Rants And Ramblings About Mobile Technology

Here are some stats and attempts to conclusions gathered from providing mobile applications via mobilerated.com. I can’t give any exact numbers for confidentiality reasons.

• Big difference in download/click ratio between applications. Conclusion: Downloading is not all. Repetitive use will create the long term ad revenue, so make useful applications that people want to use again and again. This doesn’t mean “glossy” promotion (an area where I fail utterly) is not important, but it’s definitely not enough if the application is a turkey. E.g. Jitter is downloaded relatively little (for whatever reason) but generates the most ad revenue.
• Very little pay despite sizable volumes. Conclusion: Don’t leave your day job on chance.
• Noticed at GetJar, but probably applies to Mobilerated as well: There are many more games than applications, so it’s harder to stand out with games. On the other hand, games are much more downloaded than applications. Conclusion: None really, as I have no games to compare with, so draw your own in this case.
• Indonesia and India lead, with USA and United Kingdom close seconds. Conclusion: Don’t just go for the Western markets, and don’t think Asian markets are less developed in terms of mobile use. That’s a huge mistake. Oddly Mainland China, Taiwan, Japan and Korea don’t show up. Not reached by Mobilerated?
• The ad frontend needs to be very polished, clearly pointing out the application is in there, but you need to look at an ad first. When publishing the same ad-enabled applications at GetJar, some user got really angry thinking this was adware, and nothing else. Conclusion: The market needs better in-app solutions. It’s on my (very long) to-do list to make one.

Posted by Anders Borg 22:45 | Permalink