How Much For That App?

Whilst browsing through recent reviews about the new iPhone and the release of the iOS 7 software, we came across an interesting infographic about apps.

The average price of an iPhone app is around $0.19 (12 pence) so we were surprised to see some of the pricey apps available on the App Store and thought they were worth a mention.

Top of the pile is VIP Black. This is the world’s first premium lifestyle app and is for those people that have an income above £1 million, which they must show proof of.  So, that rules a lot of us out even if we wanted to see what this app was about. Although, another thing that would rule many of us out is the price tag … $999.99 (£623). This is the highest amount of money that app developers can charge for an app on the App Store.

Another top-priced app is Agro, a functional App whose most common audience is Farmers. Tested by large organisations, this app is useful for storing client details pertaining to different chemicals, pests and crops. This app, along with VIP Black is optimised for the new iPhone 5, which is handy!

A little lower down the app chain is Preebs. This has been specially crafted to assist commuters on their daily drives or commutes. It makes full use of billboards during their journey by providing various types of outdoor advertising. Preebs, isn’t cheap either though, and will set you back nearly £500.

Next up is a football game, and no, it’s not made with gold footballers – instead it comes with high resolution graphics and animations that give you the ultimate playing experience and is named Barcelona vs Madrid. We would like to think that the game includes a few more teams than these two though. For this app, you can look to pay $349.99, or £220 for those in the UK, a lot dearer than FIFA.

So, these are little more expensive than Angry Birds, even if we think we would have more fun on Angry Birds. For those of you interested in these apps you will have to pay a hefty sum - they will cost you more than buying an iPhone outright. Pricey!

Angry Birds For Free

One of the most profitable games in the world has become free for its users.

The original version, which was created four years ago, has just released 15 new levels, all of which are free for iOS devices. The game has been part of the top 80 highest grossing apps but has recently fallen out of this, which is the first time in three years.

The game originally cost downloaders $0.99 for the iPhone version and $2.99 for the iPad version. The previous free downloads of this game only included a few levels which you could complete before you were prompted to buy the full version. These free versions have since been removed from the app store all together.

Many people had spent hours playing this clever strategy game, but may have neglected it after completing it. Now is time to rekindle that flame and download the game again with 15 new adventures all at your fingertips.

Angry Birds was first released to iPhone and four years down the line has been downloaded around 500 million times. Being downloaded half a billion times most people will know this game well, for those that don’t the game involves using wingless birds and a slingshot in an attempt to destroy pigs and any structures to gain points per level.

The Angry Birds game was the leader of apps and began the revolution to all of the millions of apps available to us today. Although this game began life as an app it has now become a brand with merchandise being available to buy as well as a movie being released.

Rovio, the creators of this addictive app, have not officially come out and said that the app will be free for a certain amount of time, but my suggestion would be that if you haven’t already downloaded it, then get downloading it now whilst its free.

If the user base is boosted whilst the game is free then it is more than likely that the creators will put back up the paywall.

Using Apps To Market Your Business

There are many ways to market your business but have you ever thought of promoting it through an app?

We live in a very technology-savvy society so marketing through an app seems like a no brainer. Here are some reasons why:

• They can make your job easier. By being conveniently located on your phone or the mobile device of a customer, you or they can access the app whenever and wherever they want.
• Word of mouth spreads. If you create an app that people enjoy, word will get out and more and more people will download your app. With the more people using the app, browsers will turn into buyers.
• Be creative. The app can be completely different to your website but still possess the same useful information, making it a better way of engaging customers. This can be a useful way of improving your audience or a way to target a new demographic completely.
• Credibility. When users or customers see that you have an app with positive reviews and a large number of people downloading it, you and your business gain credibility.
• Keep on top of statistics. When someone downloads an app, you know about it. When they give it a review, you know about it. This is a great way to know exactly how many people are interacting with your app and how well the marketing is doing.

Apps are everywhere. They are no longer restricted to just an iPhone and are easily accessible on Android, other mobile devices and tablets. There is such a large market to target, so promoting your business or product through an app is both innovative and beneficial.

There are more to apps than just flicking some birds into some pigs and with the right idea and some creativity, you’ll be onto a winner.

How having an App can help your business

First of all, what is an App? An App (short for Application) is a program that runs on a smartphone in the same way as installed software runs on your computer. It allows the user to carry out tasks they want or need to do whilst on the move using their smartphone.

We’ve all heard the huge success stories of Apps like Angry Birds and used common Apps such as Ebay or Twitter but how can an App help your business, no matter what size it is? There are three main ways a smartphone App can be used to help:

1. Marketing
As part of your marketing effort Apps can be very powerful. As Apps are only just becoming mainstream then the first companies to have an App in their sector can generate a lot of PR around this. A client of ours (www.wetherbyortho.co.uk) has done exactly that by being the first orthodontist in the UK to have an App. Also, in the same way as your website gets found by Google, then with the right setup, people will find your App (and of course your business) through the various App stores.

2. Customer Service
We all want to serve our customers better in whichever field we work. Have you thought how you could help yours without them needing to be in the office sat in front of a computer? Mobile Apps allow you to do this! We practice what we preach at Appware so as well as using web based project management software in the office we also use the associated iPhone App for this. This means that if I’m sat with a client I can give an update of exactly where we are with their project in real time. I can also make notes or add new tasks as they are requested so my team can get to work on them before I’m even back in the office!

3. Direct Revenue Generation
The types of Apps above are usually given away for free. There is of course the option to actually generate direct revenue from an App. This can be done in a few ways; you could simply charge a flat fee for an App, give a limited version of an App for free but allow customers to pay to upgrade and unlock any limitations, or support the App through sponsorship or adverts. The cost of Apps to the end user is relatively small (starting at just 69 pence) but the worldwide market is huge. With a great idea and good marketing then the potential is massive. For example, the original version of Angry Birds has sold over 12 million copies!

I hope this gives you an insight into the world of Apps. Feel free to ask any questions by getting in touch at www.appware.co.uk

Mobile Technology: From Bricks to Angry Birds!

Bricks


I think we have to look back at the original mobile phones to realise just how far things have come. One of the first mainstream phones was the Motorola 4800x Transportable which as you can see wasn't really what you'd call pocket friendly!


Text Messaging



The next progression was from voice calls to text messaging. This method of communication was an unforeseen success and over time became more popular than voice calls! It even spawned it's own shorthand some of which has amazingly made it into the Oxford English dictionary.


Wap



This was the first stab at trying to deliver a "mobile internet" experience. Unfortunately it didn't quite catch on and the user experience wasn't great. Imagine an really limited text only website with incredibly slow and expensive data transfer and you're not far off.


Smartphones



This is where things started to get interesting... I used to carry about my mobile phone, PDA, SatNav, plus all the associated cables and chargers - as well as a diary and notepad! Although the first smartphones were pretty clunky they still managed to get everything into one device which was a real breakthrough.


Mobile Websites



Now smartphones have become more powerful, data is quick, and charges are low then users obviously want to use the internet just as they do on a PC or Mac. This is all well and good and most mobile browsers actually render pages pretty well. The problem is that a website optimised for a large 17" monitor isn't quite so readable on a 3.5"screen! We are now seeing a shift to mobile optimised websites that display content in a more readable way. At Appware we use technology that auto-detects the device you're browsing on and serves the appropriate content.


Apps



As there is now so much power in a smartphone with all it's integrated technology (3G, wireless, GPS, compass, camera, etc) then users didn't just want to use the inbuilt software. The operating systems now have dedicated software development systems so that independant developers can create their own Apps and publish/distribute these to the phones. This has given rise to a whole marketplace that simply didn't exist even a couple of years ago. I think the numbers above show just how huge this has become!

M-Commerce



Users are no longer interested in just using their phones for browsing product catalogues but they actually want to purchase. This is now becoming possible and at Appware we've already got PayPal integration working within Apps to allow this.


Near Field Communication (NFC)



The next step for mobile commerce is physically using your phone to pay for things in the same way as you currently use a credit card. The first systems are already planned to hit the UK this summer (A collaboration between Samsung, Orange, and Barclaycard) and in a couple of years are set to become as standard as chip and pin machines. Also keep an eye on Google with their Google Wallet system.


Mobile Vouchers



Currently a few forward thinking organisations have realised that by using location based services and special offers they can build customer loyalty. Some are doing this with quite manual, clunky systems using services like Foursquare but are already seeing the benefits. Watch this space for dedicated Apps...


QR Codes



You may have seen these strange looking 3D barcodes and wondered what they are - they're called QR (Quick Response) Codes. All you do is use your phone's camera to scan these and they'll either redirect you to a website or add a contact to your phone's address book, amongst other things. Alot of modern smartphones are now building QR readers in (if not then search for the "Red Laser" App) and the technology is especially popular in the USA and Japan. For example; in Bestbuy retail stores products have a QR code on their label which when scanned shows you technical specs as well as reviews and stores them off for later!


Smart Notifications



Push notifications is where data is pushed to your phone rather than you requesting it manually. This is already used in Apps like Facebook to let you know when you've received message or on the Ebay App to warn you that an auction is about to end. Currently these messages are like simple text messages but they are about to get much smarter and become location aware and the like.


Augmented Reality



This is another really cool technology that will only improve with time as smartphones get even more powerful. The basic idea is that content is layered over the real world using your phone's camera as a viewfinder. Appware have already developed an App using this technology which can be seen at www.festfind.co.uk In this instance you can use the App at music festivals to not only find out who is playing on what stage and when, but guide you back to your tent or the nearest bar, toilet, exit etc. Simply fire up the App and use your phone to "look around" and it shows you which direction to walk and for how long!


Tablets



The last year or so has seen the rise of the tablet initially driven by Apple's iPad. There are more and more of these devices appearing (Shortly to be joined the HP Touchpad and Blackberry Playbook) which are aimed mainly at the consumer market to replace a home laptop. The big advantages over laptops are typically battery life, they're simple to use, and you just pick them up and they're on and working rather than waiting 5 minutes for a laptop to boot up! This is another interesting space to watch over the coming year.


Platform Wars!



As more and more smartphones appear on the market so do more and more different operating systems. Apple have iOS, Google have Android, and there are many many more around and emerging. As these are all totally different with different development tools, languages, and skillsets then developers tend to have to specialise in one platform. This isn't great if you'd like an App creating as you effectively have to build it from scratch for all the various platforms. Expect some consolidation across devices as the lesser known operating systems become obselete.


HTML5



One way to address the operating system platform is to try and reuse your code across the various platforms/devices. At Appware we use a system that allows us to reuse around 80-90% of an App's original development by using HTML5 which is standard across the different platforms. In real terms this means that rather than each development taking 6 weeks to develop (so 18 across just 3 platforms!) we would typically create all 3 versions in 7 weeks. As you can imagine this has considerable timescale and cost savings for our clients!


Angry Birds



So finally we get to Angry Birds which is an App that everyone must have heard of by now. It is one of the biggest Apps to date with over 200 million downloads. It has also turned some traditional channels on their head. It used to be that a film came out and then there was associated merchandising afterwards which is where companies really made their money. With Angry Birds it started life as a smarphone game and now there's a feature film based on the game. The film cost $90 million to make and so far grossed over half a billion dollars!