App recommendation websites and stores are springing up rapidly, regardless of the OS in question. Industries such as Education are seeing massive growth in customized app stores which follow Google and Apple’s model of retaining 30% of the revenue from app sales. The primary reasons for the successes of these online app stores can be summed up in the following points:
1. Selective/ Industry Based Content: With the Google Play Store and iTunes Store growing rapidly, the user is looking for a customized store which offers quality applications without the time required to sift through and try applications one at a time. With review processes protecting the gates to the ‘Published App’ status on many of these websites, apps with little utility are already removed from the competition. Needless to say, these websites do have a decent offering for customers looking for specific content.
2. Immediate Extra Working Capital Available: Since all developers are paid only after a certain revenue threshold has been reached and since these payments are made at specific intervals, the app publishing companies get extra working capital some of which never reaches small developers at all if the revenue does not reach the threshold. In the end, for any app publishing company, if there is a $15 sales for 100,000 apps (where the threshold is $100) , then the funds retained on behalf of the developers amounts to $1,500,000.
3. Limited Apps With Ads: Many of the app publishers do not allow third party ads to be posted within their apps. While linking developers to advertisers offers opportunities that could potentially lead to bigger business, these ‘App Markets’ focus solely on their area of strength and hence avoid diversification into areas where Google is already strong. With no Admob ads part of the apps, most developers who publish on these apps choose to publish paid apps once again increasing the probability of revenue for the app publishers.
4. Low Operating Costs: Most of these websites hire people for work for activities like review of applications, email based business development, and site maintenance. In totality, the costs of app publishing are not extremely high unless the company chooses to expand tremendously in a short time span.
