End of the Gold Rush

When you tell people you develop mobile apps your very often told, often in hushed tones, about a great idea for an app.

Usually these ideas are interesting and are apps you think you would like to use, but are they a route to a gold mine for the inventors, sadly most times they aren't.

A few years ago we were taking part in an app store gold rush, a well designed app with a cool name and a striking look would command large sums of investment.

Those times have now passed, the gold rush is over and monetising mobile is not a straightforward challenge to meet.

No Secret Sauce

Software is increasingly being regarded as a commodity, its simply the raw material coming off the development production line.

While this view is flawed it has meant that the market often places very little value on code, the majority of apps are now free or carry a small nominal fee.

No longer are we purveying secret sauce, consumers aren't paying for the cleverness of your code there subscribing to the service your offering.

Aside from the possible exception of gaming your aren't going to get rich simply by producing an app.

Advertising Failure

When faced with this challenge many turn to advertising, it is the cure to all ills, when were not sure how we extract the value from the product were producing we fall back to the warm comfort of advertising.

Unfortunately what we very often lose sight of is the context in which the adverts are shown. We've all used apps where we are aware of a banner ad at the bottom of the screen but do we actual look at the advert?

Advertising without context degenerates into a pure numbers game, if we show it to enough people we may by pure fluke get someone who is interested in the product or service to look at and maybe even click the advert.

This is not optimum for anyone involved, the users who are forced to lose screen real estate to adverts, the advertiser with an uncertain audience and the developer who can only make money at enormous scale.

But what about if we did have context, if we display helpful suggestions and not adverts, what if we knew who our customers are.

The Devils in the Data

Mobile phones are an integral part of almost everyones lives, we have it with us all the time and we regularly consult it when making decisions or turn to it when we have some time to waste.

All of this means our phones can detect almost everything were doing in our lives, apps that can harness this and use it to both the developers and users advantage will truly be data gold mining.

This data has the potential to lead to enormous value that we could never have realised simply by putting a price on our app. 

I would never want to put anybody off from taking a crack at the app store but people should do this in the knowledge that very few will make their fortune.

Don't go looking for gold in the hills just have fun in creating something that you feel will entertain or enhance and take it from their, you may just have invented the next big thing, time will tell but you'll have enjoyed creating it regardless.