After years of writing about mobile technology, I was fortunate enough to start working in the field recently. At inneractive, I work with some of the industry’s leading names in app development across all platforms, as well as companies on the forefront of mobile advertising. Blue Bite is one such company.
The mobile app landscape is becoming a really exciting space right now. The two leaders, Apple and Google, are both pulling out all the tricks to maintain their lead, and we, the users, are eating the fruit. With hundreds of thousands of apps across various app stores, there is no shortage of apps in every category. Apple said it best in its famous iPhone campaign. No matter what you are trying to accomplish with your smartphone, there is most likely “an app for that”.
After all this time, some things never change when it comes to the Web and social media. While it has penetrated the corporate world on levels we would never have imagined five years ago, social media is still a buzz word companies and people throw around without really understandING what it is about. The errors are on both side of the spectrum and some do not appreciate the power of the social Web while others overplay it. Here are some examples…
It has been a few months now since I replaced my beloved BlackBerry Bold with a shiny new iPhone 4 (Read about the experience here). All in all, despite its shortcomings (yes, Apple is not perfect), I am extremely satisfied with the iPhone and despite what I would have said about the first 3 generations of the Apple device, I now recommend the iPhone 4 to anyone who asks me.
First of all, let me just say that I have come to the conclusion that blogging has made me a very cynical person. As I watched the Apple iPad 2 event yesterday and read the live blogging/tweeting coming through my various streams, it made me a little sick. In fact, the sick feeling started earlier that day, as I tweeted. All the tech publications are overly obsessed with Apple to the point that all I was reading about hours before the event were mockups of what the iPad 2 was expected to look like.
It is the same story every time. Another friend of mine goes over to the dark side, gets rid of his/her BlackBerry and buys an iPhone. Then the questions start pouring in. “How do I delete a song from my iPhone? What do you mean I can’t do it from the device?” “How do I create a ringtone?” Then there is the question that every single new iPhone owner asks: “What apps should I download?”
Before I begin, I want to clarify one thing. I have never built a business or a product from scratch. I am not an entrepreneur (yet) and there is nothing more annoying than a person who preaches out of lack of experience. Having said that, due to the nature of my work, both as a blogger and a marketing guy, I meet a lot of companies on a daily basis. I hear their challenges and thoughts, and it always occurred to me that the average app developer goes through what every business owner goes through, only on a smaller scale.
One of the obvious advantages of the growing mobile app ecosystem is that if you don’t like a specific app, there is almost always a better alternative. If you don’t like making free calls on Skype, use Viber. If you don’t like the way Instagram applies filters to your photos, use PicPlz or Burstn. If you don’t like the way one flashlight app works, there are hundreds of others to choose from. I think you get the point.
By: Hillel Fuld
I had the privilege of having an hour long conversation with Patrick Mork, CMO of the Web’s largest independent app store GetJar yesterday, and I think it is safe to say, I learned a heck of a lot. As you probably noticed, all my previous interviews were done via email so I was able to quote the person precisely. This interview was done over the phone (not even Skype), so I will be paraphrasing the answers Patrick gave me to my questions.
I am sure by now I do not need to tell you how big the “app business” is, but just to put things in perspective, overall app revenue is estimated to grow to $17 billion in 2011. GetJar is a leading brand along with the App Store, the App Market, the App World, and as you will see later in the interview, a handful of other independent app stores like Mobango and Handango.
Talking to Patrick was a real pleasure and as I told him at the end of the call, I intend on picking his brain about the mobile space in the future. He very graciously accepted my request. So here are the questions I asked Patrick and the answers as I understood them (and he approved before I published):
1. Please tell me and my readers about yourself.
Originally from Belgium, Patrick worked for Pepsi and the mobile gaming company Glu before joining Getjar. He joined Getjar two and a half years ago when there were 8 employees. The company is now up to 65.
2. How did GetJar come to be?
GetJar actually started out in a completely different space providing developers with a beta testing platform for their apps. You would join Getjar to upload your apps, test others’ apps and communicate with other developers. The site was started in 2005 for the Java platform and when Symbian was getting started. Getjar, in its original model, had 150,000 downloads in its first month on the Web.
Once developers and the founders saw its success, they decided to take all the data and apps they had hosted on the site and add a distribution platform on the existing site to become an independent app store. The rest is history.
3. Is GetJar officially the biggest app store on the Web?
That really depends on your parameters, some other stores claim to have more apps than us, but our downloads speak for themselves. Over 1.6 billion downloads to date, 75,000 apps, and support for more than 2,500 mobile devices. Some might say that Mobango and Pocketgear who recently bought Handango are Getjar’s biggest competitors, but with different business models, Getjar has no real direct competitors.
4. What is the GetJar business model?
Getjar is free for the user to access and download apps. The revenue comes from a very interesting model, which is very similar to Google AdWords. Developers can run campaigns on Getjar to target certain geographical locations and certain devices. The developer bids on the placing, and only pays once the user downloads the app. It is completely performance based.
5. What does the future hold for independent app stores?
In one word, consolidation. There is no room in the market for hundreds of app stores, it is not scalable or sustainable. Consumers will eventually choose their app store based on exposure and discovery. Only a few app stores will remain and the rest will get swallowed up. In addition, mobile will follow the trends of the Web both in terms of a few dominant players taking over and in terms of openness.
The open model will eventually prevail and closed app stores like Apple’s will have to adapt. It is already starting with open app stores like Getjar surpassing any one provider in terms of downloads.
6. What will be the outcome in the battle of the OSs?
Contrary to the impression one might get from the buzz, the battle of the OSs is a long one and is not going to be determined today or tomorrow. Some things we can expect to see is that iOS will continue to be dominant, but in Patrick’s opinion, the iPhone has already reached its peak in terms of market share, while Android will continue in an upward graph. Apple is dominant because of its superior eco system and developer community.
iPad will continue to grow but iPhone will remain relatively static when it comes to market share. The one to watch in this space is Android, something Patrick and Getjar predicted over a year ago, when people were still pessimistic of the Android model. Android’s main challenge is monetization of apps and distribution. Fragmentation in the Android OS causes both users and developers major problems and they are going to need to fix this soon.
In terms of monetization, the numbers show that more people are willing to pay for iOS apps than Android ones. The reason being that iTunes’ one click billing solution is convenient and seamless, while Android makes it difficult for developers to charge for their apps on a global scale. Everyone talks about Android being open, but in reality, many aspects of the Android platform are in fact closed, such as the billing. If you do not have Google Checkout for example, you cannot charge for apps and Google Checkout has been deemed a failure.
Another aspect of how Android is in fact closed is that certain providers do not allow Android users to download and install Android apps from 3rd party stores, like Getjar. AT&T subscribers for example, cannot install Getjar apps on their Android phones. (Did you know that? I didn’t!)
7. What are your thoughts on mobile advertising?
Patrick has been a fan of in app advertising back before it was a popular method of monetization. It is an effective method of generating app revenue from mobile apps, but the big down side is that in order to make significant revenue according to Patrick, developers need serious traction. This is especially true in emerging markets where the eCPM (what the developer makes for every one thousand impressions) is particularly low. Mobile advertising is a big space that will only continue to grow.
At this point, I talked to Patrick a little about my new job at inneractive, a company that optimizes over 60 ad networks to offer developers an effective way to monetize their apps on all mobile platforms. Patrick will be meeting us in Barcelona next month in the Mobile World Congress.
8. What is the best monetization model for app developers?
Patrick pointed out that there are two main models for monetizing apps. The first one is ad funded as mentioned above and under certain circumstances, can be very effective. As I mentioned, the main weakness is emerging markets since developers need more traction to make real revenue there. The other model is in app purchases. Patrick gave me the example of a mobile game in which you have to kill a monster but the sword you are given for free is not sufficient, so you are offered to upgrade the sword for $.05. Patrick says users are willing to pay small amounts especially in games, so this model is expected to become extremely successful in the mobile gaming space. Patrick is not a fan of the freemium model for mobile apps as he things it is not as effective as the other options.
9. What are five tips you would give a developer just getting started?
10. How did you land an exclusive with the wildly popular Angry Birds for Android? How did it go down?
Speaking of launching on Getjar, I had to know how they managed to get Angry Birds to launch exclusively on Getjar. Patrick told me that the founder of Getjar, Ilja Laurs knows Peter, the Mighty Eagle of Rovio, Peter Vesterbacka, from Finland. When Patrick and Peter ran into each other at CTIA, they sat down for coffee. Peter was talking about how he was upset with Google because he was about to launch Angry Birds on Android, but the “Android guys” were not answering his calls. Patrick explained that Peter than looked up and said “How about we launch it exclusively on Getjar”?
Patrick of course accepted and Getjar obviously made a lot of PR noise about the launch. When the birds did eventually launch on Getjar, the site’s traffic increased 12x within the hour and the servers eventually crashed for a few hours. Within the first day, there were a million downloads of Angry Birds, and the game continues to perform phenomenally well. Patrick said that as far as he knows, Rovio is making as much from the ad funded Android game as they are from the paid iPhone version of Angry Birds but he said for more numbers, I would have to speak to Peter.
Since the launch of Angry Birds on Getjar, the site has launched a new program for highly successful apps. The program is called Getjar Plus and it has since launched titles with Zynga, Mafia Wars, Digital Chocolate and many others.
11. What are your thoughts on today’s announcements, namely The Daily for iPad and the Android Web store?
Patrick was not very impressed or excited about either of these announcements. He said that we knew about The Daily for some time and it will probably do “ok”, but not sure it will save the newspaper industry, especially with the small number of iPads on the market, relatively speaking. It is also too early to know how well it will do when it comes to profitability. As for the Google Web store, Patrick said he was baffled how Google launched the Market in the first place without a Web UI.
In today’s day and age, this is a must. The Web store is long overdue. At this point, I asked Patrick about Apple not having a Web store and he answered me “Apple is Apple”. They have a very strong consumer brand and are experts at retail, Google isn’t and could not afford to not have a Web store. Apple should not have either, but at least they have their consumer brand.
As you noticed, I asked some pretty difficult questions. I was sure I would get at least one “I cannot disclose that information” answer, but it never came. Patrick was really open and nice to talk to, for that I thank him.
I hope you enjoyed the interview as much as I did, and as usual, I would love to hear your comments, so leave them below or hit me up on Twitter.
Rueters is reporting that Nokia is expected to announce a reshuffling of the executive team at its event on the 11th. According to some very very reliable sources, I have some different information about what we can expect to hear at the February 11th event.
One of the first and main challenges mobile developers have to overcome is discovery. We have all heard the numbers, 300k iOS apps, 200k Android apps, plus BlackBerry, Symbian, and all other platforms bring the total number of mobile applications to the millions. So given these growing figures, how is a developer supposed to get an app discovered?
