Apps are already mass market and will become even more popular in the future – be it on the iPhone or any other device. Developers or developing companies of any size (so far) often find it difficult to make enough revenues from their app sales to build a sustainable business. As mentioned in an earlier post, in our opinion, there are two possible solutions to this problem: increase app sales or increase revenue per customer – ideally both.  Since we constantly hear stories of developers that sell a few thousand copies (or more) per day and we also now the impressive amount of apps having been downloaded worldwide so far, our “way-to-go” seems to be the mass-approach. Produce a hit, make it in the top rankings, sell thousands of apps day after day and grow a profitable business – sounds about right, doesn’t it?

But is your app suited for the mass market? To answer this question you should ask yourself how many iPhone users would actually have an interest in your app and then adjust your expectations (and your approach) accordingly. In short, if you’re developing niche apps (a niche among all apps and within the specific category), don’t expect sales to skyrocket, but instead focus on your target group. Categories are not necessarily niches. Rather they consist of different niches. If you sell a cooking app you’re in the lifestyle category where you’ll compete with shopping apps and horoscope apps for a place in the top rankings.

So in our opinion, whether you are a big or small developer or development company, you basically have two choices:

• Develop for the mass among iPhone Users (e.g. gaming) and expect to face some fierce (very fierce) competition

• Develop for the niche and really focus on that particular target group – expect to build up a user base and focus on their needs. RunKeeper is a very good example of this.

 
There is, of course, a chance that you will make it big with one app because you released it just at the right time or because your app does something particularly funny or interesting that hasn’t been done before (like letting you know what an infant wants from you). But even that kind of publicity won’t get you far in terms of building your business in the long term.

Growing revenues then does not necessarily have to mean achieving mass adoption but rather adjust your marketing and product development to the particular niche you are in. To do that you will need to know where to find your users and which communication channels work better than others.

Bottom line, if you focus on that target group and work on your product, then maybe you won’t need to sell millions of copies (surely, that would still be very nice), but you’ll find a way to have a constantly growing group of users pay for your service on an ongoing basis.

Or maybe, we’ve gotten it all wrong and you’ll either make it big or don’t make it at all – what do you think?