ecommerce, which really only took 7 years from hitting the catalyst threshold, and India may reach this point equally fast.  The catalyst driving this is of course mobile:

2Mobile as percent of internet traffic (Source: KPCB)

Source: KPCB Internet Trends 2015

Despite Android’s dominant presence (over 90% market share), you may think Google Play is the only game in town – but think again. Mobango, an app store focusing on the Indian market but with a global audience, passed 1 billion downloaded apps already in 2012. They claimed to have 37% market share of the game downloads in 2013, and when considering games is the biggest category in apps, is quite impressive.  There are also plenty of other app stores with traction in India, such as www.9apps.com and www.mobogenie.com.

Recent research from Deloitte suggests that India will hit 9 billion app downloads this year.  According to the Deloitte report, “the biggest bet is in the youth in the 16-30 bracket who form a substantial part of the mobile subscriber base in the country.”

Not to be outdone, consulting firm KPMG points out that India is #7 on the list in terms of the # of downloaded apps. Each subscriber will average 17 downloads during the year, of which 4 will be paid apps. And if you plan to advertise for your app, it pays if it has something to do with cricket:

People interested in cricket on Facebook (Source: Facebook)

Source: Facebook

So there you have it. Your 16-30 year old cricket fan could be your ticket to become an app kingpin. Either way, it’s time to rethink your product marketing strategy!

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Do you have an app that targets a specific consumer segment? Then you should make sure your app gets distributed on app stores that target this segment!  It’s easier than you think.

Today smartphones are a commodity, and many handset manufacturers have realized that launching their device with bundled content offerings matched to their consumer segment is a key differentiator.

Let us give you one example:

The Cat Phone is a rugged smartphone which targets customer segments consisting of people with an affinity for the outdoors, plumbers, farmers, blue-collar workers etc. The phone comes with a dedicated, pre-loaded App Store with some hundreds of carefully selected apps relevant for that customer segment. This offering makes the phone more attractive to the customer segment. They will find apps they did not realize that they actually needed as an outdoor person or a blue-collar worker.

The Cat phone - for the tough ones!

The concept is a fully managed service from Appland (www.applandinc.com), who delivers hosting, app store platform and apps, and also has responsibility for the continuous operation of the store. There are more than 350 apps in the store, from both well-known apps like Skype and TuneIn, to more niche apps like CHECK-D. It is all about creating a compelling app offering for the specific consumer segment.

Appland works with many smartphone manufacturers across the globe, targeting different specific consumer segments from photo enthusiasms to e-learning students and hard core gamers.  If you publish your app through CodeNgo, it will automatically get published on Appland.  Of course, there is no guarantee your app will be launched in stores like the Cat store – your app needs to be relevant for the segment and be a high quality app. But if you do get published, you will not find a better, more targeted audience for your app – hopefully providing you with great analytics and a nice boost to your install base.

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From BlackBerry’s newsletter

Increasing App Discoverability within BlackBerry World
 

If you plan on increasing discoverablilty of your application choosing an application name is very important. Not because of your app but because of everyone else’s. For instance, a search for calculator displays almost 5,000 results! The app name must stand out to grab a user’s attention and should follow these basics:

  • Don’t Duplicate: Do a quick search (outside of BlackBerry World) to ensure other entities are not already using the name of your app, or even worse, have it trademarked!
  • Be Authentic: Adding Insta or Flappy to your app name denotes a certain phoniness to the app. Original is better.
  • Be Clear: It should be obvious what the app does.
  • Pronounceability: Users should be able to easily repeat the name of your app. Use caution when creating new words to ensure they are not difficult to say.
  • Typography: Stick to CamelCase, such as BlackBerry. Avoid lowercase or ALL CAPS.
  • Compound Words: use to pair the function of an app with a word that enhances it. Think of Evernote, Dropbox and PicStory

Visual recognition is also an important factor. The Application Icon is the image that appears on the BlackBerry World Storefront and is the first visual of the app. If app functionality is unclear from its name, users will depend on the icon and short description for this information.

Short descriptions appear when the product displays in a list, category or search result. It should quickly outline the basic functionality of the app. Now that your app has finally been selected it is time to tell the apps story through its screenshots and description. Screenshots: Note the Device Screen Sizes and follow these guidelines:

  • Place the best screenshot first. Entice the user to scroll forward.
  • Don’t place a screenshot inside a BlackBerry device
  • Take screenshots from the target device whenever possible
  • Avoid screenshots filled with text or marketing materials
  • Only add graphic overlays when necessary to explain the image
  • Don’t reference pricing: local currency prices can be misleading

Long Description: The description is the final selling point of your app. It should be clear, concise, and appealing to your target audience. The description should focus on content rather than keywords.

  • Optimize the first lines before “More Description” with what your app does and why it will benefit the user. Use adjectives such as awesome, or addicting. Already have a large user base? Call it out here!
  • Be honest. Talk about the benefits but be factual of the app’s capabilities. Do not mislead users.
  • Details: List achievements and features in bullet form. If it’s going to be long, break it down into sub-headings with proper spacing. Leave out anything that is unnecessary.

Keywords:

  • Choose your keywords wisely. You are limited to 10 keywords, which can be up to 3 words each (i.e. BBM Connected Apps).
  • Avoid overused keywords. Think of synonyms or other ways users may search for their content. It’s better to be in the top 10 of average searches than 100th in common searches.
  • Don’t use third-party trademarks.

Featured Image:

  • The featured image for your product displays on the Featured Items screen in BlackBerry World, known as the Carousel.
  • The image must be a 1920×1186 pixel .PNG file.
  • Similar to the icon, the Featured Image is the first visual of an app. Ensure images are vibrant and display functionality of the app.
  • Similar to screenshots, avoid use of a BlackBerry device.

Featuring on BlackBerry World

 

Featured applications are applications available on the forefront of BlackBerry World. Whether on mobile or desktop, these apps appear when a user launches BlackBerry World. This featuring leads to great front-of-the-line exposure for applications and their developers.

The obvious feature spotlight is the BlackBerry Carousel. This large banner at the top of BlackBerry World provides a great first-look at individually featured apps.

Next, we have Grouped Featuring. Found only on mobile, directly under the carousel, this section allows for similar apps to be featured together. This includes Apps for Business, Travel, Games, Sports, Utilities, Globally Relevant Events (New Year’s, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Summer, Christmas) and so much more!

For more information, please see: Getting Your App on the BlackBerry World Carousel

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When “Write Once Run Anywhere” is done right it can produce applications that are “better” than native apps by targeting the highest common denominator.

by Shail Almog, CEO of Codename One

Some would claim that native is the best approach, but that looks at existing WORA tools/communities, which mostly target cost saving. In fact, even native Android/iOS tools produce rather bad results without deep platform familiarity. Native is very difficult to properly maintain in the real world and this is easily noticeable by inspecting the difficulties we have with the ports of Codename One, this problem is getting worse rather better as platforms evolve and fragment. E.g. Some devices crash when you take more than one photo in a row, some devices have complex issues with http headers, and many have issues when editing text fields in the “wrong position”.

There are workarounds for everything, but you need to do extensive testing to become aware of the problem in the first place. WORA solutions bring all the workarounds and the “ugly” code into their porting layer, allowing developers to focus on their business logic. This is similar to Spring/Java EE approaches that addressed complexities of application server fragmentation.

If you review most user feedback on mobile applications you will quickly notice that a company that releases applications often and fixes issues gets consistent 5 star reviews. The ability to provide a stable app across platforms is a much tougher nut to crack than most developers assume, bugs are remarkably portable even between programming languages. Being able to scale your development team to give fast response times to user requirements is a huge deal. Being able to use Google Play as a beta site for the more conservative (and slower to approve) iTunes is a remarkable benefit for any developer.

Codename One is relatively young, so we don’t have a blockbuster, multi-million downloads app that contains a large enough representative segment (we do have some huge customers and great apps so its a matter of time). However WAZE (recently acquired by Google for over 1b USD) was constructed with a WORA solution, has multi-million downloads and 4.5+ star reviews on iOS/Android. I’m not crazy about their UI (as a matter of personal taste) but I think it proves that a HUGE majority of users want a functional, stable, and fast app. The word native and its various interpretations are only a part of the developer lexicon and don’t matter as much to actual users.

Using the native platform has a huge conflict of interest problem, e.g. Google is very keen on developers building Android applications. However, it has slowly migrated new API’s into the Market app, which only enables them for Google sanctioned devices. This makes sense since vendors have been very slow at migrating to newer Android OS versions. However, this also means that non-Google devices such as the Kindle (and future Amazon phone etc.) wouldn’t work with those API’s. Thus, we have a situation where the platform vendor wants us to develop to his platform alone while, as developers, we want to have as many users as possible. Yes, iOS users provide better monetization but that might change in the future and as developers we have an interest in agility.

As a side-note, Google itself uses a relatively simple WORA solution when targeting iOS named J2ObjC its a great solution for porting libraries from Java to Objective-C.

In the past, the conflict of interest between the platform developer and the tool developer pushed many developers from Microsoft tools to Borland tools and later on to Java/Swing. I believe we will see similar trends as mobile platforms migrate towards the enterprise and we are already seeing such development with PhoneGap despite all its faults.

 

The Native Is Easy Myth

Often when I bring these things up, I get the strong knee-jerk reaction from the fans of native claiming that native is the best approach. This completely ignores the long-term complexities of building/maintaining complex applications across platforms. For example, a well known Google developer asked in a recent Google IO who in the audience understood the activity lifecycle, he then made fun of the audience members who raised their hands claiming that despite all his years in Google he still doesn’t get the activity lifecycle (I built a few VM’s in my life and I can attest that this is indeed a complex subject with many edge cases).
iOS is not much better, the compiler/runtime doesn’t protect you from basic mistakes such as wrong function arguments (function, not message), memory access issues etc. You need to maintain around seven splash screens for a typical universal app, which you need to update with every change to the first view and don’t get me started on provisioning profiles…

The main issue isn’t writing the code, it’s maintaining it in the long term, scaling it for additional team members, and working in a corporate environment. As the mobile market matures from app startups, who have relatively small teams of hackers, and moves to the enterprise the need to scale the development becomes far greater. Enterprise developers need the ease of Swing, Visual Basic or Powerbuilder when it comes to mobile development.

They also usually prefer vendor independence when possible. Just like Java EE, SOA or ESB took over backend development we will see mobile services take over the client side. Developers who didn’t work in demanding Enterprise environments or worked in a very specific niche in an enterprise sometimes claim, “well they should hire better developers”. But that isn’t really the issue, projects such as these are maintained over years when developers hand them off from one person to the next as manpower/positions change. In such circumstances tools must be very simple to enable efficiency.

 

Speed & Flexibility

Performance is a big issue with WORA solutions, unfortunately we are sometimes judged by the performance of a specific application which might not always be under our control. The Pareto principle applies here: by improving a very small section of the code we can improve everything. Most of our rendering code is native and if you have mission critical code you can always write it natively to reach the performance level you would expect from any solution. Unlike HTML5, which is effectively throttled by how fast webkit can reflow, in a proper WORA solution you are throttled only by the performance of the native OS.

Since we can invoke native code we can pretty much do anything we want within an application e.g. integrate with the Dropbox API via OAuth while using a native intent to invoke Dropbox on Android. This is actually implemented by some applications to enable easy usage of files within a mobile app, which is a painful experience on all mobile platforms.

 

Final Thoughts

My goal here isn’t so much to convince native developers to abandon native programming, but rather to change the basic “WORA as a compromise” attitude where native is considered as the best approach.

I think this approach rose from sub par WORA solutions and implementations, such as the much maligned Facebook app. Despite the fact that I think embedding HTML5 (as is done in PhoneGap) isn’t a very good approach, I think that in the right hands it can produce a decent app. As a developer I try not to blame my tools but rather look at how the tool works and try to understand if its limitations are inherent or temporary. I think most of the issues we see in WORA tools are being resolved and we will see far more WORA apps on the market in the coming years.

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With the release of Android M, Google has taken some major steps to improve usability.  Some of the improvements will have positive effects on apps overall, and some will certainly help conversion.

As a users I am perhaps most excited about “Doze” which allows for the phone to have a deeper sleep when not in use. According to Google, this just may double battery life on some phones, depending on the usage pattern.  But of course, as a developer, perhaps one of the most important impacts will be on conversion rate due to improved permissions. Two major changes stand out:

1) Permissions happen on usage, not on install

Users who download an app may not be ready to make a decision on permission at the point of download or first open. Delaying that until they open the app and will actually use the feature (which is when it makes logical sense to ask for permissions), may just mean a lot more apps will get installed and opened.

2) Users control permissions

This is good news, as users who may get spooked about what they need to permit can now fully customize what they allow an app to do. This of course puts the onus back on the developer to entice the user to open up permissions as they get familiar with your app, but that is how it should work in the first place. It should also serve to cut down on rogue apps who grab unneeded permissions and spam users, which will help the market overall.

Check out the entire improvement session below. Well worth your time!

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Windows Mobile has in large part been heralded as a pretty good and sleek operating system. Consumers however, have not caught on at all, and Microsoft’s market share in the mobile OS market has been minimal. With Windows 10 and some strategic moves, it could mean the return to mobile relevance for Microsoft for a couple of reasons. However, Microsoft also has a unique opportunity to truly change the game in the industry through adopting a simple measure in the business model and technology used.

First, the reasons why they may become relevant to developers and consumers again:

1. Windows 10 is the same on every platform

This means there is no need to maintain separate code for mobile, tablets and desktop.  Potentially this opens up for app developers in a much bigger way, as whatever they make will default work on any platform. Naturally developers would be wise to design to screen sizes and use cases (i.e. users on the go vs stationary etc), but the OS allows for this fairly easily.

2. Your Android or iOS app will work

Perhaps the biggest news is that with small modifications, Android and iOS apps will be able to run in a Windows 10.environment. This is huge, but is in line with Microsoft’s strategy of releasing their office and productivity apps on iOS and Android. What it means is of course potentially instant availability of equivalent app catalog to Google and Apple.

So, what’s still missing?

A well functioning eco-system means not only that an app can run on a handset.  There are still a few gaps we see that still need to be addressed:

The store:  Where will users be able to download apps?  Will they follow Apple and only allow it on the Windows store?  In our opinion (big surprise), we think this is a big mistake if that turns out to be the case.  Being good at software and platforms does not mean you’re good at retailing. And creating yet another mega marketplace where only the big boys can compete gains nobody. Our advice: Allow for anyone to distribute and sell Windows 10 mobile apps.

The business models: No news have come out in terms of any changes in how Microsoft will deal with in-app billing. Does Microsoft expect developers to integrate their proprietary payment SDK? If so, big mistake. Our advice:  Make the MS payment SDK available on OPFIab (formerly OpenIAB) and mandate use of OPFIab in apps run on Windows devices.

Why does this matter? Because most stores that hope to profit from the in-app revenue require the developer to put in a different payment SDK than Google’s. Adding payment SDKs is a big hassle and most developers simply will not do it. We’ve seen this even for stores generating millions of downloads per month that persuading app developers to integrate a new payment SDK is very, very difficult.

Microsoft is the organization with true market power to really catapult the adoption of OPFIab as enough developers would use it in order to have their apps available on Windows devices. This means Microsoft could truly break the Google Play chains and allow for the proliferation of a multi-payment SDK that works on a large number of stores – thereby enabling more stores to be created and be in the value chain. That would be a true win-win for the industry.

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David Jones from Streethawk and Paul “The App Guy” Kemp are two very sharp minds in the mobile world. CodeNgo co-founder Chris Jones had a chat with both of them. The focus of course is about Alternative App Stores, and what alternative app stores can do for developers, but covers wide ranging topics from subscription models, China, payments and payment SDKs, pricing strategies and more.

For the App Guy interview, you can go on the site, and the interview with David Jones is below. Key takeaways are:

  • Utilities Apps are very well suited to many Appstores because they are globally in high demand.
  • These marketplaces are often easier for your App to be featured – so you increase user acquisition dramatically.
  • Cost per install campaigns (CPI) are now a more efficient method available in some of these stores. Run campaigns against a feature placement.
  • Apptoide allows users to create your own specialised store if you have a quality brand and a number of properties.
  • Managing feedback is critical, be proactive about that and use the ability in Google Play to respond or shift the conversation. Tools like HelpShift or Apptentive are examples of product that can help with that.