A $19b acquisition! whatsapp with facebook?

So the biggest acquisition in the history of business has been announced and nearly 19 billion is to be paid to whatsapp from facebook. Facebook, that has ruled the social space in the last decade has been finding it difficult to compete against the mobile messenger app. There is a lot of emphasis on retention of the user and whatsapp was winning the competition. The shift of internet towards mobile devices caught facebook in a ‘not very much prepared’ manner and quickly there was rise of an app driven ecosystem that was exclusive and interesting to the users. Is right of facebook to acquire one of the most successful app development company? What are the future implications for facebook?

There are reports that the application keeps on adding 1 million users daily and this is something substantial enough for an app development company to be acquired for billions. Facebook fought against whatsapp to gain advantage on mobile but failed. It just did not happen. Facebook was made for web that brought each and every tool together to add value to the social conversations. On the other hand whatsapp initiated altogether a new wave of social interaction. Facebook needed to compete against it and tried their best with the messenger app and later with an android launcher, both of them did not really take of. The only way they could have had their hands upon the most engaging interaction is by acquiring whatsapp. According to one of the reports messaging applications such as whatsapp, line and we chat are emerging as total ecosystems. As smartphones become the new tool to access internet and communicate, they are emerging as the biggest source of revenues too. Hence the acquisition is obvious from the point of view of revenues.

Facebook too, can learn more and delve deeper into optimizing their business around the mobile.With a team strength of 50, whatsapp is one of the most efficient app development company today and can be very helpful.  Facebook’s attempts to rule the mobile has been criticized in the past and the acquisition may bring better understanding of the mobile ecosystem into the company. Facebook might go on monetizing the users through an ad based model which might or might not affect the whatsapp user base. However, one thing is certain, facebook has acquired its major competitor that could have been a great threat to the facebook ecosystem an another couple of years. While bulky deal raises a lot of eyebrows and naysayers, it is going to help FB in the coming times significantly.

The rise and fall of flappy bird

In an app ecosystem crowded by more than 1.7 million apps strange things happens at times. And one of the most strange things that happened recently was the rise and fall of flappy birds. Many mobile app development companies and experts speculate that Dong Nguyen, the maker of the game has purchased traffic over web to get high download numbers for his game. Nevertheless, the game has been a sensation over the app stores and has generated significant amount of revenues for the mobile app development expert Dong Nguyen. Let us look at the brief history of the game that became an overnight sensation then vanished from the appstore.

Flappy Birds was first launched in 24th may 2013 and registered a few downloads in Russia followed by its peak position in the country within a month. Within the next 3 months the game starts to spread and gains top spot in australia as well. Mobile app development expert Dong Nguyen, updates the application while downloads in the US picks in the mean time. Till the end of december flappy bird was one of the top 10 iOS apps in North America. The game continued to grow and registered a geometric growth in the month of january. The game makes entry into android and ends up at the top apps in many countries in play store. By the first week of february flappy birds became a rage and topped both the app stores. However after all that, Dong Nguyen put down the game apparently.

Some of the app review experts have been harsh on the game criticizing the graphics and the levels of difficulty that the game brings in. One of the experts has put that it is not possible to get traffic in all the applications that Dong Nguyen has developed. Nguyen also said that it is not possible to do that or else Apple app store would have axed the app much earlier. Finally on February 10, Dong Nguyen put the game and ended the flappy bird phenomenon.

There are many unanswered turns to the flappy bird story but one thing is clear. You just need an idea that is potential enough for you luck to play its part.

Nokia dares to look beyond windows, tweaks Android!

So Nokia is also coming up with their own budget android phone. It does not raise eyebrows to hear this announcement when the company is desperately looking for some voluminous sales. However what an android app development company would find strange is the fact that the device will not have any direct application to the play store. However Nokia will give the app for Nokia app store (OVI store) to download apps for your device. Is this an effort from Nokia to create get a huge low end market and then sell apps to them. How should the decision of excluding play store be looked at?
 

 Nokia has a very strong brand perception that directly connect to dependability, trust and other major variables of brand loyalty. Especially in countries like India, Nokia is still one of the major players in the market selling most of the budget phones. People believe in the brand name and might give its android phone a chance. Forget about the play store thing, if we just look at the specs, it is fairly a great phone that comes with kit kat out of the box set to run on a 1.2ghz dual core. The market that it is targeting is mostly occupied by 4 inch+ phones made by players like micromax. And this is where the brand name Nokia might be able to topple the 5 incher micromax devices.

Micromax has already been known for its notorious customer service while with Nokia, it is vice versa. Nokia has one of the best customer service network in India and people are already aware about it.

If Nokia fares better as compared to micromax on the experience part, (for which micromax has bad reputation with some of its models) then it would open up doors for the company to sell feature rich phones for this market creating a substantial Nokia android cluster who will be downloading apps from the Nokia store and Nokia and come up with a substantial app store supported by reviews and some cash as well, derived from the paid apps. In the longer run the company might go for a larger spectrum of devices and target other segments too. This might looked a little farfetched but launching a budget android phone with its own app store indicates nothing but creating a foothold upon the chaotic android platform while also assuring a revenue generating app store in the future.

Everyone can be a superstar developer

Yes, it is true as we see the flappy birds score a fortune in the app stores. The game was simplistic with basic graphic that dated back to the mario days and all the user had to do is to tap to keep the bird flying while passing through the obstacles. The game got some bad reviews from the tech circles that talked mostly about the poor graphics and extremely difficult and frustrating gameplay. But it is ultimately the charts that matters the most. Mobile app developers ultimately create the apps for people and if it appears on the top ten spot, then there is nothing more a mobile app developer can ask for. 

From the flappy bird story you can easily predict that everyone can become a successful developer and deliver a hit in the app store. There are a few factors that can make your app the next success story on app stores and earn your huge revenues if you could do it right. One of the major aspect for mobile app developers should be upon the simplicity of the game. Be it angry birds or flappy birds, they did not asked for the least efforts from the games. You can play them anytime and without any mental stress. Mobile app developers must understand that simplicity is one of the major aspects with casual games and simpler the game play, more downloads and installs it is likely to get.

If you want to earn money from your app/game, then have a clear app monetization pathway into mind. Look into the various aspects as to how your app is being used by your userbase. For example in flappy birds, the gameplay never goes out of the loop while the users hit the replay button at least 3-4 times in a minute. These intermediate slots between sessions proved the ultimate goldmine for the developer, earning him more than $50k a day from ads that flashed between gameplay sessions.

Don’t under estimate android. Flappy bird went viral due to android. Hence, create a free version for android so that your app/game has wider reach amongst your target audience. Making an android device does not open up revenue channels directly but they will let you understand about the various other segments of users. You could target these cluster of users next time when you make an app or update your existing application.

Responsive web page design - Major Advantages

Mobile is the where the internet data is moving towards and businesses do not want to leave any opportunity or miss even a single visitor. The idea of single point access with only one URL is solidifying and mobile app development India companies suggest that a large number of businesses will opt for responsive websites in the near future. The boundaries between mobile and web is diminishing and it has become extremely important to engage the mobile users as well. Responsive websites developed by an experienced app development company can help monetize the mobile users and generate revenues. So how does responsive web pages create value for the business?

Condition: Responsive web design (RWD) help users to browse a website despite the varying resolution across multiple screens.

Benefit: Users do not come across deformed web pages resulting in lesser bounce rates and better engagement. Value of individual pages increase leading to better SEPRs.

Condition: RWD makes your website search engine friendly. This ultimately increases your online reputation and sales.

Benefit: Search engines, especially google has a dedicated algorithm called panda. Panda is fundamentally created to check the website experience and user satisfaction. If your website scores good in panda, you can secure a higher rank on google than your competitors.

 

Condition:RWD allows you to break the barriers and helps you to reach a wider demography through mobile devices.

Benefit: Mobile devices are teenager’s favorite tool these days. You may find out that there can be a potential market waiting out there in segments that you might not have explored. Major app development companies say that a mobile friendly website will enhance the overall visual appeal of the website and may find you new markets as well.

Condition: RWD allows you to have one point of access for all content and hence there is no need to make multiple websites.

Benefit: Mobileapp development India developers working on RWD projects suggest that it saves a lot on development costs. People can save at least save 50%-60% of the development cost that would have spent otherwise for creating multiple sites.

Condition: RWD saves a lot of time and minimizes hassles when it comes to website maintenance. 

 

Benefit: Maintenance time for multiple websites will be higher as compared to a single website. This saves huge on costs and maintenance time for the website that would have been wasted otherwise.

Prominent mobile app developers are paying emphasis on responsive web page design. There are numerous advantages and most importantly they are all futuristic.

The internal android disruption

Being an opensource mobile operating system, android has always been the center of attention for mobile app developers. Exclusive applications such as the laucnhers and lock screen apps are exclusivly an android thing. But apart from the apps, android is also responsible for creating internal segments of users within the android ecosystem. We are talking about the markets in countries like India and china where android OEMs such as micromax is writing altogether a new story with their budget smartphones. These smartphones are priced lower than $100 and run on android. How can these users with small pockets affect or drive app monetization in the play store? How is it beneficial for android?

In the first glance it might not very beneficial for google to have so many devices running android under these cheap brands. However many android app development company india believe that these users could amount as a substantial subset of users who could drive a lot of free apps downloads and provide rating for the applications aswell. If you have observed, the google play store provides a quick rating option in the play store for each time you visit. This rating is generally asked for the previous application the user has used. It is definite that if the number of users using an increases, the rating would also increase. App stores have already set users ratings as a critical ASO varible for app ranking. It is practical because, more the rankings are, more aunthetic reviews and hence position of the app would be.

Android apps would mostly earn from high end device users. And to give user satisfaction, proper app ranking is neccesary. Seeing this, these internal segments within android are quite valuable for users as well as mobile app developers who want to get their app discovered.

Why was Flappy Bird interesting but not good enough?

Flappy bird, the popular game which is now gone from the stores topped the charts after it became viral on android app store. While many installed the game but most of them could not even clear even a single obstacle and make the bird pass through. There were a lot of hate comments on techcrunch posts that talked about the app, especially when it’s developer announced that he is taking it down. While the game might have topped the charts, but there is an indication that many users did not like it. A day before the mobile app developer of flappy bird took it down, the game swiftly moved from the first spot to the 7th or 8th spot. You do not see such dramatic changes of app position unless there are a few factors involved.

One of the major variables that affects the ranking of an application is the speed of its download as well as the speed at which it is being uninstalled from the mobile device. Numerous app development company India believe that the time duration of an app installed in a device affects the ranking of an application. Seeing flappy bird’s fall by 7-8 position from the numero uno spot, it can be easily assessed that many users uninstalled it. Many users have been found saying that the game is difficult and frustrating. It is most possible that one can easily uninstall such an app from their mobile device.

Anyways this gives a hint that how the frequency of app download can be possibly connected to the overall app ranking of an application and how mobile app developers can make apps that amount to a high rate of downloads after being discovered substantially.

Advantages of per app VPN for enterprise app development

iOS 7 has come out with highly useful feature for per app VPN. In technological terms, VPN or a virtual private network allows users to access data from a computer across shared or public networks in the same manner as it would have done from a secure private network. Hence when we talk of per app VPN for Apple devices, we mean a mobile app development company making an exclusive application with its own dedicated and secured network. And with the help of which Apple users can easily go around public networks to access an enterprise app without compromising on security, while network admin have the full control of that app at the same time. What does this bring for a mobile app development company? What kind of enterprise applications an iPhone app development company india can conceptualize to utilize per app VPN?

Making apps for public safety:

A mobile app development company can create apps that access the huge databases to serve data for firefighters, criminal records etc. For example integrating an API to an app that gives high value data to iPhone users using the respective app.

Making apps with large scale time based data:

iPhone app developers can create health and fitness apps while integrating APIs from large health institutions to fetch data. Apps that can create a direct communication between doctors and patients based on the patients history that is fetched from a particular database of a large health organization.

An iPhone app development company can also create apps for accounting, housekeeping, billing and various other sub categories that demands a segregated control and keeping data safe across public networks too.

Inventory management and CRM:

A lot of weight can go behind process management which the iOS7 enterprise features can revolutionise. Especially with per app VPN, app developers can create apps with larger set of controls for the network admin which was not possible until now. Developers can create apps that can derive data from a database and send push notifications to customers, suppliers and vendors.

Opportunities for sales representatives and insurance claim settlers:

There is a lot of data and point based monitoring when it comes to sales representatives. At the same time these people need data and stats served in many forms that are unique with respect to the companies and the kinds of profiles that they hold. An iPhone app development company India can create multiple apps to funnel or catalyse the work of these sales representatives with respect to the various industries.

Insurance claim settlers can look into all the complexities of a death and interact (fetch data, record or approve).

Per app VPN is a phenomenal technology and can be used to make a lot of utility based enterprise applications and become valuable in the long run. There is a lot of potential within enterprise based application and it many app development companies can utilize the same in the 2014.

“Just when many thought that the web is dead”

It has recently come out that google will be allowing developers to create android and iOS apps from chrome apps. We know that chrome already has a lot of applications and having them on mobile will just add value to both chrome and the mobile OSs alike. An app development company can employ Apache’s cordova platform to port chrome apps to iOS and Android apps. This comes as a great news for some tech pundits and they feel that there no revolutionary apps for chrome and are eager to find out, as to how these apps would fare in mobile.

Finding a new market

 

Many chrome applications can be potential hits in mobile platforms. There are many productivity apps that can get a new life as they go mobile. All this will make the chrome apps to find new markets in mobile by letting these apps flourish. Another great thing about this step would be a large number of valuable iOS users will use these apps and create monetization potential for the application. An app development company might look towards a large number of app porting requests from chrome to iOS and Android.

 

Continuing the chrome revolution

 

This announcement from google can be a real motivator for many developers who have been developing for chrome. They have a huge and newly opened market in front of them to exploit with little efforts. As far a google is concerned, this is great step in keeping developers motivated and committed towards making chrome apps that can also run in the mobile ecosystems. So just when many thought that the web is already dead, this  can be seen as a potential preventive measure from google.