The rapid proliferation of mobile computing has created a modern success fable. An independent developer builds a simple but useful app. It hits the Apple Store and Google Play, creating a platform with the fixed attention of millions of sets of eyes. Following the modern mantra of “grow big, then monetize,” the developer brings in a robust profit through advertising and premium features behind a paywall. It is so easy that you can do it from your bedroom with nothing more than an internet connection, the Android SDK, and some lessons from Code Academy.
If only it were that simple. A recent article on Forbes has illuminated the reality of the B2C app market. Developers are lucky if they can make pennies per download. Presenting users with advertising and value-added features is easy. Getting conversions is exceedingly hard. Perhaps the market has reached saturation, or lost its novelty with consumers. Whatever the cause, developers are fortunate that a more critical market is set to become prized and competitive – custom software applications for enterprise mobile operations.
IDC and Appcelerator have released a joint study that brings the concept home. While we may have to take it with a grain of salt as it is based on the Titanium developer community, the huge sample size tells us a great deal about the priorities of businesses towards mobile development.
B2C development, largely driven by the optimistic mythology that we described above, used to make up the lion’s share of mobile efforts. In just three years, it has declined as enterprise development has risen. The two trend lines have crisscrossed, and at the current trajectory B2B/B2E development will have completely swapped places with B2C within a year or two.
This situation makes a great deal of sense. The tablet has created countless novel approaches to productivity. Every company has a need for one or two consumer applications, but will need scores of applications – most of them bespoke - in order to manage the modern scale of operations.
For mobile developers, this means an opportunity to flex the muscles that they have toned through all these years of consumer development, but in a more lucrative and lofty environment. For businesses, it means that the field will become much more competitive and it will pay to partner with the best mobile development talent before the opposition does.
