Mobile development opportunities

By -
I was recently asked about the differences between the major mobile development markets what opportunities are there for developers.
After some research to fill-in the gaps, I have came up with a comparison table.


mobile development plan
storepriceprice for companiesdurationmobile apps (2014)languageref
google play$25$25one-time1.3MJavahere
windows store$19$99one-time300KC#here
apple store$99$1991 year1.2MObjective-C / Swifthere

What this table tells us, is that we have right away some big differences. If you are a typical Microsoft-oriented developer, you may opt with the windows store. You will get one of the best access fees (only $19) and you will be able to develop using the frameworks that you are used to.
Being a still growing market, there is a larger chance to create new apps that haven't been thought up before.

If you want to enter the Apple ecosystem, many bloggers recommend that you start with Objective-C. But you should know that you have to pay a minimum of $99 every year, and if you have a published app, it will be removed from the store as soon as you stop paying. Apple is also known for having one of the most rough validation procedures, where most "silly" apps will be blocked from entering the store. One could argue that there is a higher risk due to these prices, but this can also mean higher return of investment if you have a good product.

The Android / Play store is known for being more permissive. This can be an advantage and disadvantage at the same time. This store has cheap, life-time access, and the application approvals don't seem to be very thorough, so although it might be good for you, often we see news of viruses or hacks making their way into the store. But if Java is your comfort zone, creating a nice app with a good monetization plan could be the way to go.

How many apps per store?
A study has found that in 2014, the Google Play store was the one with the most apps, with around 1.3 million applications!

Is there a way to develop once and for all?
Yes, PhoneGap and Xamarin are just a few of the many options.
Check this stackoverflow comparison for more.

How can I make money?
Most markets will keep a 30% commission and let you keep 70%.
Here are a few monetization options:
  • Create apps with advertisements
  • Create one free (limited/adds) and one paid
  • Create a trial app (payment required to continue using)
  • Implement In-App purchases (e.g. "Gold coins")

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Breaking down document locking in SharePoint

By -
Image
This is a topic I've been meaning to discuss in a while. We open, change and close documents almost every day, and sometimes we collaborate with other people at the same time on those documents. SharePoint brings all co-authoring features we need, straight out-of-the-box, but sometimes, there are problems. While things are starting to look better on the cloud side, the concept of document locking is still very much up-to-date and understanding how it works and what to do when things go wrong is crucial. In an article that has since disappeared the Microsoft Knowledge Base (but still available here ), Microsoft explains it best: When a document is opened by a client program, Windows SharePoint Services puts a write lock on the document on the server. The write lock times out after 10 minutes. Users cannot modify the document during the time when the document is locked. In a scenario where the program that opens the document unexpectedly quits or crashes and you try to open the do...
Read more

Working around X-Frame-Options for iframes

By -
Image
The problem: One of the first things we noticed after migrating to SharePoint 2013 was that our iframes have stopped working, giving the error: "Refused to display 'http://contoso/pages/home.aspx' in a frame because it set 'X-Frame-Options' to 'SAMEORIGIN'." Quickly we could see that this is in fact a security mechanism to prevent click-jacking and others: "The X-Frame-Options HTTP response header can be used to indicate whether or not a browser should be allowed to render a page in a frame or iframe. Sites can use this to avoid Clickjacking attacks, by ensuring that their content is not embedded into other sites." Soon we realized that, starting SharePoint 2013, an HTTP Module is adding the header " X-Frame-Options " by default, with the value " SAMEORIGIN ". This is effectively preventing the rendering of pages outside the scope of the current web application. The (attempted) solution: So what to do?...
Read more

Document ID not being generated

By -
Image
Problem In a scenario where we have many document Content Types, we may want to enable Document ID - aka "Permanent Links" - which is a feature in SharePoint that assigns a specific ID for each document. That ID never changes even if the document is renamed or moved to another location. In this scenario, the Document ID field was being generated for some libraries/content types, but not others, which is a surprisingly common problem. Background There are several stages we need to go through to enable use this mechanism. Stage 1 We enable the feature in the Site Collection Features. Stage 2 Under Site Collection Administration > Document ID Settings, we need to enable the assignment and pick a prefix. The IDs use the format: PREFIX-LISTID-LISTITEMID ( ref ) Where: PREFIX: the preconfigured prefix for the site collection, which can be any set of numbers and letters between 4-12 characters LISTID: the property docid_msft_hier_listid of the list...
Read more