New Age of the Smartphone?
Author: June Beatty
When the very first iFund was announced to help invest in startups creating Apps back at the start of 2008, the business world hardly blinked. While the iPhone and iPod Touch made strong debuts in terms of numbers sold, the Apps Store itself was, as yet, unproven. Downloads might have been frequent even back then, but people doubted that any money was being or could be made from these small transactions. It was hard to see how game makers and software developers would be able to distinguish themselves from all the free iPhone Apps and persuade iPhone owners to part with between $1.99 and $14.99 for a new App.
But who?s laughing now? Those who didn?t have the foresight to invest in the App market just a mere two and a half years ago have lost out on a major profit. Independent iPhone game company Ngmoco received $10 million in 2008 from the iFund. This week that same company was bought by a Japanese mobile portal and e-commerce company for a staggering $400 million. That is an amazing increase in worth by anyone?s standards!
So does this mean that the age of the App is finally here? Not necessarily.
While Apple may take 30% of every sale, the freedom that developers have in dictating the price has been instrumental in making the Apps the commodity they are. Does the rise of competing platforms offering equal sales opportunities, mean that developers will eventually discover that they have spread themselves too thin? Or will they just find greater opportunity to reach both the PC and Mac audiences? Maybe the end result will end up looking something like the balance between games created for both Xbox and PS platforms.
iPhone App reviews and iPhone Game reviews all seem to agree that so far the Apps are the holding strong and increasing in quality and usefulness. Whether or not that continues to be the case will depend largely on how competing platforms do over the course of the next twelve months. At the moment it seems that people thinking of investing in the App market would do well to look for companies that don?t pop up in the top ten on the list, but rather the ones that are rising throughout the ranks of the top 100. Companies that are concentrating on building more unique Apps for newer platforms are also considered worthy of consideration.
Plans to develop and build an electronics shopping App have just been announced for the upcoming Windows Phone 7 launch, and investors are definitely advised to keep a close eye on its progress. While predicting the direction that these Apps will end up taking is impossible, innovations like this seem to reveal the enormous potential of this market.
But who?s laughing now? Those who didn?t have the foresight to invest in the App market just a mere two and a half years ago have lost out on a major profit. Independent iPhone game company Ngmoco received $10 million in 2008 from the iFund. This week that same company was bought by a Japanese mobile portal and e-commerce company for a staggering $400 million. That is an amazing increase in worth by anyone?s standards!
So does this mean that the age of the App is finally here? Not necessarily.
While Apple may take 30% of every sale, the freedom that developers have in dictating the price has been instrumental in making the Apps the commodity they are. Does the rise of competing platforms offering equal sales opportunities, mean that developers will eventually discover that they have spread themselves too thin? Or will they just find greater opportunity to reach both the PC and Mac audiences? Maybe the end result will end up looking something like the balance between games created for both Xbox and PS platforms.
iPhone App reviews and iPhone Game reviews all seem to agree that so far the Apps are the holding strong and increasing in quality and usefulness. Whether or not that continues to be the case will depend largely on how competing platforms do over the course of the next twelve months. At the moment it seems that people thinking of investing in the App market would do well to look for companies that don?t pop up in the top ten on the list, but rather the ones that are rising throughout the ranks of the top 100. Companies that are concentrating on building more unique Apps for newer platforms are also considered worthy of consideration.
Plans to develop and build an electronics shopping App have just been announced for the upcoming Windows Phone 7 launch, and investors are definitely advised to keep a close eye on its progress. While predicting the direction that these Apps will end up taking is impossible, innovations like this seem to reveal the enormous potential of this market.
Article Source: http://www.a1articles.com/article_1832596_25.html