BusinessTech

Whether Building Mobile Applications are a Necessity in 2021

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December 23, 2020December 24, 2020
Whether Building Mobile Applications are a Necessity in 2021

For those app developers out there, who are working on the upcoming the next generation of web applications, there will invariably come a point in your development or planning where you will have to consider whether it is worthwhile to specifically cater to mobile devices by creating a mobile app version of your web application

The If, When, & Where of Mobile Apps Summary

When deciding on whether infact you will require a mobile app in your development plans, may hinge on the following:

1. A review of the market numbers

Depending on the type of application you are developing, and the type of exposure you are anticipating, the need for a mobile application may or not be an ideal choice.

  • The size of the app market 2020-2026

When considering the current size of the app market its important to also consider what sectors currently make up the app industry:

Currently by the end of 2020 the Global software industry is projected to reach $532 Billion US dollars with expectations of a $772 Billion US dollar market in 2025.

Mobile applications make up approximately $106.27 Billion us dollars in 2018 and projected to grow to $407.32 Billion Dollars by 2026.

This means that based on projections the mobile application market will surpass half of the overall market software industry by 2026, and the reality that more and more people will become more comfortable running applications on their mobile devices over the upcoming years.

Whether or not the above information would be applicable or realistic to your situation may depend on the intentions and perhaps the expected shelf life of your application.  You will want to consider the potential exposure value of simply being available in Google play and IOS stores, and whether:

  • Additional marketing dollars will go into advertising your mobile app on there respective platforms; and if so, how much.
  • the perceived value in mobile app exposure, and potential market penetration vs the perceived cost to achieve it.

Also, you may want to also consider other factors such as the:

  • size of the target market or the
  • purpose of the application you are developing.

A further example of this would be to suppose you are developing a web application that is proprietary in nature and designed specifically for use for and by a particular private business to (let’s say) replace a particular function of the business’ operation. In this case a mobile app may not be appropriate to justify the additional costs for mobile app

 Web Apps built for a small or very specific number of consumers may not be ideal for mobile application development.

2. The costs of building mobile apps.

The costs to build or redevelop applications for the mobile markets, depending on the type of app you are building can vary from as $200 to $40k with the entry level being DIY platforms online that take your web application and automatically convert them to sdk and IOS packages for you to upload to your respective mobile app stores. The higher end pricing will usually involve some sort of software developer or agency who will dedicate actual human beings to develop your UI/UX design, and handle database integration.

As mentioned earlier these costs do not include the actual advertising dollars one would spend for downloads of the mobile apps on their respective platforms.

3. Patience vs Penetration

So, when we talk about penetration, we are basically discussing the ability of having users of their respective platform (Android, IOS) to download and use the mobile application. A simple mathematical definition or expression to define penetration for the purpose of this post would be:

number of users that download your app / The Total number of apps all users downloaded.

So, (this is just for illustration purposes) if you had 1000 users download your mobile application and there were a total of 50,000 users who downloaded a total of 100,000 applications for the year. Your mobile app market download penetration would be 1%.

Now that may not be a satisfying result, but I find mathematically expressions can sometimes seem cold if not properly taken into context. In this case the above mathematical definition does not (directly)seem to take time into account, but ask yourself the following:

  • What if the market penetration was at rate of 1% per month as oppose to per year?
  • Does 12,000 downloads for the year warrant some sort of consideration?
  • How much penetration can you anticipate for your application?
  • How long will it take and how much would have to be spent to get there?

In order to answer the last 2 questions, it would be worthy to note that the total mobile apps downloaded in 2019 was 204 billion, with a total revenue of just under $126 Billion US Dollars.

Once you have successfully answered the last 2 questions above you will know whether or not a mobile application makes sense to consider.

Regards,

Richy Riches