Month: February 2015

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Trivia Crack – One of the most profitable mobile apps

Posted by Eric Worrall on in Android App, Android Development, iPhone App, iPhone Development, Mobile App, Mobile Development 0 Comment
Trivia Crack - a simple idea which has taken the mobile app game world by storm.
Trivia Crack – a simple idea which has taken the mobile app game world by storm.

When you think of blockbuster mobile app games, you normally think of huge hollywood budgets, million dollar special effects and 10s of thousands of hours of mobile app development effort.

The reality is, some of the biggest iPhone Apps and Android Apps are nothing of the sort – they are simple ideas which caught on, earning a fortune for their creators.

One of the biggest games to date is Trivia Crack – a mobile app based on the old favourite Trivial Pursuit.

According to Venture Beat

After catching on big time in the U.S. and Canada, Trivia Crack has expanded to countries like U.K. — and this is helping fuel its domination of the mobile app markets.

Trivia Crack is the top downloaded game on mobile in the world, according to developer Etermax and industry-tracking firm App Annie. Since its debut, this app has racked up more than 125 million downloads worldwide. It has also managed to reach the No. 1 spot on the overall app download chart in important countries like the United States and Canada. With mobile gaming revenue reaching $25 billion in 2014, Etermax carved out a piece of that for itself by appealing to casual players with a trivia app that hooks heavily into social media.

Trivia Crack pits players against their friends in a Trivial Pursuit-style quest of knowledge. It already has over 200,000 unique questions, and — thanks to its players — it gets 2,000 new questions every day.

Important Lessons

There are some important lessons we can learn from the success of the Trivia Crack game.

  1. The use of social media – friends challenge each other via social media, which helps to propel the explosive growth of app users
  2. The enlistment of users to supply new questions – these guys don’t even have to think up new questions themselves, they get their users to do it for free.
  3. Simplicity – the game doesn’t pack in every imaginable feature, or heavy servings of Hollywood Glitz, it is just Trivial Pursuit, with a few adaptions to make it more attractive in a mobile app environment.

If you have an idea for developing an iPhone App Game or Android App Game, and you are worried that your idea is too simple to work – please don’t let that stop you. Because when appealing to mobile users who are snatching a few few seconds from their busy schedule, simple is good. And if users like your idea, you could have a runaway success on your hands.

Contact Me to discuss your mobile app development idea now.

Where’s the money in Mobile App Development?

Posted by Eric Worrall on in Android App, Android Development, iPhone App, iPhone Development, Mobile App 0 Comment
How to make money from mobile app development
How to make money from mobile app development

App Developer magazine has printed an excellent article which describes how some people are making vast fortunes from mobile app development.

According to App Developer magazine

Show Me the Money!

The profit model for apps has shifted dramatically in the last couple of years. Distimo’s Unveiling the Secrets behind App Store Category Dynamics report was very illuminating. It revealed that 90 percent of all revenue generated on Google Play and 74 percent of Apple App Store revenue in February 2014 came from games. In the consumer space, games are clearly where it’s at.

For business the rise of enterprise apps is an important trend. An interesting post at Developer Economics last year suggested that the average revenue per developer involved in app development is four times higher for the enterprise than for the consumer segment.

Obviously much depends on your skills, your ideas, and your contacts, but choosing your focus is only the beginning.

Mobile Apps are high risk, high reward. It takes careful planning, dedication and commitment to create a mobile app success. But for the owners of successful mobile apps, the profits can be extraordinary. For example, according to the article in App Developer magazine

… one of the top games right now is Supercell’s Clash of Clans, which makes more than $1 million per day.

A million dollars per day

How do you maximise your chance of your iPhone App development or Android App development being successful? The answer, as always, is do your homework. Research what the owners of successful apps are doing to achieve that success, and copy the elements of their success which are compatible with your iPhone App or Android App idea.

One of the most important decisions when developing a mobile app is the revenue model. According to App Developer magazine

When it comes to business models, for consumer apps there’s no contest. Premium apps with a price tag are fading fast. The freemium model, whereby the app is free at the point of download, but includes in-app purchases and sometimes advertising, is dominant.

The Distimo report found that 85 percent of iPhone apps and 78.6 percent of iPad apps are free with in-app purchases. That figure is even higher for Android. A special report from App Annie last June found that a staggering 98 percent of worldwide revenue on Google Play is generated by freemium apps, and 90 percent of those freemium apps are games.

Consumers are increasingly reluctant to spend money acquiring an app, but they are growing more willing to spend on content within apps, especially after they’ve invested some time.

In my experience, the number of downloads a mobile app achieves strongly influences the position of the mobile app’s listing in Apple App Store or Google Play Store. Free apps get a lot more downloads, which puts paid for apps at a potential disadvantage.

The Freemium mobile app model can overcome this disadvantage – with freemium, you get all the advantages of a free app, but you also create an opportunity to convince users to pay a fee for premium features.

I strongly recommend you read the Full Article, if you are serious about creating a profitable mobile app.

If you have an idea for an iPhone App or Android App, and would like to discuss various revenue models, and how they might be implemented, please Contact Me

Why Mobile App Developers avoid Adobe Flash

Posted by Eric Worrall on in Mobile App, Mobile Development, Steve Jobs 0 Comment

Another week, another gaping security hole in Adobe Flash.

Up until a few years ago, if you wanted to animate a website, and create a slick dynamic presentation, you used Adobe Flash. Flash even made inroads into mobile app development – for a time it seemed likely that Adobe Flash would become the defacto cross platform environment for mobile app development.

A relentless string of security embarrassments, defects which allow malicious websites to plant viruses on the computers of users who view the websites, has dramatically damaged the popularity of Flash. The seeming inability of Adobe to secure their Flash product is an ongoing disaster, which will almost certainly lead to the demise of Adobe Flash as a web standard.

The downfall of Adobe Flash, in my opinion, began in 2009. Steve Jobs, the legendary CEO of Apple Corporation who oversaw the birth of iPhone, published an open letter, explaining why Apple would not allow Adobe Flash to run on iPhone.

In April 2010, Steve Jobs, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Apple Inc. published an open letter explaining why Apple wouldn’t allow Flash on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. In the letter he cited the rapid energy consumption, poor performance on mobile devices, abysmal security, lack of touch support, and desire to avoid “a third party layer of software coming between the platform and the developer”. He also touched on the idea of Flash being “Open”, claiming that “By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system”.

Jobs also tried to dismiss the idea that Apple customers are missing out by being sold devices without Flash compatibility. He quoted a number of statistics and concluded with “Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content.”

At the time Steve Jobs’ decision was highly controversial. Critics suggested that Steve Jobs was exaggerating the problems with Flash, to try to steer developers into using his proprietary iPhone development environment, rather than allowing iPhone Apps to be developed using Adobe Flash.

Since 2009, ongoing and very public problems with Adobe Flash security have vindicated Jobs’ decision in the eyes of most observers. Adobe’s apparent inability to secure their product has provoked fury amongst developers and Adobe Flash users.

According to The Register

Enough is ENOUGH: It’s time to flush Flash back to where it came from – Hell

If you patched Adobe’s screen door of the internet – its Flash plugin – last week, and thought you were safe, even for a few weeks, you were sadly mistaken.

The Photoshop goliath is warning that yet another programming blunder in its code is being exploited in the wild, and says it won’t have a patch ready to deploy until later this week. Buckle up, in other words.

This latest security vulnerability is, as always, triggered when the plugin tries to play a malicious Flash file – allowing hackers to download malware onto PCs and effectively hijack the computers so passwords and more can be stolen.

According to Trend Micro, the Angler exploit kit was updated to leverage this particular flaw, and used to inject malware into PCs visiting web video site dailymotion.com via a dodgy ad network.

Read more…

For now Adobe Flash continues to be used. A lot of legacy websites, and some mobile Apps, still use Adobe Flash – so completely removing support for Adobe Flash from all systems would potentially annoy users, by preventing them from accessing websites and mobile apps they rely on.

But Jobs’ early decision to ban Flash on iPhones, combined with the rise of alternatives such as Javascript / CSS animations, which provide comparable functionality without the security problems, has had an impact. Flash is now very much seen as a legacy system – something you have to consider supporting, because some old websites and mobile apps still require Flash, but not a system which you would use for creating new code or web content.

If you would like to know more about Adobe Flash, and options for upgrading or replacing Flash, please Contact Me

Android App Developers Poke Fun at North Korea

Posted by Eric Worrall on in Android App, iPhone App, Kickstarter, Mobile App 0 Comment
A newly developed Android App pokes fun at the North Korean dictator
A newly developed Android App pokes fun at the North Korean dictator

A new Android App developed by Subway Monkey lets users poke fun at North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.

According to PR Newswire

While Sony Pictures may have famously balked at the idea, the fearless development team at Subway Monkey has no qualms about poking the bear that is North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. The company’s new mobile app, Kim Cam, gives users a co-star with the reclusive and notorious leader in their own mini-movies. Subway Monkey has also launched a Kickstarter campaign to further support the app’s development.

“What’s a great home movie or viral video without a compelling and recognizable star?” asked Bee Brown, Public Relations Manager at Subway Monkey. “Our new Kim Cam app lets enterprising young directors cast none other than Kim Jong-un in the lead role, doing all sorts of ridiculous things. We all know that Kim’s father was an avowed movie buff – it’s only fitting that his son follow in his footsteps, so to speak.”

Kim Cam is free and will launch first on Google Play. The app takes advantage of a smartphone’s built-in camera and enables users to insert short recordings of the North Korean leader into a video clip. The user’s imagination and sense of humor are the only practical limitations on what can be created with Kim Cam.

These apps might not seem a significant contribution to the world, but there are a few inescapable highlights of creating an app like this:

  1. The creators of satirical mobile apps sometimes make a lot of money – taking advantage of a hot issue is a powerful way to attract attention for your effort
  2. Satirical mobile apps are arguably a celebration of freedom of expression. They might seem silly or puerile, but I’m glad we live in a world where you can create such a mobile app without breaking the law
  3. Nobody is going to complain to you about the impact on their business or income, if your satire mobile app malfunctions.

Of course, in the case of a high profile target like Kim Jong-un, there is a risk your satirical app will attract the attention of cyber criminals, like the people who hacked Sony Pictures.

However, the world would be a poorer place, if everyone started censoring themselves because they were worried someone powerful might be offended by what they say. The famous comedian Charlie Chaplain refused to be intimidated by the risk of retribution from Adolf Hitler, when Chaplain made the satirical movie The Great Dictator, even though Hitler had agents and sympathisers who could conceivably have attacked Chaplain in retaliation for mocking their idol.

If you have an idea for a satirical mobile app, especially if the satire is relevant to current world events, and want to speak to an iPhone App Developer or Android App Developer about your idea, please Contact Me.