Apple and Google dominate the app store game – but only in terms of size. Senior Analyst Andreas Pappas discusses the key success factors for app stores, why Google is lagging behind and how Amazon fits in the whole picture.

The game of ecosystems is in full bloom, with each player attempting to draw as many developers as possible around their platform. As we finally see some signs of consolidation, VisionMobile Senior Analyst Andreas Pappas, talks about the rules of engagement and identifies the winners and losers in this game of ecosystems in 2012.

Appsfire Infographic shared figures for the iOS App Store in 2012. The growth in the amount of apps, while still high, seems to be slowing. This might indicate that the market is maturing. Only 1 in 10 apps gets any reasonable traction at all. Only 1 in 1000 manages to get to the top 10 of […]

Cross-platform tools (CPTs) are a class of developer tool that aim to enable a single implementation of application functionality to run across multiple platforms. If that definition seems very broad it’s because the category covers a wide range of use cases, technology approaches and forms of app deployment. In our analysis of this sector from February 2012 we identified over 100 tools across three forms of app deployment (native vs. web vs. hybrid) and five different technology approaches

In our 2012 analysis of the cross-platform tools (CPT) sector, we have identified five distinct technology approaches being used:

• JavaScript frameworks
• App factories
• Web-to-native wrappers
• Runtimes
• Source code translators

Each technology targets a slightly different developer audience – from non-developers to seasoned programmers – and addresses different application use cases.

With the wide selection of cross-platform development tool (CPTs) available in the market, how should a developer select a development tool? The exact selection criteria will vary depending on the project and the individual developers involved. However, it’s valuable to look at the criteria other developers have used to select development tool and, even more […]

[The explosive growth of app ecosystems is creating serious bottlenecks in app discovery that only popular apps can overcome. Having 700,000 apps is great for platform vendors, but not so great for developers, whose apps are lost in the heap. Andreas Pappas takes a look at the app discovery problem and considers whether social discovery […]

W3i, the in-app offer exchange provider, released a report on December 6th showcasing recent trends in mobile app monetization. The W3iNSIDER Report breaks down data from its hundreds of game developer partners and 66 million monthly active users across iOS and Android.The data shows that smaller microtransactions ($0.99-$1.99), long thought to be the backbone of […]

With well over one million total apps available on Apple and Google app stores combined, plus hundreds of thousands on the other platforms, the competition to get on consumers’ handsets is fierce. As hundreds of apps are added each and every day, app discovery remains a largely unsolved challenge which is only getting worse. With […]

How do various forms of fragmentation of the potential audience impact the development economics? The answers will vary significantly depending on the specifics of each app but some general issues are worthy of consideration by everyone.As we pointed out recently, Android is now way ahead of iOS in terms of share of new device sales […]