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App Developer Conversations: Android News & Apple Critiques

By: Robi Ganguly

In this App Developer Conversations we dug into some recent Android news and some critiques coming out of Apple.

We focused on a couple key areas:

  • What’s the impact of Andy Rubin leaving the Android team at Google?
  • The table market is becoming so large companies can focus on just making apps for tablets

Be sure to visit MobileDevHQ to see the how to be successful with apps in China

Take a look for yourself and see if you learn something new. Be sure to let us know in the comments if there are other areas we can address!

The Transcript:

Robi: Hello. Welcome to App Developer Conversations. We’ve got Ryan Morel
back. You look a little tan. I hope you had fun in Hawaii. Ian is also
back from Hawaii.

Ian: Doesn’t look tan, because I stay in the shade.

Robi: Ian Sefferman of MobileDevHQ. I’m Robi Ganguly of Apptentive. Now
that the gang is back together, we’re going to talk about some new and
some old news, I guess. Let’s start off with something that’s old but
it’s always funny when it happens; Phil Schiller told us that Android
sucks, which is like, “Okay. Phil Schiller’s talking.” Then Android’s
chief, Andy Rubin is leaving. How about you talk to us a little bit
about the Android news around and Rubin leaving the [inaudible: 00:44]
and going into something else for Google.

Ian: I think it’s a potential huge shake-up. It could be really good, it
could be really bad. Andy Rubin has done a fantastic job of having a
vision of an open source operating system, finding a company who could
help get distribution for that operation system in Google, and making
it sort of . . . it’s not the standard, because I think iOS is the
standard to everybody here, but it is certainly comparable to the
standard; has huge numbers. That being said, if they do want to become
the standard, they’re going to have to figure out a 10x play and maybe
that involves shaking things up every once in awhile. This could work
out for them really well for them.

Robi: Do you have any thoughts on it?

Ryan: Yeah. I think it’s been an amazing run for Android; we all know that.
I think questions start to get raised when you have a market size that
is 5x the size of another, yet ¼ the size of the revenue. That starts
to become a little bit . . . that’s way out of balance. Then other
questions start to come up when you have OEMs with leverage. Amazon,
right across the street here, has essentially their own version of
Android, which Google has no control over. We can bet Samsung is
continuing to just push on their own version of Android, if not, going
to move slowly; Tizen, or whatever the hell they call their thing. Now
all of a sudden, you take those two players out of what you would
consider the core Google Android audience, and you’ve got problems.
You’ve got [inaudible: 02:28] devices.

Robi: I think that is probably Phil Schiller’s point. Phil Schiller is
like, “This fragmentation is real and it’s really messing with
consumers experiences, and look at the data. Sure, they have more
devices than us, a lot more now, but our people use their devices way
more often that are consuming more data.” When you think about it from
the developer’s perspective, we’re always talking about which
platforms developers prefer, what approach. It seems like you’ve got
to be developing for both if you’re going to be in this long-term.
This issue, are you seeing in your business what Phil Schiller is
saying, in terms of there being more money, people are using it more
often?

Ian: Yeah. The short answer to that is, yes. There’s obvious caveats to
that, and we talk about Amazon as a caveat to that. In the standard
Android world, absolutely, iOS rules the day.

Robi: How does this play out? Do we just get to hear for the next 10 years,
“Android sucks”? Then everybody’s buying Android devices. Is this the
scenario?

Ryan: I think at some point, people need to recognize that it’s okay to
have different audience segments. This has always been Apple’s play.
Apple’s like, “I don’t want these people who want free devices. We
don’t want them.” It’s arguable for game developers; you don’t want
them either, because they’re not paying you any money. Then there’s a
certain segment of the Android population, like you and other people
buying the Galaxy Nexus 3 and Nexus 4. Sorry.

Ian: Galaxy S3.

Ryan: Yeah, Galaxy S3 and Galaxy S4, etc., those are the high-end scope.
When you look at the handset breakdown between them, it’s still iOS.
If I’m a developer, I’m thinking about how do I maximize my game for
these handsets that appeal to this higher-end audience and then not
care so much about this lower end audience, maybe?

Robi: Then there is another side to this I think, which is Schiller and
Apple are up there saying fragmentation’s bad, it’s really hard for a
consumer to have a consistent experience, and their developers’ lives
are easier, but we continue to see more and more devices coming out of
them supporting different things. iPad 2 is different from the iPad 3,
which is different from the iPad Mini, which is different from the
iPhone 5, which is different from the iPhone 4S. There’s no shortage
of things that are confusing about the iOS ecosystem at this point.
Are you seeing any of that stuff coming out, playing out? Are you
hearing from developers, that that is becoming more challenging?

Ian: We really talk after the development cycle, but I haven’t actually
heard that. People still bang on that drum, and I think of Android is
fragmented but iOS is not. I think part of that is because Apple says,
“Android is fragmented and we are not.” People just listen to them. It
is fragmented.

Robi: I’m definitely seeing people developing just and iPad app or just an
iPhone app now. More and more being like, “I’m just choosing this one
thing. I’m just going after this. It’s too complicated to think about
the experiences across both.”

Ian: It’s probably right to do that. Depending on what your app is, there
are different use cases between having an app on your phone and having
an app on a tablet.

Ryan: Yep. We’ve talked about this before; they’re all big enough now. When
the iPad first released, an iPad-only app was a guaranteed failure.
Now, there are 120 million of them or something ridiculous. That’s a
huge market of people who are spending a lot of money. Perfect, Super
Cell, a good example, there’s an article about that making . . .
they’re calling the iPad the perfect gaming device or something, and
they’re focused almost solely on that.

Robi: Wow.

Ryan: Anyways.

Robi: Anything else?

Ryan: It’s good to be back.

Robi: Welcome back.

Ryan: I missed you guys.

Robi: We missed you, too. We talked about you quite a bit in the last ones
we showed, actually.

Mark: Fucking asshole, glad he’s gone.

Ian: I think there was fucking asshole, but it was because you were in
Hawaii.

Robi: Sipping Mai Tais.

Ian: Not editing the video.

Robi: Be sure to tune in for the next 2 installments of App Developer
Conversations. You can like this on YouTube. Share it with your
friends and subscribe.

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App Developer Conversations: How app developers can take advantage of the new iOS smart banners

By: Robi Ganguly

In this week’s App Developer Conversations we discussed Apple’s new smart banners for iOS, which work in Safari.

We had a couple key observations:

  • The fact that they only work in Safar is puzzling and somewhat listening
  • The ability to pass information along to the app from the smart banner has a lot of potential for end consumer customization.

Watch to find out more and be sure to see the other two segments from this week:

App Developer Conversations is a weekly video series with Ian Sefferman of MobileDevHQ and Ryan Morel of PlacePlay covering current topics of interest for app developers. If you have suggestions for future conversations, please let us know!

The Transcript:
Robi: Hello. Welcome to the next installment of App Developer
Conversations. I am here with Ian Sefferman, of MobileDevHQ, and Ryan
Morel, of PlacePlay. Today we are going to talk a little bit about
smart app banners. As most people are aware, with the release of iOS
6, you can now put tags in your content on the web that will launch a
smart app banner on Mobile Safari.

For most viewers of your website on an iOS device, you have the
opportunity to show them something smarter, it shows them that app,
and it makes it easier to download. Along with that, comes the
announcement that you can put a tag called App Argument into that
smart app banner. That is pretty interesting, from the tracking
perspective, because you can pass data through.

Ian, why don’t you kick it off. Talk to us about the ways in which
passing the data along can be really interesting to app developers.

Ian: I think, in my world, the most interesting way to use that App
Argument is as a refer; if you were to go from the web perspective.
Attribution is obviously broken in the app ecosystem. There are people
like HasOffers Mobile Tracking who have done some really interesting
stuff there, but fundamentally it’s still broken. Having this gives
you at least some amount of the ability to track where a user comes
from. You could use this to say, ‘app attribute refer = Google keyword
XYZ,’ and then actually see where they come through straight from
Google, or you can see website, Facebook, or whatever, and start
tracking it down that way. Obviously, it is only going to give you
those who came through your website, but it is better than nothing.
Attribution is probably the biggest thing I think of.

Robi: Digging in a little bit, does it mean that if you did this well as an
app developer, you could essentially establish a landing page on your
site for campaigns you ran, like a Google Adwords campaign or Facebook
ads that are all going to the same landing page, and then you can pass
along refers?

Ian: Yes, that is the way that I understand it. You are going to have to,
if I was a developer, I would basically do that on a sampling of my
campaigns, where it is . . . You are going to have a drop off because
there is increased friction now.

Your ad campaigns and anything like that, are going to be less
effective overall. I think that if you were to do that to, say, 5% or
10% of your ad campaigns, that would be a very interesting way for you
to get metrics on which campaigns are performing the best. Then, once
you know the answers to those questions, you can then drop out that
intermediate section and focus only on the ones that worked well, and
go back to it in a month and try again or something like that.

Robi: What about you? What do you see from your business, from the
advertising business? Could this be helpful? Would you want to
implement this for advertisers and for any of the publishers that you
are dealing with?

Ryan: I have been thinking about it, and I think the answer is I am not
sure. We know already what apps serve what ad, whether or not they
click, and whether or not they install it. I am not quite sure I
understand what the value would necessarily be. I think we can always
pull some additional data to codify the existing data that we already
get. Maybe we pull a past device [inaudible 03:42], or time into those
downloads. We already get all that stuff, so I am not entirely sure.
Ultimately, I think that the benefit is to developers here, because
then they can start to be smarter overtime about where they are
showing their own ads. It is great that I know this information. I
think developers just have sometimes natural mistrust about networks.

Robi: Right.

Ryan: ‘Are these guys really being honest with me?’ Eventually, they will
roll this out across apps, too; that makes perfect sense. Then
developers can start to do their own testing and tracking, and I think
that is a really good thing.

Robi: I think that sometimes Apple just starts a tree of possibility, and
this might be the start of them coming out with some attribution. I
can definitely see them starting to do more now that they have got
Chomp inside. That team is probably more focused on how to make the
App Store better. I can see them starting to roll into more of a
metrics and here is the tail and how it hits your various assets and
how they convert, which would be great for everybody.

Ian: One thing that is interesting about this, I think, is that they
implement it as meta tags, which basically, it restricts it to only
people who have the latest Safari that supports it, rather than a
JavaScript snippet that could have gone on any browser. I use Chrome
on my iOS browser. My guess is, maybe it knows how to do it because it
is using the same renderer, but I am not sure.

Ryan: I think, potentially the interesting thing here for the long term is,
I believe that Apple wants to really provide a single solution for
developers, because it is clear that their ecosystem is what is going
to drive hardware sales down the line. By providing developers not
only the hardware platform and the users, but also all the tools they
need to promote and close the loop on their marketing budget. It is a
pretty locked-in platform right there that both developers and users
will keep coming back to. Maybe it is a starting point, I do not know,
it seems like it.

Robi: One last piece on this topic. There is another interesting piece that
could happen. If you are passing along this argument and you, as the
developer, know in your code that different arguments mean people are
coming from different places or searching for different things. You
can tailor that first experience in the app, and say, ‘Welcome. Thank
you for . . . It looked like you were looking for recipes for this
cocktail, so here it is, on our app.’ You can actually get pretty
sophisticated. I do not know how many people would do that near-term,
but it would be great, I think, if developers started to make sure
that flow of discovery and desire is then satisfied in the first
experience with an app. As we all know, most apps are not used more
than two or three times, so that first experience being really
relevantm can be huge.

Ryan: Can you do that?

Robi: Yes.

Ryan: Really?

Robi: Yes.

Ryan: That is awesome. I did not know that.

Ian: I actually think that that would fundamentally, probably help your
business, as well, in terms of it sounds like it would make engagement
a lot stronger, which is something that you are deep in.

Robi: Yes, absolutely. Anything that makes this easier, better, and gives
you more context about your app seems, to me, like a great thing.

Ian: Yes.

Robi: Make sure to join us for the next installment in App Developer
Conversations with Ian.

App Developer Conversations: How to create and extend app franchises

By: Robi Ganguly

In this week’s App Developer Conversations we discussed Rovio’s recently released game: Bad Piggies and explored how app developers can create and extend franchises.

We had a couple key observations:

  • Rovio’s ability to promote its other games with a tremendously large installed base is significant.
  • In general, app developers are really just starting to wrap their heads around building a relationship with their customers, but it’s clear that those who are doing it well can really grow their business.

Watch to find out more and be sure to see the other two segments from this week:

  • PlacePlay talked in more detail about iOS6 – one week in
  • MobileDevHQ talked about hard core games and if they’re appropriate for mobile

App Developer Conversations is a weekly video series with Ian Sefferman of MobileDevHQ and Ryan Morel of PlacePlay covering current topics of interest for app developers. If you have suggestions for future conversations, please let us know!

The Transcript
Robi: Hello. Welcome to Part 2 of App Developers Conversations this week. I
am here with Ryan Morel, of PlacePlay, and Ian Sefferaman,
MobileDevHQ.

Angry Birds is Rovio’s big hit, but now Rovio is coming out with Bad
Piggies, and they are trying to see if they can extend this franchise
into something else. I think it makes sense to talk about how a
publisher can really build a franchise, and how you can take an
audience from one app, or one series of apps, to other apps. Let us
kick it off with you, Ryan. You played the game, what do you think?

Ryan: I think it is fun, at least the 2 or 3 levels that I played. It is
interesting enough that I will play maybe a couple more and either
stop or keep going. I think that the nice thing that it has, and was
really smart on Rovio’s part, was making the pigs the central theme,
the central character of the game. I think we saw that despite Rovio’s
massive marketing muscle, which is massive. Amazing Alex, probably for
Rovio’s standards, is a massive flop, so using a character from the
Angry Bird’s franchise may a ton of sense for them.

You played a level or 2.

Ian: Yes. It is a good game right. It is fun, relatively simple, it will
be a good time waster for when you are sitting on a bus, or at the
airport, or something like that. I totally agree, using, leveraging
the franchise of Angry Birds is super-smart. I am always amazed at
walking into, I am ashamed to admit it that I have walked into a
Walmart in the last few months, Walking into a Walmart and seeing
Angry Birds toys and things like that. This just totally leverages
that. It is straight out of . . . Rovio has done a good job at
pretending they are a movie studio that does not make movies. They
say, ‘We are going to act as if we are Paramount, and Paramount knows
exactly that, whoever makes it, that Pirates of the Caribbean is a
monster franchise, or Pixar knows that Toy Story is a monster
franchise, if we need to extend that franchise, we extend that
franchise, it makes us like killing in the short term. That is a long
term play because you can do it over and over again. From that
perspective, it makes a ton of sense. It is something that I do not
think a lot of . . . EA has done it with Madden, things like that,
that is just a continual franchise, but not a lot of the casual games
have been able to do that, and I think it is really interesting to see
somebody do that.

Robi: How did you find out about it? Did you read press, or were you told
about it in one of their apps?

Ryan: I read about it.

Robi: OK.

Ryan: They do, Rovio pushes their stuff hard. If you go into any of their
iPad or iPhone games and you press pause, you will see ads for their
other ones. Clearly, a lot of people are finding out about it through
that advertising. I think it will be, I think it is an interesting
little test to see how many people will convert from Angry Birds to
Bad Piggies versus Angry Birds to Amazing Alex, whether or not that
becomes a barometer for their ability to produce non-Angry Birds
content. Angry Birds has shown no signs of slowing down. It has been
3 years, but you would assume that eventually it will. Do you not
think so?

Robi: Probably. It is not always top of the charts though, which it was for
a good period of time. I think what is interesting is their using a
bunch of their inventory instead of for advertising external stuff,
advertising their internal stuff. We, at Yahoo!, call that house
advertising and it makes a ton of sense, especially you are as big as
they are.

I think what is weird, to me, is that Rovio has not really done a lot
else to really build up their franchise. They have the ability to
subscribe to a newsletter and some of the apps. I do not know if you
have ever clicked on that. It takes you out to a webpage, which is
just really dumb. You are leaving the app and it does not really look
good on your phone, so I would be surprised if that was very
meaningful to them. Do you not think they could be more sophisticated?

Ian: Yes, absolutely. They are sophisticated in some of the stunts that
they do. I remember the Space Needle, that was super-smart, covering
the Space Needle with a sling shot and putting a big bird on there was
really interesting. I think they way that they branded that stuff,
doing that type of marketing is smart. I think they have not done a
good job of the traditional digital marketing, building a community
around this franchise.

Robi: Right.

Ryan: Right. Do you think that, I would guess that the reason is that they
just have not needed to. By the time they need to, it will be too
late.

Robi: That is the thing. If I was them, you got the dollars in your wallet
and the ability to invest; I would be investing as much, if not more,
than I was in new games and new opportunities, and making sure that my
ability to take people from one game to the next, to the next, was
really smart and intelligent. I was taking that audience and I was
moving them around my assets, and making sure that they knew about
what else I was doing. I think that is one of the places we see most
developers being really behind the marketing ball, where we think in
app messaging and the ability to really take your audience and talk to
them about the right things, you drive significant results. It is
instructive of where we are in the market, that a company a successful
as Rovio, is still pretty early and somewhat primitive in thinking
about this.

Ryan: I think it could be just a result of the natural extension of the
console-days. With mobile, it is really the first opportunity and the
first platform that companies have that cannot ‘own’ the customer,
despite the fact that Apple technically owns it.

Robi: Right.

Ryan: Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo have always been the gateways.
Although, Apple is now, there are still meaningful opportunities to
connect outside of the app experience with the App Store, Facebook,
their website, and all the different things you are talking about, but
just no one is doing it. EA is trying to build Origin. I cannot
remember the last time I heard anyone talk about it besides me. Could
they do a better job? The answer is obviously, yes, because eventually
someone’s going to. [inaudible: 06:43]

Robi: Anything else on this topic?

Ryan: I would just ask if you think, if either of you think Rovio has a
shot at doing something really successful, outside the Angry Birds
franchise?

Robi: I think that they probably could, if they were to take my advice.

Ian: Hire Rovi, and we can win.

Robi: Exactly. Founders@Apptentive.com. Seriously, I think if the fact of
the matter is that if they start to invest in turning their apps into
channels, to build a real meaningful audience, and it is not just
about the ads that they are using, but it is actually saying, ‘We are
going to turn this into a marketing funnel. We are going to get deeper
engagement from people.’ Then you can move folks, but otherwise, you
have to have a lose association that looks close enough to the Angry
Birds franchise and it is using the same characters, then of course,
somebody will click then go download your app. What do you think?

Ian: I think you are right on. It is interesting to me that, I think, EA
is a household name. Rovio is not, Angry Birds is. From that
perspective, it becomes hard. Angry Birds is the company, so branching
out of Angry Birds is a little bit more difficult, where as EA is the
company and EA has Madden, Tiger Wood’s Golf, and things like that. I
think they got to fix that problem first.

Ryan: The assumption that you can take a hardcore experience and put it out
into mobile and see the same levels of success, is naive and
borderline retarded. At least what I have seen in most the hardcore
games . . .

Robi: Stay Tuned for Part 3 of this week’s App Developer Conversations.
Thank you guys.

App Developer Conversations: Is developer interest in Android waning?

By: Robi Ganguly

In this week’s App Developer Conversations we discussed recent reports that developer interest in developing for Android continues to diminish.

We had a couple key observations:

  • Fragmentation is real and it’s definitely giving people pause.
  • In our businesses we’re actually still seeing positive trends in Android interest.

Watch to find out more and be sure to see the other two segments from this week:

App Developer Conversations is a weekly video series with Ian Sefferman of MobileDevHQ and Ryan Morel of PlacePlay covering current topics of interest for app developers. If you have suggestions for future conversations, please let us know!
The Transcript:
Robi: Hello. Welcome to the next installment of App Developer
Conversations. I am here with Ryan Morrell, of Place Play, and Ian
Sefferman, of Mobile Dev HQ. We are going to dig in a little bit on a
topic that a lot of people like to talk about.

Appcelerator came out with some data around, and that is Android’s
adoption among developers, is it waning? Appcelerator says over the
past four quarters it has been dropping and they are seeing more and
more healthy interest in iOS development, but that it is waning in the
Android space. The question is, should we take these numbers
seriously, and what should we be thinking about as app developers?
Ryan, why don’t you kick it off.

Ryan: It is a grain of salt, to some extent. I do not know that
Appcelerator would have any specific agenda for promoting data that
looks like this, but we have not seen any data to support that the
developers are losing interest in Android. We actually have more
Android developer than we do iOS, so I do not know if that is entirely
true. I certainly do hear people saying, ‘We are going to do Android
when we can,’ and that, lots of times, leads to, ‘My stuff is going so
well. Do we want to update the content so frequently that, that means
Android slips?’ We have had lots of conversations with developers who
say, “Yes, it is about 80% of the revenue. There is 1X to 2X the work,
in terms of development.’ I think that probably the biggest challenge
that developers have is now that once you create your app, now what?
There is Google Play, Android, and carrier stores, that’s a lot of
work. What do you guys think?

Ian: We are in the same thing, in that we have not firsthand noticed that.
We have always seen our customer base be 80/20, iOS to Android.
Anecdotally, I have seen an increase in people caring about Kindle,
and that might be a Seattle-bias or whatnot, but that is another
interesting data point. I think that if I were to look at, whether or
not that study is true, if I were to look at, if I were to assume it
is true and think about why it might be the case, one, Apple has done
a fantastic job of updating their OS so frequently that developers
just need to keep on the train and have a little bit less time and
resources to do other things. Two, traditionally, I have always
thought of Apple and iOS as [inaudible: 02:44], as the high-end of the
smartphone, but when you actually look at what they have done, I am
constantly surprised that they now have free phones. It is really not
super-expensive to get into iOS anymore. When you start to think about
how they have captured the low-end of the market, or they are
capturing the low-end of the market, at least in the United States,
that that is super-compelling to a developer who says, ‘I actually
want to focus on the lower-end because I am working a weird game or
some product that targets those consumers, rather than the high-end. I
would have traditionally said “Go to Android first,” but now you can
actually go to iOS first, even in that type of situation.

Robi: I think one of the things that Appcelerator stated when they came out
with their study was that people are fearful for the fragmentation,
that problem continues to be something that makes people hesitate or
might be limiting the interest. The fact of the matter is that Google
needs to be more aggressive about phasing things out and making sure
that the updates are going out. There is an argument to be made that
they have lost so much control that they cannot actually do that.
Apple is continuously doing things that upset the developer community,
but the thing that pleases the developer community is how quickly they
are pushing Legacy OS versions off, from a support perspective, and
they are not even supporting NX codes, so you cannot really build for
it, and so I think that makes a lot of lives easier.

Ryan: Every time Apple updates their OS, they also provide developers with
new features that they can take advantage of, as well as the consumer
community. When developers have new features they can play with, they
want to go do that. They are consistently updating apps to take
advantage of that, consumers are updating software to take advantage
of that, so it creates this nice rising tide. With Google, and now we
even see this with Windows Phones 7, software gets updated and only
some percentage of people do it. If you are a developer you say, ‘I
got to . . . not only did I develop this for multiple versions of OS,
now I got to go do individual updates based on . . .no.’ They think
that is too much work.

Robi: That too much work question hits organizations large and small. We
are saying it is not just the independent developers here facing this
problem, it is the large companies with mobile presences are already
behind the 8 ball, they do not have enough resources to do what they
are doing. Things are moving way too fast, so that decision is really
a painful one for everybody in the ecosystem, it seems like, to us.

Ian: Yes, I agree.

Ryan: How much of that do you think is reality versus the momentum of
perceived reality? I technically do not know. We are not developing
apps and doing stuff for Android, but my perception is that, and the
noise we hear is that it is hard. Is that really true, or is that just
the momentum of the perception, is it just perceived that way so
people say, ‘No, I do not think so’?

Robi: It does seem be challenging. We make an SDK for Android, more and
more people are using it, but what we have found is that there are
some issues with documentation. Recently we ran into an issue where
the documentation and the Java doc that you could download was not the
same as the doc online, and it was recently downloaded, so they did
not actually specify something that they did online, and that caused
an issue for us. That stuff is a little bit amateur hour, I think.
When we think about how we design the UI on iOS, we say, ‘Here is what
we want it to look like.’ We draw it out, design it, and make sure it
works. ‘OK. Good,’ you put it out there and do some testing.

With Android, you say, ‘This is what we want it to look like. Now what
can we actually accomplish? It looks like on this portion of devices,
that is going to be a crappy experience, so let us go back,’ And you
are constantly fighting that game of lowest common denominator. It is
just not a good place to be.

Ryan: Ian, you had mentioned the low-end market and Apple kind of capturing
that. That has historically been owned by Google, to some extent,
despite Samsung’s progress of the high-end. Do you think that over
time people . . . are developers caring less because that low-end does
not spend?

Ian: That is a really good question. You probably actually have more data
on that, in terms of advertising than we do. I think that, just as in
the real world, there is a lot of money to be made in the high-end,
there are also a lot of businesses to be built in the low-end of the
things, especially the Walmarts of the world do not carry luxury
goods, but Walmart makes a lot of money. I have a feeling that it is
both, and it is just dependant on who you are going to target. Did you
seen any of that on the [inaudible: 07:40] side?

Ryan: Yes, everything. Yes, of course. More people want advertising on the
Android because they cannot make money elsewhere. We all know that, A,
advertising revenue on Android is not as good as it is on iOS,
partially because of this low-end, high-end perception of people. How
long does that last? Our own advertising pays pretty well and
developers like it, but it is not Dragonvale, you are not bringing in
$15 million a month from the app store, so it is hard to know if that
can support an entire economy of app developers.

Robi: That was very good conversation of the wax and waning interest in the
Android ecosystem. Join us for the next installment of App Developer
Conversations.

The problem is somebody needs to actually be pushing the HTML5
platform forward. It seemed like Google is doing that, and maybe,
arguably, they still are but they have pulled back. They seem confused
about this. If it is not Google, then who else would it be?

App Developer Conversations: What iPhone 5 means for Apple and app developers

By: Robi Ganguly

In this week’s App Developer Conversations with Ian Sefferman of MobileDevHQ and Ryan Morel of PlacePlay we discussed the new iPhone 5 and discussed some of the stats that Apple shared along with talking briefly about what to do with the increased screen size.

We had a couple key observations:

  • The fact that 90% of apps are downloaded every month is shocking and super positive for the app developer ecosystem. When people talk about a long tail in the app store they’re right – the opportunity exists all the way down the tail.
  • A taller screen adds a new row, giving every app developer another 4 spots where they can win a home screen slot.

Watch to find out more and be sure to see the other two segments from this week:

The Transcript:
Robi: Hello. Welcome to another episode of App Developer Conversations. I
am here with Ian Sefferman, of MobileDevHq, and Ryan Morel, of
PlacePlay. I am Robi Ganguly, of Apptentive.

Yesterday, Apple finally announced the iPhone 5 after lots of waiting,
blogosphere speculation, etc., and they showed us some cool things.
Most importantly, they told us a bunch of stats that were really
impressive. Number one was that 90% of apps are downloaded at least
once every month, which I thought was amazing. Number two, that 400
million iOS devices had been sold as of June 2012.

I think that the thing to talk about first is just Apple has created a
behemoth; it is a real juggernaut from an app distribution
perspective. I think 90%, again, is just shocking. They are selling a
ton of devices that seem to be in the world for a long period of time.
Let us jump off on that.

Ryan, what was your reaction to those announcements?

Ryan: Shock. I think the most shocking one is that 90% of apps get
downloaded every month, because there seems to be . . . The App Store
is certainly feast or famine, but with famine, you are still eating a
little bit, so maybe that is not that bad. There are probably
developers watching who are saying, ‘Great. That app got downloaded
one time. Yes, one time really sucks, but that is a chance, and it is
better than zero. If you are focused on building a really fantastic
app, one download might . . . you may not become the next Angry Birds,
but you have got to start somewhere.

Robi: What if that one download is [??], and he loves you, and then all of
a sudden . . .

Ryan: Yes, exactly.

Ian: I think it is interesting. Obviously, I do not know the stats for the
web, but I would be willing to bet that most pages on the web get
viewed less than. 90% of pages on the web are viewed less than one
time per month.

Robi: Yes.

Ryan: Yes.

Ian: When you compare the web to the app ecosystem, the app ecosystem is
actually not looking so bad. There is obviously a real future there.

Robi: I think that another thing that came out of this, just realizing how
many iOS devices are out there, that is really interesting is the
notion that if you get an iPhone 4, then you see the iPhone 5 and you
decide to upgrade it, generally speaking, we are seeing people take
the iPhone 4 and sell it on Craigslist, eBay or something like that.
What do you think that means, as an app developer? How should you be
thinking about those activities?

Ryan: First of all, as a consumer, it is amazing. I just looked, and my
wife’s iPhone 4, which we will replace, someone will pay $200 for
that.

Robi: That is incredible.

Ryan: That is amazing. This did not happen before. Now there is this second
market being created, which ultimately creates new opportunities for
developers. We assume that, let us pretend that there are 100 million
really active, engaged people in the app economy, and everyone else
would be secondary users who still want contact, they just could not,
for whatever reason, get the newest iPhone. Every person that gets
brought on board to the iPhone ecosystem is an opportunity for
developers to acquire new customers, because these people buying these
secondary devices are new, most likely. New people, go get your app in
front of them.

Ian: It is interesting to see how the iPhone 4 is now free with a new
contract. That is really interesting to see how that affects it. I
would love to see how that . . . That is obviously a US thing, I would
assume, and maybe part of Europe, but I would like to see how they are
going to handle that in Africa, South America, and other emerging
places, to see if they can break into the lower-end. Then to see, as
they break into that lower-end, how does that affect the app economy?
Does that fundamentally mean that the percentage of buys go down
because those people do not have the money to buy apps? Or does it
mean that those people will stick to the free apps and advertising
becomes even more important. That is another interesting . . .

Robi: I think one of the things that would be a guess is the fact that they
are retaining their value after such a long period of time, that you
can still sell it for $200. It is not just about the hardware, because
the hardware is actually quite a way behind at this point, if you look
at the specs and stuff. It is that software aspect, the draw of the
software ecosystem must be part, if not all, of the reason that they
are retaining such an extraordinary amount of value.

Ryan: I think everyone who complains about the iPhone not living up to the
expectations are totally unrealistic. I think, to your point, I do not
know that the hardware matters at this point. Great. It has a 4G LTE
chipset, which is fantastic, LG is awesome unless you use AT&T in
Seattle.

The reality is that the ecosystem around all of your content living on
one platform that works across multiple devices is what keeps people.
This is not 2005 or 2006, when a new Sony Ericsson or new Nokia would
come out and you would say, ‘I was going to go get that,’ because it
is the awesome, new hardware. At this point, it is all about the
merging of the hardware and software experience, I think.

Ian: That feels like we have gotten to the point with laptops, almost,
where . . . When I buy a laptop today, I do not really look at the
specs so much. I say, ‘I know need at least 4Gigs of RAM. Outside of
that, speed is going to be probably OK. I am not doing crazy graphic
stuff. All right. Here we go. That is it.’ It sounds like we are
getting there with mobile devices, already, where people say, ‘I do
not really care what the chipset is in there, it is probably going to
be OK. I am much more biased towards what does the ecosystem look
like?

Robi: Talking about speeds and feeds is their own way to go. One last point
on the new announcement, and then we can segway into some other stuff,
but it is a bigger screen, it is taller. I think what is interesting
about that, from an app developer’s perspective, is that you are
always struggling for loyalty, engagement, and making sure that your
top-of-mind with a consumer. Now there is an extra row, which means
that you just have that much more of a chance to show up on the home
screen. Do you think that enough app developers are thinking hard
about it showing up on the home screen, and does this change how they
are thinking, at all?

Ryan: I think it is probably, and Ian can probably talk a lot about this,
and [inaudible: 06:42]. We know from just web search that first page
results get 85% or 90% of the clicks. What is on your home screen of
your phone is similar to that first page, that is what you use most.
There being an extra a row, yes, of course that is important. I would
say that . . . I know that Ian talks a little more this, but having a
really nice icon is really important. Even if it is just pretty to
look at, and it goes on the home screen, that is good enough.

Ian: It will be really interesting to see, just from a boot perspective,
there is an app, and now you get four app icons, by default, to go on
the home screen.

Robi: Right, yes.

Ian: Which is not even necessarily a user action, it is just going to
happen, and that will affect things. You guys spend a lot of time in
retention and things like that. Do you have any understand of what the
home screen matters or how developers can use it best?

Robi: It certainly matters because you are more likely to just get them to
open you up and look at it. It is not clear, from a statistics
perspective, how many people are showing up on what home screen,
because there is not a lot of data that is shared around that. I think
that point that you just brought up is that app developers, if you are
looking at your stats over the next two months and you are starting to
see a boost in activity, it means you are just beyond the fold and the
fold has now changed. You were just on the top of the second screen,
and you are showing up, now, on the front screen. I think a lot of
people should be paying attention to that increased engagement, trying
to go connect with those people, and maintain that. Any time you can
actually communicate to your customers in whatever way you have,
whether it is email, app, inboxes, or things like that, maybe you
should actually be asking to show up on the home screen, or perhaps
even trying to understand if you are on the home screen. I guess, I
think that people could probably do more work around figuring out what
would drive them to be top-of-mind for a consumer, and maybe being
more explicit about it.

Ryan: Maybe there is something interesting like an in-game promotion: ‘Send
us pictures of us on your home screen.’

Robi: Yes, exactly.

Ryan: Something really stupid that people get excited about: ‘We will give
you 10 coins,’ or whatever is. That stuff gets picked up when other
people do it. I had not even thought about that until you brought it
up, and it is a really interesting opportunity to have for awareness.

Robi: I guess you could poo-poo the taller screen all you want, but there
is a whole set of app developers who are about to be very big fans of
the taller screen.

Ian: Yes.

Ryan: Just from my own personal perspective, I was really worried that they
were going to make a wider screen. Even though I have relatively big
man hands, when I use bigger screens, I cannot get my thumb across the
side, and that is really annoying. Then I was said, ‘Four inches
taller, do I really care about that? I think I do.’ It is nice.

Robi: Awesome. That was the first installment. In the next installment we
are going to be discussing some more about the changes to the App
Store, and what is coming down the pipe with iO6.

Ian: From my perspective, it feels like a little bit of natural evolution,
which is that once the app ecosystem reaches so many apps that
categories really does not fit the bill anymore. You have . . .