Throughout the last weeks we have been blogging on app marketing and issues that come along with it, as well as topics related to making an app successful. Many of the topics we pick up and that are discussed in the blogosphere refer to recent events or problems and anticipated short-term developments of the App Store and the app industry in general. Although there are statistics and numbers out there, predicting market conditions, market size and market shares by OS, it becomes quite obvious that this still very young market has so many issues to solve in the here and now to be thinking about, let’s say, 2013.

Take for example the recent (or never ending) discussions on the app approval process and Apple’s treatment of developers. Cases of developers being and feeling mistreated and misguided, tales of unjustified rejections and approvals, intransparent processes and guidelines increasing delay in app (and update) approval time just seem to be adding and adding up. Of course, this is probably not something that Apple is taking lightly, as recent examples have shown. Apple even seems to be using “robots” now to test applications before approval – although this one could be rather negative than a step in the right direction, it shows efforts to automate and thus speed-up the approval process.

However, the discussions around solving the before mentioned issues appear to be solely about what to do now, like “increase transparency” or “clarify the rules for app approval”. Rarely do we see discussions about whether the system itself is sustainable in the very long term. That is fine, considering the massive success of the App Store as a centralized distribution platform, having revolutionized an entire industry (or even created it in the first place). Apple and the App Store principle have been a game changer for many market participants.

We do not want to argue about what makes sense and what does not. We love the App Store and think it is here to stay. But if you want to get your head around the long term perspective and some thought provoking arguments, we recommend you read this post. Additionally, this blog entry underlines the power of instant approval and the risk that Apple is running by creating a delay between creation and distribution of content. Enjoy reading them before getting back to the “here and now” of selling apps

The Apple App Store is awesome. It has the advantage of reaching millions of users around the world without ever really having to internationalize your app business. Practically, you do not even need to leave your home – all you have to do is check the boxes for the different countries when uploading your app. Additionally, you can use English for the description text of every country’s app detail page. The same goes for the language you use within in your app. In fact, for app developers outside of the U.S. this is as exciting as for those within the U.S. Those not from the United States are able to reach a huge market (the biggest for iPhone apps) and for U.S.-developers, it’s a pretty big upside to potentially reach a lot more customers than “just” the one in the own domestic market.

We just recently talked to a smaller developer from Germany (“smaller” meaning he has three apps on the App Store and his “app endeavors” are still at an early stage), who is working on his app projects part-time, though considering to go full-time soon. This developer started with an app which he put up on the App Store in German and, of course, English – sales were doing fine at 79 and 99 Cents respectively. Obviously, this developer didn’t have a lot of budget to spend on anything, but he decided use some of his money for a translation service (no, not Google Translator – this is the translation service he used) to have the detail page of the app translated into 5 European languages. According to him, after adding the translations of the product descriptions to his detail page, sales went up immediately and also (as an effect of that) his app went up in the rankings, which then resulted in even more sales. Of course, he is now dealing with more “local” support requests, which is quite a challenge, but in general, this small effort really helped him get his app business off the ground.

So today, this is the story we wanted to share with you, the moral of which you may find by reading the headline. If you have any similar stories of the like – we would love to hear them!

That’s if you were wondering why the top grossing apps at any point in time appear to be either games or navigation. Seems pretty straightforward: navigation is the “one” product people seem to be spending on the most per purchase and games are simply the most addictive in terms of usage and, in our opinion, offer the most logical ways for integration of in-app purchase – virtual goods, extra levels and the like. “Yes, some more ammo, please, I’m in the middle of a battle here!” refers to a more probable use case then “yes, some more news for 1,99 please, I need them now and have no time to look them up on the (mobile) internet”. But we are digressing.

We just came across this article, basically suggesting two things:

1. Apple is looking for developers for an in-house app games product line
2. Apple might be embarassed about the iPhone being about gaming that much

 
Of course, the first statement contradicts the latter in some ways. So what could this move by Apple imply?

Businesswise, it seems to be a pretty logical step to make the iPhone an ever improving gaming device, as explained before. But we all know that the device already is so much more. Smart business models and integration of monetization as well as increasing customer life time value are possible in every kind of category for every type of app.

The only question is: what is Apple going to focus on? It is no secret that app developers heavily rely on Apple regarding technical innovation, app approval and, for that matter, on promotion as well. Making the device and the App Store more and more about one thing or topic doesn’t seem be a smart move – but of course, we’re judging from the outside. What’s your take? Are games going to increasingly overtake the App Store in terms of visibility? Is Apple taking every other developer for granted?

A week full of exiting and interesting news has gone by. Here’s what we came across:

• Of course, the biggest news this week was Google buying AdMob – exciting for the entire app/mobile industry, though not everyone is sure what this will mean for and in the future.

• The Volkswagen app was downloaded more than 2 million times – impressive!

• An iPhone developer sells his entire app-portfolio (87 apps – go grab it, it’s “only” a hundred thousand dollars, you’ve got 5 hours left) on Ebay and if you want to go GaGa, here’s a karaoke app for you

• Apple shows developers some love: makes the app approval process more tansparent. Let’s see if this helps

• Gizmodo has this weeks 10 best iPhone apps for you as well as “10 iPhone Apps To Augment Your Sad Reality” (we love the headline)

 
Have a great weekend!

Time for a developer insight talk, hopefully the first in a series of short three-question interviews with apprupt Performance Analytics users on this blog.

We’d like to kick it off with INTENIUM.  INTENIUM is one of the leading distributors of casual games and just released their first iPhone app WICKIE, which went straight into the Top 10 on the German App Store. Here is what they have to say:

Tell us about you, your company and the type of apps you offer.

INTENIUM Console, founded in 2009 as a subsidiary of the Hamburg-based INTENIUM GmbH, which is one of the most successful publishers of Casual Games in Europe. INTENIUM Console focuses on development, marketing and sales of games for Smartphones and game consoles. (www.intenium.de).

On the iPhone INTENIUM offers casual games that appeal to a broad audience and that deliver fun to everyone. Games like WICKIE (fun Viking game for kids and their parents) and DIAMOND DROP (the iPhone version of an international match-three hit on PC) at the moment with more exciting titles coming early next year.

What kind of marketing/promotion have you done for your app(s). Any insights on what worked and what did not?

The key to success is to be featured on the App Store. To reach this, a good PR or a strong brand is important. WICKIE is a strong brand that has its own legs, but games without brands need heavy and clever PR. And of course, daily analysis of sales trends and proper price points selection during different stages of the life-cycle.

In general: any tips for creating and promoting an iPhone app? What would you say are the most important things to consider?

The best thing to have is a good game. Quality sells! Second, know your target audience and the markets you want to be in. Get those two aspects together and make a game that has a certain quality for your audience and you will succeed! Make people love your game – then you will have better ranking.
WICKIE was a perfect match for the German market and parents who want a game to play with their children on the iPhone or to keep the kids calm while they are working.

Lately, there have been a lot of examples of brands or let’s call them “bigger corporate entities” launching an iPhone app to increase their brand recognition and basically just use the Apple App Store as a marketing channel. The North Face, Lufthansa or Coca-Cola are just a few examples of this. There certainly is no general answer as to whether this makes sense or not and should rather be evaluated on a case to case basis. The point we’d like to make is another:

In the beginning one might have thought it would be enough for those brands to use their already existing brand awareness to drive downloads of the app. This appears to have been the wrong strategy. Those applications that have been successful on the App Store so far, have all been really thought through and a lot of care was put into creating viable mobile products. Additionally, while they all may be useful in a different context, they all at least provide some kind of utility. This is also why several industry experts claim that branded apps are in fact no marketing at all. A few apps have even proven to be a very successful direct distribution channel, like the Pizza Hut app, which just recently exceeded 1 million in sales, generated directly through the app.

The most recent announcement of VW’s iPhone app exceeding 2 million app downloads is impressive, but in some ways not unexpected. Notice the time and effort that was put in thinking through the app and mobile apps as a marketing channel (quote from MobileMarketer):

“Volkswagen has done a lot of in-depth research, especially surrounding the GTI target consumer, and have found that in many cases, he is a tech-savvy individual, who enjoys social networking, plays games and spends time on mobile devices and in most cases, that device is an iPhone”

Additionally, the product provides a utility – it’s a fun game, though its clearly thought of as a marketing tool, as verified by Charlie Taylor, general manager of digital marketing at Volkswagen of America saying “the iPhone platform reaches our target customer’s sweet spot and allows us to make an impact in a way that a 30-second spot never could”.

So bottom line in our opinion is that brand and attention is helpful, but your app still needs to be a product with a definite target group and utility. And getting there demands effort. Common sense, right?

As mentioned before (about a thousand times) and probably agreed by the bulk of you, PR is one of the most important channels for a developer in order to push sales. You’ll get an (hopefully) honest review on your product, relevant to your target group and in most cases you will get to the crowd you want to reach. We think it will stay that way in a way, at least for sites that are only about iPhone (or mobile) apps and reviews and niche or, let’s say, topic specific sites. Of course, with the mass of apps rushing into the App Store this environment is also becoming more competitive and increasingly, your network or networking skills will be advantageous when trying to get reviewed.

But what about the more “mainstream” tech blogs with a broader and larger but still very relevant target group for you? This article on Techcrunch got us thinking. You find one of these types of app reviews in one of the larger techblogs every other day (if not every day). This particular article reviews an iPhone karaoke app that is the result of a collaboration between Lady GaGa and iOKi. This is without doubt a smart idea (the T-Pain app should be prove enough), but the amount of smart, funny, extraordinary and shocking apps, sometimes flavored with a celebrity name, is just growing very quickly. At some point, this will either lead to the tech-blogs not taking an interest in them at all anymore or to simply review only the few truly extraordinary ones (whatever this means).

Either way, unless you’ve contracted a reknown celebrity to co-brand your new 3D-Shooter, chances are your chances to get some public attention via any kind of blog or website are getting slimmer and slimmer. The PR channel seems to have already become just like any other marketing channel: one that requires experience, network and hard work to really make use of for yourself.  So, in our opinion – assuming that your product is well thought through and interesting to at least a few people – we believe it’s time to forget about mainstream PR (even mainstream tech PR) and start focusing on niche sites that have a similar target group to your app.

Sure, there is a lot more to it and we cannot help you with the PR part, but we can help you with finding out on what kind of target groups to focus your efforts on, by looking at which channels work better for you than others. And that’s knowledge that serves you in the long run.

We do not want make this blog the 500th industry review and also do not want to judge other companies active in the mobile market industry. But this news is big: yesterday it was announced that Google is buying AdMob for 750 million US Dollars, as you probably already know.  There are several rumors about the deal, especially about the reasons for the purchase price. But the reasons for the acquisition itself seem to be quite clear: Google wants to control the mobile advertising space. And according to some sources, AdMob is controlling about 80 percent of in-app advertising on iPhone.

Whatever way this is going in terms of effective monetization of mobile traffic, it substantiates the obvious fact that the iPhone and iPhone apps are here to stay for the long term (we know: common sense). And now we have a big player working on matching your app traffic with relevant advertisers. We have picked up the topic of increasing the customer value per download before on this blog, which is why we also think this news is relevant to every developer out there.

More money from ads means more money to spend on customer acquisition. Of course, the opposite holds true as well. So is this deal a positive for the app industry? A few comments on this post on Techcrunch and by now also several blogs are concerned that the increased market dominance will only lead to higher dependency on Google/AdMob and accordingly to lower revenue shares for publishers. Sure, no or less competition is never good for any market. On the other hand, this may enable AdMob to innovate even faster and leverage Google’s sales force and network, among others.

We are not so sure – what do you think? Will this have a positive effect on your app monetization? Maybe even make you forget about other strategies to increase your customer lifetime value and “go free” forever?

“It’s all about location” is a phrase all of us have heard before and is also a rule that we know to be true when it comes to selling and marketing a product (usually related to retailers or business selling physical goods). Of course, what has been proven to be true many times in the “real world” has to be true for mobile and apps in a similar kind of fashion. This article suggests just that, only that with mobile (and mobile apps) it will be about integrating location into your product so that it enhances the quality of the service by combining its basic purpose with immediate environmental relevance.

Indeed, if we look at the numbers (or just apply logic), it seems location will not only be an additional feature or upside, but rather will become something that is a product itself. Agree?

The possibilities are interesting at least, very useful and awesome at best. The before mentioned article names examples of mobile services and how they could be elevated by adding a little global positioning to them, like cooking apps that show recipes from the neighbourhood or apps displaying music that’s being played in the surrounding area and is similar to your taste.

Whether or not you think location will be needed as an integral part of any app or mobile service in the future, from looking at the raw data, it becomes clear that location will in fact be a very relevant feature in the future and will in many cases allow for new kind of services to be rolled out.

But, equally important, will be the impact this will have on how products are being purchased. If location is a big part of anything mobile, then new channels will open up for marketing. These channels will be location aware, but will also have to take the classical marketing metrics (like demographics) into account. And of course, localization of product and marketing itself is not at all something new.

Location will add a new dimension to marketing. It will make it more complex, but has the huge potential upside of being exponentially more relevant. For us this may be something that will be added feature-wise regarding apprupt Performance Analytics. For app developers it has lots of implications for product development. And it bears a lot of potential for effective marketing and customer acquisition. We aim to help you with that.

Another great week, filled with iPhone and performance marketing action, is behind us. Here’s what we saw happening:

• Apple officially announces (or better: affirmes) 100,000 iPhone apps in the App Store

• The increasing amount of apps will soon be even more enriched with 24-hour-no-coding-skill-required-apps, these are 13 tools to do just that

• The (next) so far most serious competitor to the iPhone, the Droid, faces a one-on-one in this extensive two-part MobileCrunch review

• Steve Job becomes Fortune’s CEO of the decade – this article lets you know how he did it exactly

• An iPhone app now lets you know what your baby actually wants and if you’re a bookworm outside the US, this is how you’ll get the Kindle app on your iPhone.

 
Have a great weekend!