Building Mobile App for living?

Gone are the days where Smartphone’s were used only by business professionals for quick communication. The emergence of iPhone redefined the way smartphone are used; it tapped the youth potential, who started using Smartphone’s for entertainment purpose.  Even the darling of corporate users “Blackberry” started their rebranding exercise a few months back(Remember “We are Blackberry boys” add).

In India the Smartphone’s that are not affordable to masses is getting changed with the launch of Micromax’s  Andro A60 which costs only Rs.8000. This opens up enormous amount of opportunity for software professionals, freelancers to consider App development as a serious business opportunity.  There are plenty of platforms to address like Windows Mobile, Android, iOS etc.

But the problem with this market is lack of proper business strategy, many people have cool App ideas but they refuse to look beyond just developing the App. Here are few points which I feel every aspiring App developer should consider

• What is the pain point which you are trying to solve with your App? Is it going to be a viral app where everyone starts using it whenever they are free or is it going to be used on a need basis?
• Can you build a framework where you can rapidly create different App’s? Like Farmville where it can build Cityville rapidly.
• Addressing multiple platforms with the same successful App helps to increases the customer base.
• Focus should also be on making the App to work in mixed environment like with/without internet. My thought is to start using sms as a medium of communication for building social Apps. It will help to attract people in country like India. An innovative game I recently came across is cWicket, it is an Audio Game designed for in-call delivery over telephony networks. NO Downloads, NO Data plans, NO GPRS, just a simple number to dial & play. It’s not an App though, but think about some innovation like that.
• Identifying the business model: can you sell your app one time and generate revenue or can you make it work on a fermium model or can you constantly engage users and generate revenue with add?
• Providing frequent updates is essential an app should not be built and forget. Focus is on to constantly innovate and enhance the app or find ways to develop a bouquet of app which interacts with each other.
• Measuring the performance is a key to success, don’t just look the number of downloads as the only metrics, start collecting metrics like daily usage, time spent on app, paid upgrade conversion.

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