CTIA was in San Diego in this week. Mobile apps start to be a serious business. There are 85,000 iPhone apps, and 12,500 Android apps. The number of Android apps is growing so rapidly that we can ask, how soon there are more Android apps than iPhone apps.
Ilja Laurs, GetJ
ar’s CEO, spoke in the same conference with me. It is always great to hear Ilja’s comments about the apps business. GetJar is really an interesting success story. It is world’s largest open apps store. They have had more than 500 Million app downloads. Ilja had many excellent points about openness. Most of apps stores are not yet open, if we think how they support different devices, and how the content is restricted. From Social Intelligence point of view it was really interesting to hear that in GetJar 40% to 90% of new users of an app come from friends referals. One more example of the power of social networks.
Another interesting topic was operator’s role in apps business. Operators have many assets like billing, network service (e.g. messaging and location) API’s, and customer information. The last one can be used for insight, targeting, and personalization that is coming crucial in apps business. There are so many apps that it is hard for users to find relevant apps and this makes it also difficult to make niche apps. How to get right people to find them. Operators could make this in their apps stores, and they could also be an enabler for 3rd party apps stores. But as many participants commented in CTIA, operators have been very slow to utilize these assets. Now it would be really time to do it, if operators want to have a role in this business.
