Apple and Google have announced updates to their mobile app stores that will help app developers increase visibility and revenue. Both companies are under increased pressure to help developers’ apps stand out in their crowded app-store marketplaces.
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Apple announced that it will allow developers to provide early-access promotional codes for their apps and in-app purchases. Developers can offer these codes to journalists and reviewers for free access to new apps and content. Granting that access gives developers a chance to garner more publicity and recommendations for new apps.
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Google, meanwhile, announced a slew of updates to the Google Play store, including allowing developers to offer discounted subscription pricing for their apps. This means developers can give new users a discounted subscription price for a limited time when they first start using an app, which could help them gain users.
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Google also said that it will expand the Google Play store to new computing platforms including wearables, VR headsets, and Chromebook laptops, giving developers a single marketplace to sell apps and content across all of these devices.
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Lastly, Google will leverage machine-learning algorithms more heavily to provide app recommendations for Google Play users.
These announcements follow changes Apple made to the App Store earlier this year, which included giving developers a bigger cut of revenue and helping them garner more reviews for new apps.
App downloads seem to be rebounding recently, according to a survey released this past summer by Tune, but developers are still struggling to stand out in the app stores. Google Play, for example, features more than 2.4 million apps, according to Statista, yet the average smartphone user downloads only two new apps per month, according to a recent comScore survey. Additionally, app developers will likely face increased pressure in the near future from chatbots and messenger apps that collapse many capabilities into a single service.
Cutting through the noise of an overcrowded app market is critical for any app developer looking to build a viable user base. There are now well over 3 million apps available across the world’s five largest app stores. Delivering the right product to the right audience at the right time in this environment is imperative to the success of any app.
The challenge of marketing an app effectively has made app-install ads — an ad unit that directs users to download a mobile app — an essential tool for developers seeking to stand out in the Google Play and Apple app stores. This is why it's not surprising that more marketers are using paid channels to drive downloads than ever before. In fact, over 80% of respondents in a survey of the top 100 grossing mobile app developers noted they plan on increasing their spend on app-install ads in 2015.
- Business Insider