Discussion of mobile app platforms and different app stores

Lesson Details:

This course is brought to you by Appy Pie as part of our Academy series in this video I want to talk about the pros and cons of all the different mobile app platforms there are so many too many options of course everybody knows about Android and Apple they're the green ones but there's a lot of country-specific ones like there's one for China there's one for in the end there's one for a lot of countries specifically and then there's the platform's look Kindle even the BlackBerry even the watch apps even Microsoft and Samsung they all have an app stores and there are so many app stores it's never-ending and management becomes a nightmare you have way too many app stores to prioritize and there's no real right the answer of where you should put your app because if you can go to a smaller app store but become the number one app there in your category that's fantastic you might be able to get more downloads compared to if you struggle let's say on a big platform like Apple or Android you might have some extremely strong competitors were on smaller platforms you won't but generally what I would recommend is to understand that for each app when you upload it to a different the platform you need to do specific marketing for that platform extra testing I hope you're doing testing getting extra review specifically for that platform maybe sometimes they require extra development sometimes they have a different the language the app needs to be reprogrammed in but and even if it doesn't sometimes there are platform-specific features, for example, the payments for in-app purchases are handled differently on Kindle apps versus the Android Google Play apps even though it's all Android underneath they're just some code specifics so that has to be managed of course bugs have to be fixed found and then fixed there's a lot of work for each platform don't underestimate the work because if you underestimate the work you'll neglect the apps and then they'll underperform and you won't get much out of it anyway so it really doesn't help to have a struggling app in a third-rate App Store so my suggestion is to perfect an app on one platform if you're not stuck with having to launch on iPhone and Android even if you launched on Apple and Android you can still experiment on one of them and perfect the app on one platform and then some when something is really working on one platform put it on the other but otherwise you'll just be expanding extra resources / updating both platforms because once the app grows and monetizes as well then that's when you start putting the app on other app stores but don't rush beyond Apple and Android because for most apps the recommendation is to focus on the marketing and making the app profitable there because they if the app is truly effective and profitable there those are the markets after those markets the Android and Apple that drop off in effectiveness in downloads is extremely steep so if you win on Android and Apple if you become the number one in your category or close to everyone the results you get from that you won't get anywhere else so those are the primary focus for going big now let me tell you a little bit about my own strategy for how I did it I launched with Android only I experimented with any new feature on Android only because I was able to experiment cheaply and very rapidly so all the experimentation happened on Android and only when something was perfected I had put it on iOS in my case I also put my apps on the Nook on the Kindle but I didn't have time to really update them all the time so I kind of just neglected them I never ain't I mean it maybe a couple of updates on them a long time ago and then I just kind of I had to leave it I just didn't have time for them and they really weren't paying for themselves to be updated they were making a little bit of revenue but not enough to warrant real attention even though I was number one in my category on those platforms so let's say you've perfected your app on Android and it's perfected on Apple and it's monetizing really well then when you put your app on the next platforms whatever that platform is make sure that you don't just place it and forget it that's the tendency to place it there upload it there and forget it and hope for the best you have to focus on it just like you focused on Android and Apple until it's ranking number one it's keywords until it's number one for its category then you get all the best results if you upload it there and dump it and it sits there with none no reviews or one review or something it doesn't help you it's gonna be the tenth app in a fifth-rate App Store it's not really gonna give you anything it's not going to be worth its effort so you've got to give it the proper focus only then you'll start really benefiting from it and in my view that should really only happen once the app is monetizing effectively for install.