It is becoming increasingly difficult for brands and marketers to break even - or make a dent in the mobile public's awareness - when developing an app for Apple. Not so with the Android, as the recent example of Car Finder illustrates.
The app, which as the name suggests helps people find their car, was developed by Edward Kim, who gives a detailed breakdown of the day-by-day sales at his blog. It is now averaging about $400 a day or $13,000 a month "proving it's not just Apple fans who'll pay for basic apps," as the Register puts it.
The app records when you park, using GPS. It also alerts you when the meter needs feeding and - if necessary - will guide you back. The free version has been downloaded about 70,000 times, but Kim has increased the price for the paid version to $3.99 from $1.99 - without losing any customers, which bodes well, says the Register.
"iPhone users are a lot more price sensitive, though that may change if the Android Marketplace gets swamped with $1 apps, as iTunes is. Lots of cheap applications lower the perceived value of all, which is something of a bugbear to iPhone developers." Given these financials - as well as the heavy-handed manner in which Apple can act with its developers - it is difficult to understand why so few developers, relatively speaking, have built apps for the Android.
Catch-22
That leads to a Catch-22 for marketers that may be interested in exploring the Android platform. The health of a platform, be it Android Marketplace or Apple iTunes, is measured in part by the number of interested developers, Christian Science Monitor explains. "And profitability is a major lure. If folks such as Kim can show there's money to be made on Android Marketplace, that will only draw more developers, which might boost sales of phones running Android. And if Android sales soar, so do sales of applications. It's a happy little circle."
Tougher and More Expensive
Meanwhile marketers are finding its tougher and more expensive to have their branded apps move into wider circulation, according to Brand Week. Apple's App Store, unfortunately for its developers, has become a victim of its own success. As more apps are developed, the competition means that any one app will require a lot more downloads to land in the same spot in Apple's 100 most-popular rankings than a year ago, Brand Week said.
"Marketers have to spend more to get the same result," said Jason Spero, vp and managing director, North America, for AdMob (via Brand Week). He estimates that a marketer who spent $15,000 a year ago to promote a new app would have to spend $50,000-$55,000 now.
Another consideration is that apps have a notoriously short life span, with a downloaded app's usage dropping off significantly after the first month.
"My Brain Hurts Just Thinking About It"
While Android might be a more cost-effective platform for marketers - if they are willing to accept the lower traffic - the fact that there are so many mobile platforms in the first place is the real problem, according to Steve Sherlock, founder of Oodles.com.
"From the perspective of fragmented mobile operating systems, this is a real drain on the development budget," he said in a recent interview with M-Travel. "With mobile handsets we could find ourselves optimizing and testing for a plethora of variations, such as iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile and Symbian, with each manufacturer having its own level of operating system customization.
"From a development perspective that all adds up to a lot of time, effort and money for an unknown return. My brain hurts just thinking about it!"
