With the development of mobile platforms such as cellular phone and tablet, more and more software developers are battling in the mobile app market which is regarded as a new profitable area.Through research, IOS Apple App Store has had 700,000 apps and hit $30 billion downloads in 2012. Apple also declares that it has paid app developers over $5 billions.This incredible record is just made by Apple and I have not included the data in term of Android App Store. Above facts give people a strong idea that how fast the mobile app ecosystem is growing and how profitable it is.
Apple’s CEO -Tim Cook shared the biggest number 30 billion apps downloaded in WWDC 2012
However, the fact is that not all apps hit good sales even if these apps have a high standard of quality and the market seems to be large enough to contain all the presence of apps. In order to increase the sales, developers come up with tons of strategies to improve the ranking and visibility of their apps. These strategies include being free for limited time, hiring promoting agency, discounted sales, in-app purchasing, etc. If all developers use the similar promotion methods, the effects of promotion will not be obvious.
From my own opinion, I think a good marketing strategy for promoting mobile apps is to make them appeal in TV shows, no matter how long they last. A successful example is a $0.99 app called Ugly Meter. This is a very simple mobile app with the entertainment function that it will take a picture of the user and give a scale of 1 to 10 how ugly the user is. Ugly Meter is simply targeting for the young customers who like to play fun with friends and who do not take the results seriously because it does not have any reference or standards of what is ugly and what is beautiful. But the developer made a half million of dollars due to the presence of this “silly” app in a TV show. I will talk more about the developer’s promotion method in the Part 2 of the blog.