Rants And Ramblings About Mobile Technology

Update 20090504: I guess I should have checked how Apple App Store handles payments. You register as a member and give out your credit card information once. After that, purchase is done simply by choosing an application. No more to fill in. Excellent, provided users get over the initial “bump” of at all giving out the credit card information. Seemingly they do.

Enrique Ortiz at About Mobility has written a sobering, yet also carefully optimistic, piece on mobile applications.

He goes through the situation at Android Markets, including that it contains a lot of crap applications that generate no revenue for anyone (which by the way very much also applies to Apple AppStore).

I don’t agree with assessment 5 though (paid applications came later than free ones, and it supposedly set the wrong expectations): The answer is rather: People simply usually don’t want to pay for mobile applications. Period! See my comment to MobHappy – Striking the balance in ad-supported Content for more on this.

Paying with a credit card (or even paypal) is neither a good solution for mobile applications, due to the hassle and the security concerns for such a small amount of money. Mobile applications should be charged to the phone bill, or be ad-supported free. Period!

Enrique provides good descriptions of the mobile application platforms, focusing on the essentials. I have one comment on J2ME (or Java ME): The security model is completely misdirected. Why on earth should I get a question whether I will allow the application to e.g. take a photo? In an average non-certified, non-game application you get several of those messages, that are of no use: Even if the application would be fraudulent (remember Red Browser?) the user would anyway answer yes to all the questions (a la “get on with it”). If certification should at all be needed I as a developer should be able to do it quickly, easily and for a low cost via the Web, and the application should then not generate any warnings what-so-ever.

No doubt browser or SMS based services have way less problems with device compatibility, and SMS is excellent for pushing content to a user, with the content completely in the message or accessed via a link. For interactive mobile marketing, SMS is still the best choice.

I continue to be a Java ME fan from a development perspective, partly of course because all phones (except iPhone and Android-based phones I guess) support it, and that you can do a hell of a lot more via a MIDlet than via a browser. Yet generating revenue through existing application stores has generally failed. GetJar still doesn’t have a scheme for commercial applications (even though they have started an in-app-ad trial), and purchase frequency at ClickApps is dismal at best. Kalador/Mobilerated might be more right on target, but is way less known than GetJar.

Apple showed the direction, but success for other application stores is not given, as Apple runs a tight network of interacting/complementing services and offerings. They are totally in control of their business (I’m not really sure why though), where not even operators dare to question what they do. Ask any other phone manufacturer, and they will tell you the operator is totally in control of them. Apple is also extremely business-oriented. They do creative things no doubt, but only if it long term generates more revenue. You can’t call Apple a media player or mobile phone manufacturer, because that’s missing the point of what they do. Apple is a business mesh in itself. I’m not saying this to praise Apple, just to indicate the difference between Apple and most other businesses.

Whatever the setup, and as Enrique also concludes, the key thing is of course to make money now. That’s why we are in this business.

Michael Yuan made a very important comment:
“What developers want is to address the “maximum number of people who are willing to pay”. Today, it means the US iPhone market.”
Whether it’s USA or e.g. China (where people generally don’t have PCs) is though open to discussion.

About Mobility - On Mobile Applications, Platforms and Monetization — “Show me the Money”

Posted by Anders Borg 12:23 | Permalink