I was having a conversation recently with a colleague around the improvements in Android around mobile to desktop syncing, and where things with Google search could trend with regards to apps. Well, it has begun! Rolling out from the US and then around the world, users of Google on their Android or iPhone devices will be able to find apps in search results that are indexing the Android Marketplace and Apple App Store.
This makes total sense as a mechanism for making apps more discoverable through existing channels for information discovery using the web, and I expect that it’ll have a significant impact on how apps are marketed as well. Check out the Google Mobile Blog for full details.
I’m very pleased to be speaking at the upcoming AIMIA Queensland event, “The Mechanics of Mobile Marketing” on June 17 in Brisbane. The afternoon seminar will be led by a number of speakers from different areas of the mobile market, all looking at how the smartphone/touch device explosion has, and can, impact business. Speakers are:
- Telco – See what Dale Rankine’s team at Vodafone Hutchison Australia recommend when building your mobile platform for device or mobile web.
- Agency – Brett Wiskar, Director of Speedwell eBusiness Solutions, development partner in the delivery of the highly successful Domino’s Pizza iPhone application.
- Publisher – Carl Poplett, Content Relationship Manager for News Digital Media, Australia’s largest news publisher across online and mobile, talks about the mobile explosion, News’ mobile platforms and the opportunities available for brands in the mobile space.
Space is limited so if you’re interested, register now.
It’s that time of year again, where web and digital designers, developers and business-types descend on Sydney for the annual webDU conference! I’ve posted about it many times before but now that it’s here, I wanted to point out some of the highlights I’m looking forward to over the next 2-3 days.
- Seeing the “two Mikes” – Mike Chambers (Adobe) and Mike Downey (Microsoft) – back presenting at the sane conference again, although this time they’re speaking for different teams!). Mike D has a interesting session on game development on Friday afternoon
- Catching up with many good friends from the industry, both from locally and overseas
- Delivering my first webDU session in 6 years that’s NOT specifically about Flash!
- Seeing if Greg Rewis has mellowed out at all after getting married
- Seeing some Android action
- The conference party, the after conference party, and the speaker party
For those of you going, I’ll see you all at Bondi Beach in the morning!
I recently decided to do a small experiment with the Flash mobile game titles I have in the Nokia Ovi Store. They’ve been there from the very beginning of the Ovi Store at the lowest price point (1 EUR), and over the past months I’ve watched the sales dwindle to nearly zero. In saying that, I stopped marketing the apps at the end of 2009 when I started working for VHA, so to be completely fair I haven’t been putting anything into getting sales – which of course you need to do on any app store to see downloads!
So I wanted to see what the impact would be on an app that’s been in the Ovi Store for around 12 months if I turned it into a free app and continued to do no marketing (apart from what was already out in the open, which really at this point was a listing on oviflash.com). I went into the Ovi Store publish system (which has dramatically improved over the past 12 months in speed and stability) and chose one of the more (surprisingly) under-performing apps in our catalogue – Palleggio. And here’s what I discovered …
From March 2009 through to the end of Feb 2010, Palleggio (a football skills / juggling game) had a grand total of 63 paid downloads. For the first two weeks of March 2010, it had a total of 3302 free downloads.
Where were all these customers before when I was making money off these downloads hey?! So is this really surprising? No, not really – free VS paid is pretty much always skewed in this way. But does the radical jump in downloads indicate that the Ovi Store is easier for customers to download free content? Does it mean simply that Ovi Store customers (as like much of the app store patronage across devices and platforms) are LOOKING for free content? I wonder what I would see if I had a freemium version in there (i.e. a limited version of the game for free, plus a paid version with all the bells and whistles), as is the case with so many titles in the Apple App Store?
And while this might be seen in some quarters as poor app-store-etiquette, I’d be interested in doing another experiment and see what happens to the numbers if I change it back to a 1 EUR price point. If and when I do that, I’ll be sure to post the results here as well
I’m also working with the Ovi App Wizard to create some free apps that include AdMob advertising – the results of those (Java and WRT) apps through the store will be an interesting read also!
Would be interested in hearing your thoughts and comments on your experiences with free VS paid content on Ovi Store.
It’s conference season at the moment for geeks, and one of the best going around is of course Sydney’s own webDU. This is seriously one of the best conferences for the web and technology industries, and always delivers a high standard of content and entertainment
This will be my 7th webDU, and 6th as a speaker. This year I’ll be speaking about mobile marketplaces and the technologies that allow us to go to market quickly, and there’s some other great mobile content at the conference as well, including a great session from Rod Farmer and Oliver Weidlich.
I encourage you to get along to webDU this year – this time at a new venue at the famous Bondi Beach!
www.webdu.com.au
