Why you should invest in mobile development?

Have you tried investing your money everywhere? One of the comparatively lesser known platforms to monetize is by using Apps and we are talking specifically about IOS Apps on this blog. If you have an iPhone you probably would be visiting the app store more often than not but have you thought about being the provider of such apps that can help you grow financially (with the icing on the cake being without any major investment)? Having an app makes it very convenient for your customers to access your services and indirectly creates a mirage of a personalized touch, catering to their likes and dislikes. In today’s world, people spend more time online on their phones and iPad than living in the real world and talking to fellow human beings (sad but true ;)) and this behavior is resonant across age groups and across genders. Therefore, irrespective of your target audience, given the penetration that technology has made in our lives, giving a specialized tailor-made experience via mobile apps can greatly help in attraction, retention, and growth in your consumer base. Let’s have a look at the different ways we could make more money (by attracting more clients thereby Healthier bottom-lines [1]) by App Monetization. Pave a way ahead Firstly, decide on an idea to create an App and get started if you know a bit of coding or hire professionals (like us) to create the perfect App for you (latter is personally recommended ;)). Now launch it in the apple store. As you may understand, it is easier said than done as an App has to undergo strict scrutiny and various benchmarks to be able to get listed in the app store. Once you have the App ready, the most crucial aspect comes in Show Me the Money i.e. you need to decide how you want to make money via your App. Below is a quick categorization of ways in which different apps are classified and how they can make money Free Apps: These are the completely free ones which cost you nothing but the major revenue comes once the app has been high on the download list. So for each 100 download, you would get somewhere around a dollar or so. The amount may look small initially but it grows exponentially. E.g. FacebookIt is a totally free App but gets revenue from its popularity which spans across geographies. Freemium Business Model: These are the apps that allow you to try them out for free to an extent but to be able to use their full functionality, you need pay. For example, did you ever try using Microsoft tools? Its a completely free app now but earlier, the free version allowed only the documents to be viewed. In order to edit the documents, the users were required to pay a certain amount. Now, however, the entire app is free probably owing to the pressure that there were other apps which provided similar features for free (talk about Peer pressure in the digital world as well ;)). Subscription Apps: This is again based on giving some part of the app for free so that the users try them out, hopefully, get hooked and then managing your revenue by monthly, 6 monthly or yearly subscriptions. These are the most popular methods for the Magazines and newspapers but are also seen these days for the cloud-based apps. The auto-renewal subscriptions are specifically annoying here but great for the app owners. In-app purchases: This one also is zero upfront cost to the user but to unlock some additional features you need to invest some amount. One of the examples here is the game ËœTemple Run. If you had played the game, then as you may remember, to have additional power boosters or coins, one needs to buy the same from within the App Sponsorship app: These apps do not cost anything to the user but are just massively popular and they capitalize on that. One of the most popular examples of that being the WhatsApp. It is hugely popular and was sold to Facebook at $19 billion. It might be true that not every app meets the same fate but still if you are on a good stable position in the market you can command a reasonable amount for branding your app with a known company and using their marketing strategy to further boost the popularity of your app. Paid App: It is a pretty straightforward way to make money? Not really! It costs the user to download these apps starting from $0.99 to any amount which the app owner think it can charge. These apps can only command the price they charge ONLY if they are having a unique selling capability in terms of design or functionality or a brand value or a history of great reviews and downloads else it faces tough competition from the other free apps available in the store. More often than not its a common trend that these paid apps will either fade away or become free in the long run. Ever heard of ËœI am rich app the $1000 App? There are also third-party analytics services to help you identify the roadblocks which is stopping your app to be amongst the top-rated Apps. For example, Omniture which was recently acquired by Adobe. It captures the app activity like how many users logged in, at which step they dropped out, did they rate the app etc. and can create powerful BI reports from this data for easy analysis by Site Catalyst. Similar services are also provided by Flurry Analytics Services. Going ahead, the market for Apps is huge and provides a great potential for those who would like to build-up on their revenue. The recent trend has shown a great revenue growth for the App studios, making it easier for a nontechnical person to work on them. A recent move by Apple is to make their programming language Swift considerably swift in terms of making it easier to use and understand. And to everyone’s surprise, it is now available as an Open Source. Thus enabling IOS app design to be a cross-platform development i.e. those not having a MAC would also be able to create IOS apps thus increasing the scalability to a much greater extent. So do think about converting your ideas into a reality by getting it published onto the app store and taking a small step in paving a way ahead for your future. Contact us and send us some details about your business idea and we can tell you ways on how the idea could fit into your business model and offcourse within your budget.