Some stats from Stuart Dredge
Some Positives
Pizza Hut – iPhone app has generated $1M in sales (pizza). Drives traffic to website to create an account etc
Paper Toss – 10M+ downloads, $125K/month ad revenue, $1.25M in paid downloads
WSJ – 64K active users, $17.99/mth
Pandora – 30K users/day on iPhone, 25% of overall traffic is iPhone, $40M revenue
Doodle Jump – 4M since its launch in March ’09, 80K downloads on christmas day, 2.8M revenue ($0.99), Android app retails at $3.99
Red Laser – 2M downloads, 950K users/mth, $1.99 -> $2.25M revenue, 50M codes scanned
Flight Control – 2M downloads, 1.4M revenue
Ebay – $600M mobile revenue, $1.5B revenue overall 2010, 1.5M items sold over christmas 2009
Lessons (on how to be successful)
- Application has to be excellent
- Get people talking about you app in the pub etc
- Mix and match streams
- Free spawns premium
- Help people buy things in the real world
- Free apps are great for cross promotion
- You have to be lucky!
Shazam
- 250 new users/week
- 2M interactions/day
Considerations (when creating apps)
- What is the proposition
- Single v’s multi platform
- Development (how much?)
- Business model, free? Paid? Advertising?
- Go to market strategy
- Future opportunities <- See below re: TV advertising
Lesson – If you charge for the application do not include for advertising
Shazam
- Built for mobile
- Utility = longevity
- Built for all platforms and application stores
- Preload opportunity with operators and OEM’s <- holy grail
- Available in 200 countries <- beware of localisation issues
New service – Tag a TV app to receive a promotion.
Admob
Russell Buckley, VP Global Alliances
Video will be big in app advertising.
AdWhirl – iPhone and Android open source ad platform
Costs around $15k in advertising to get your app into top 20 on app store.
Bango
2006 mobile apps were worth $3.1Bn
2009 mobile apps were worth $9.7Bn
How people buy apps:
Common – browse -> buy -> download
Freemium – browse -> download -> use -> buy
Freemium
- App store wars
- Customer care <- may not be the same in each region
- Payment flexibility
The Opportunity
- Ride the free app wave!
- In app billing
- Draw users to website
Comment
Some interesting perspectives on making money from applications and advertising from people that have experience. The above is not an exhaustive list of everyone that presented but just comments that stuck out for me. The panels whilst well presented did not talk about anything new. At least the messages are consistent which is always good to know.
There are lots of companies doing mobile. Some are making money, some are doing it because they have to (keeping up with the Jones’). What is clear is if you can get it right the potential audience is huge! However before you rush off and start coding that iPhone app you may be better of putting a £1 on the lottery.