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Apps are web goldmine, but competition is brutal
Published in Saudi Press Agency on 14 - 02 - 2011

Awwal 11, 1432 H/Feb 14, 2011, SPA -- The software programs cellphone users have come
to love are humbling the mightiest corporations in the mobile phone
industry, with all the money now rushing into the so-called apps, according to dpa.
Whether it is Angry Birds, a simple game with a soundtrack of
shrieks, or simulated flatulence noises with software like iFart, the
real cutting edge at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week
seem to be in the apps field.
Nokia, a Finnish company, may make popular mobile phones and lead
the world in unit sales, but there are comparatively few apps
available for its old operating system, Symbian.
In Barcelona, the big question has been whether Nokia and its new
partner, Microsoft, can lure apps developers to fill the Windows
Phone 7 operating system with hordes of the pastime programs.
The buzzword is "ecosystem," meaning a combination of a strong
platform like Apple's iOS and Google's Android with a community of
freelance programmers eager to earn big money with add-on software
that will catch the masses' taste.
Where fortunes beckon, even helpers can prosper. In Berlin these
days, anyone with a bit of experience in programming apps would be
stupid to accept a steady job, one start-up entrepreneur said.
The going rate for software developers in the city is 600 to 1,200
euros (800 to 1,600 dollars) per day. A desperate scramble for talent
is underway.
Berlin's apps industry has sprung up practically overnight. Four
years ago, Android and iOS did not exist. Apple did not open its App
Store until 2008, but just passed the first 10 billion sold.
An estimated 17 billion apps will be sold this year, generating
15.9 billion dollars, Gartner Research, a respected market tracking
company, said recently. By the end of 2014, it estimates that 185
billion apps will have been installed on the world's phones.
Others have forecast 25 billion dollars in annual sales by 2015.
It all began with the clever idea of allowing practically anyone
to reprogram software extras for mobile phones. Where it will all end
is anyone's guess, many experts say. In the meantime, the industry is
turning cutthroat.
Even the Finnish company that devised Angry Birds, which currently
reigns supreme as the must-have app everyone is tweeting about,
admits that the competition has become brutal.
Rovio published 50 apps that were flops before it struck gold with
Angry Birds, a little game built around the story of five cartoon-
style birds that resent the theft of their eggs by a group of green
pigs.
Mikael Hed of Rovio candidly admitted in Barcelona, "We don't have
any secret recipe for success." Chance rules.
Even getting a game onto mobiles worldwide does not necessarily
translate into dollars and cents.
"The standard price for an app is free," Hed said. "The premium
price is 79 (euro) cents."
Anyone crossing that line risks getting little attention among the
hundreds of thousands of programs currently available.
Market researchers say four out of five apps are offered for free,
with the developers trying to recoup their investment by selling
advertisements or persuading users to buy something extra.
The latter approach has worked best with games.
The Zynga company has achieved a 9-billion-euro market valuation
by selling premium points for Farmville - the Facebook hit that
allows bored urban people to pretend to feed chickens and pigs - and
its other games.
Wireless network operators, who have been sidelined in the rush,
are now trying to get a foothold in the apps business. They may prove
attractive to independent apps vendors, which tend to be fragmented
and lack brand-name appeal.
Telefonica O2 of Spain unveiled at the Barcelona expo its own
platform for apps developers, BlueVia, pointing out that it can sell
their programs to its 264 million mobile phone customers worldwide.


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