Pros and Cons of major App Stores

App Stores are really popular today, for customers seeking to download/purchase mobile apps and also for developers to showcase, market and sell their applications.

There are many App Stores today and each of these app stores vastly differs from the other, in terms of pricing, billing, presentation and support. Each even rates the same app in different ways, which may finally get the customer in knots about whether or not to purchase a certain app. Which among these app stores are the best and how does one choose from them?

In this section, we deal with the pros and cons of the major App Stores in the market today.

1. Apple’s App Store

The App Store was originally created by Apple Inc., to help users download applications, both free and paid, from the iTunes Store onto their iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.
Pros

• Probably the biggest app store, comprising more than 1,00,000 apps
• Largest category of apps, ranging from fun apps to more serious ones
• Features a whole lot of free apps. The paid ones are very reasonable
• iTunes, is Apple’s biggest advantage. No other store so far offers users this facility

Cons

• Only the most downloaded apps are featured prominently
• Using the Apple App Store is the only method a user can install apps in their iPhone
• There is duplication of many apps in the "lite" version of apps
• Apple’s recent inclusion policies are very restrictive 

2. Android Market

Though the Google Android Market had initially gotten off to a slow start, it has now grown tremendously in both size and popularity. Some experts believe that it may very soon be capable of superseding the all-powerful Apple App Store.
Pros

• The Android Market features about 250,000 apps
• Developers only pay a low fee of $25 to register
• The apps are available at low costs too
• Each item is categorized and listed out neatly

Cons

• Quality of apps leaves a lot to be desired
• Google supports only 29 countries to sell apps in their store. Developers from all other nationalities can only publish free apps
• The app store is accessible only in certain countries of the world
• Many developers feel that the app market is highly fragmented

 

3. BlackBerry App World

The BlackBerry App World, which has been live from April 2009, has proved to be one of the more promising app stores, offering more than 3500 apps. The store presentation is neat and easy to navigate. Each item is categorized systematically, so finding any app becomes very easy.
Pros

• General presentation is very neat – all items are well categorized
• The only app store that supports Paypal billing
• The only one that pays developers 80% of the sales

Cons

• On the higher end among all app stores, so products are more expensive
• Some customers complain of issues during app installation
• Can only be accessed in some countries of the world
• This App Store requires the developer to pay up $200 to register his account therein

 

4. Nokia Ovi Store

The Nokia Ovi Store focuses on five main areas, namely, Games, Maps, Media, Messaging and Music.
Nokia has undoubtedly put in a lot of effort on building their app store and give Apple, Microsoft and Google a run for their money. The user can access the Ovi services from his mobile device, via the Nokia Ovi Suite on his PC or even through the Web.
Pros

• User interface is clean and easy to access
• Developers need not pay to register
• Nokia takes maximum effort to promote the developer’s app, at no extra cost

Cons
The only disadvantage about the Nokia Ovi Store is that it features very few apps at the present time.

 

5. Microsoft Windows Marketplace for Mobile

In spite of having many apps in just a few months, the Microsoft Windows Marketplace for Mobile fails to impress. Of course, there are also some positives.
Pros

• All apps are well tested  
• The app store managed to feature about 400 apps in a single month.

Cons

• Each developer is charged a registration fee of $99
• Developers are limited to certain countries only
• Developers can sell their app only in one country. If they want to feature their app in more than one country, they have to pay $10 per country
• The user is allowed 5 free app tries, after which he has to pay up $99 per try
• Functional only on 6.1 and 6.5 OS

 

 

6. Samsung Application Store

The biggest advantage of the Samsung Application Store is that it supports both the Symbian and the Pocket PC platforms. The store also keeps a perfect record of its apps, testing them thoroughly.
From time to time, the Samsung Application Store also involves itself in promotional activities and contests, where they offer a considerable amount of cash to the winning developer.
Pros

• Neat catalogue design – the store is well-maintained
• Each listing only costs $10
• All apps are thoroughly tested before they feature on the app store

Cons

• There are only about 600 apps in the store
• For now, the app store is accessible only in Italy, UK and France

Before you become a Freelance Mobile Developer

Mobile app development is taking over our world today. With the endless demand for smart phone apps, this field is full of Apple, Android and BlackBerry developers. Submitting your app has become much easier, with the major app stores relaxing their restrictions. Most app stores charge a nominal registration fee, which makes it more lucrative for the app developer. But can a freelance mobile app developer really earn that much to support his own living? Is it worth becoming self-employed, freelance mobile app developer?

Pros and Cons of becoming a Mobile Developer Contractor

Here are the things you should take note before you decide to become a freelance mobile app developer.

Each App Store has its own drawbacks

Each of the major app stores comes with its unique drawbacks.

• The Apple App Store still continues to slap several restrictions on app developers. Besides, the huge number of iOS developers would make it difficult to make your mark as an independent mobile developer.
• The Android market is easy to enter, but the mobile platform is fragmented, thanks to apps for too many types of mobile devices.
• BlackBerry World is not systematized enough. Besides, this has to be installed on the device before use.
• The webOS and Windows Mobile 7 are much lesser saturated.

Registration Fees

Most mobile platforms require you to pay up an initial registration fee. While the Apple App Store charges developers an annual fee of $99, the Android Market is much cheaper at a one-time registration fee of $25. The BlackBerry World charges one-time fee of $100 as well. Nokia Ovi charges a one-time registration fee of $73, but adds on other signing fees as and when applicable.

The Android Market works out the least expensive for you, while Symbian is the most expensive one.

As you can see, you also need to consider the cost you will incur as regards registration and signing fees for each of these app stores.

Company Registration Fees

Some app stores also charge you what is known as “company registration fees”, which is a fee to certify that your app has been “verified and tested” in their marketplace. At this point of time, Symbian is one platform that charges a hefty company registration fee. The Apple App Store charges you a fee to sell your app in their store. Most other platforms are free and you can download and use their SDK without fearing the above restrictions.
Of course, paying certification fees is optional and only required if you want to access certain advanced features of that particular app marketplace.

App Store Commission

Most of the major app stores charge you a 30% commission on the sales of your app in their marketplace.
The BlackBerry World charges only 20% commission. The webOS pays their developers via PayPal, which decreases your commission further. Hence, this one may not be an extremely viable for you, returns-wise, especially if you are a US-based mobile app developer.

Breaking Even

It is important for you to consider the pricing of your app, as you finally need to break even your expenses and returns. Most of the major app stores stipulate a minimum price point of 99c. Only the BlackBerry World has a minimum price of $2.99. This shows that you will be able to recover your initial investment without too much trouble. So there is no major risk factor involved here.

Actually earning from your app

Your aim is not just breaking even, but also making a decent sum every month, from the sales of your app. For this, you will first have to decide a target sum you want to earn and based on that, see if you can manage to generate the volume of sales required to make that much amount of profit. While you are projecting this figure, you will also have to look at the size of the particular marketplace that you are targeting. Right now, Apple and Google are at the very top of the rung. Hence, these also have the highest number of app users, which means, you have that much more chance of making profits in these markets.

Conclusion

In conclusion, you can definitely make profits being a freelance mobile app developer. But how much you can make each month depends on your costs, your marketing efforts, volume of sales and so on. Analyze each mobile platform in detail before selecting your chosen platform or platforms and then go ahead and develop apps for the same. 

Good luck!

Creating your first Mobile Device Application

Amateur developers and coders are often intimidated with the various issues surrounding the development of apps for mobile devices. Luckily, the advanced technology that’s available to us today makes it relatively easy in developing mobile applications. This post focuses on how to create a mobile app from a wide range of mobile platforms.

Developing a mobile application

How do you develop your first mobile application? The first thing you have to look at here is the size of the deployment that you are aiming to create and the platform that you want to use. In this post, we are going to talk about developing mobile applications for the smart phones.

Developing applications for smart phones

Developing apps for smart phones is similar to Windows Mobile devices, but you have to understand your device first. Smart phones have similar features to PDAs, so they have send and end button features. The ‘back’ key is used for backspace and browser back functions.

The best thing about this device is the soft key, which you can program it. You can set this feature to create multiple functions. The central button also acts as an “Enter” button.

Note: You have to install Smartphone 2003 SDK to write smart phone applications using Visual Studio .NET 2003.

What if the smart phone has a touch-screen?

This is the difficult part, in the absence of button controls in a touch-screen handheld device, you will have to choose alternate controls, such as the menu. Visual Studio gives you a ‘Main Menu’ control, which is customizable. But too many top-level menu options will cause the system to crash. What you can do is to create few top-level menus and give a variety of options under each one of them.

Developing apps for BlackBerry smart phones

Developing apps for the BlackBerry OS is a big business today. For developing a BlackBerry app, you will have to possess:

• The BlackBerry JDE Plug-in for Eclipse
• BlackBerry simulator
• BlackBerry smart phone and data cable
• JAVA programming knowledge

Eclipse works great with JAVA programming. A new project, filed with a .COD extension, can be directly loaded to the simulator. You can also test the app by loading it through Device Manager, or by using the “JAVAloader” command line option.

Note: Not all BlackBerry APIs will work for all BlackBerry smart phones. So note the devices that accept the code.

What’s next?

After you have learnt to develop a basic mobile device application, you should carry on and try to improve your knowledge. You should:

• Be active in developer forums and discussions
• Enroll in learning labs, both online and offline. This will give you more tips and tricks on creating varied applications.
• View online video tutorials on building apps across various mobile platforms.