Name: Elly Sykes
Student Number: 15802562
Date: 21st February 2019
Tutor: Asher Rospigliosi & Chitharanjandas Chinnapaka
Word Count: 800
The proliferation of mobile phones has driven the rapid growth of apps (Fu et al, 2013). In 2017, consumers downloaded 178 billion apps to their devices, and by 2022 this is projected to grow to 258 billion app downloads (Statista, 2019). According to Gartner, less than 0.01 per cent of all consumer mobile apps will become financially successful throughout 2018—yet apps continue to be a common development goal and product focus for new and aspiring entrepreneurs (Daisyme,2018). Forbes (2013) article- ‘How To Build Your First Mobile App In 12 Steps’ says that it can be challenging for businesses to build their first app but following the 12 steps shown below helps develop an idea into a success.
Businesses need to research and explore choices when creating apps.
In regards to the best websites for platform development when creating a new app, Flutter has been rated highly from reviewers. It was created by Google to allow you to build a beautiful native app on iOS and Android from a single codebase (Flutter, 2019 & Raboy, 2018).
WisCom is also an example of a system that can analyse tens of millions user rating and comments to examine inconsistencies in reviews, identify the reasons what users like and dislike about an app, and to provide insights into entire app markets. (Li et al, 2018).
Following on from this, app analytics are fundamental to understand how well mobile applications are doing, it can help to improve apps function, attract new customers and keep them loyal by analysing data (Dogtiev, 2019). Google Mobile App Analytics is an example of a system that can understand the number of app users, their characteristics and where they are from (Google Analytics, 2019). Using a program such as Google Analytics, helps businesses to benchmark their app with competition. Furthermore, programs such as Brandwatch can be very useful when creating an app. They analyse mentions, tweets, videos and news stories in which the brand name has been discussed in real time using Artificial Intelligence (Brandwatch, 2019).
Click here: Getting started with Google Analytics for Mobile Apps
In addition businesses need to understand new dynamics of individuals through interconnection and how they use platforms, apps and global exchanges to create apps for the future (Hastings & Saperstein, 2018).
The e-book ‘ The Interconnect Individuals’ explores this further and explains how to seize the opportunity of apps in this era through understanding the individual.
Click Here: Interconnected Individuals
What are the risks ?
Most apps do actually get lost in the whirlpool of the App Store and with mobile app creation increasing, it is now a matter of how to make your app stand out from the crowd (Fu et al, 2013). If the app does not make the top 25 charts, it is likely it will not be seen by consumers. Exemplified by the fact 90 percent of app installs are generated by just 10 percent of the apps (Larizadeh, 2013).
The name of an application needs to be trendy, exciting and bold. It needs to be short and sweet with a relation to the genre of the mobile app. Word juggling and using a play on words are ideas in which successful businesses have adopted- ‘Facetune’ and ‘Boomerang’. Furthermore, the logo needs to catch consumers attention by being simple but supreme. Apps such as Facebook, Snapchat and Whatsapp have logos that are engraved in our brains (Beiley, 2016). If not, it is likely they will fail.
Top Free Apps of 2018 (Price, 2018)
In the video below, George Berkowski discusses how apps have changed the way we interact, communicate and travel and how apps have possibly been the biggest opportunity in history (Berkowski, 2015).
A big risk is whether to create a free app or a paid for app. Paid apps tend to do well with pre-existing audience (hard for start up companies) or when selling a niche service. The risk is that businesses that create a free app may not make anywhere near as much profit as an app which consumers have to pay for. However, it can depend on what app is being created as millennials are more inclined to pay for entertainment than for news (Richter, 2015).
Phil Libin, CEO of the popular productivity app Evernote says that The Internet Things will be so huge that it will eventually make apps obsolete. Even his own app which has been in the top 25 productivity apps in Apple App Store for the past four years. He mentions that we only use apps for two-minute interactions and with the move to wearable devices the session length will eventually drop to two seconds (Griffith, 2014).
The ‘Challenges and Best Practices in Mobile Application Development’ from the Journal of Interdisciplinary Research discusses the 11 biggest risks companies need to be aware of when creating and developing apps:
Click here: Challenges and Best Practices in Mobile Application Development
Understanding and being aware of these challenges when creating and developing an app will provide better understanding of challenges and therefore help to create solutions in the future.
References
Berkowski, G. (2015) How to build a Billion Dollar app?. [Video] TEDxTalks
Brandwatch. (2019) ‘Know what your customers think’.[Online] https://www.brandwatch.com[Accessed 21stFebruary 2019]
Daisyme, P. (2018) ‘9,999 in 10,000 Mobile Apps will fail’. [Online] https://www.startupgrind.com/blog/9999-in-10000-mobile-apps-will-fail-heres-why/ [Accessed 21st February 2019]
Dogtiev, A. (2019)‘Top Analytics Tools’. [Online] http://www.businessofapps.com/guide/app-analytics/[Accessed 14the February 2019]
Flutter. (2019) ‘Publish iOS and Android apps’.[Online] https://flutter.io[Accessed 14thFebruary]
Forbes. (2013) ‘How to build your first mobile app in 12 steps’. [Online] https://www.forbes.com/sites/allbusiness/2013/10/30/how-to-build-your-first-mobile-app-in-12-steps-part-1/#377c5cb03377[Accessed 14thJanuary 2019]
Fu, B., Lin, J., Li, L., Faloutsos, C., Hong, J. & Sadeh, N. (2013) ‘Why People Hate Your App- Making Sense of User Feedback in a Mobile App Store’. [Online]http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~leili/pubs/fu-kdd2013-wiscom.pdf[Accessed 14th February 2019]
Google Analytics. (2019) ‘Google Analytics for Mobile Apps’. [Online] https://developers.google.com/analytics/solutions/mobile[Accessed 21st February 2019]
Griffith, E. (2014) ‘Evernote CEO: Apps will become obsolete’. [Online] http://fortune.com/2014/04/10/evernote-ceo-apps-will-become-obsolete/[Accessed15th February]
Hastings, H. & Saperstein, J. (2018)The Interconnected Individual. New York: Business Expert Press.
Li, X., Zhang, Z. & Stefanidis, K. (2018) ‘Mobile App Evolution Analysis based on user reviews’. [Online] https://people.uta.fi/~kostas.stefanidis/docs/somet18.pdf[Accessed 14th February 2019]
Price. (2018)‘ These are Apple’s best iphone and ipad apps of 2018’. [Online] http://fortune.com/2018/12/04/these-are-apples-best-iphone-and-ipad-apps-of-2018/[Accessed 15thFebruary]
Raboy, N. (2018) ‘3 Of The Best Frameworks For Mobile App Development In 2018’.[Online] https://www.thepolyglotdeveloper.com/2018/04/3-best-frameworks-mobile-app-development-2018/ [Accessed 28th February 2019]
Statista. (2019) ‘Number of mobile app downloads worldwide in 2017,2018 and 2022 (in billions)’. [Online] https://www.statista.com/statistics/271644/worldwide-free-and-paid-mobile-app-store-downloads/[Accessed 14thFebruary 2019]
