They’re here, and they are growing. Apple launched its Apps store in July, 2008, and it has taken off. It took Google three years to turn a profit, but App developer Zynga is profitable now with $100 million in revenues.
How does an app developer make money? They can sell apps, they can sell ads within apps and they can sell digital goods used in the Apps. BusinessWeek tells us about Farmville, the virtual farm, where people pay real money to buy digital crops, cattle and farmland. Amazing! I’ll say it again: people pay real money to buy fake crops for their fantasy world. I wish I had invented that – sounds like the pet rock from the 1970’s, and some brilliant person convinced others to pay real money for essentially nothing. Let’s hope for Zynga, it continues.
The market for apps is predicted to grow threefold over the next three years. Anything growing in this economy is unusual, but to grow at that rate is truly unbelievable. The barriers to entry are next to nothing, so this will be a crowded marketplace in no time flat.
One company who hopes to be a big player is Yahoo. Yahoo will have apps on the Yahoo.com home page and may have its own apps store. The apps are a way to track data for its targeted ads. I suppose the trade off for everyday users like you and me is being subjected to more ads – we can never get away from them. You can learn a lot about a person by the apps they use, and I’m sure as we all venture further into the world of Apps, someone will be watching over our shoulder.
Even Research in Motion, and Verizon wireless and Kleiner Perkins – remember them? - the VC from the old dot-com boom days are getting into the Apps act.
What does this mean for everyday folk? More interesting things to do, and better ways of doing things, but alas, those pesky ads. And if you can develop an app, go for it – it may just be the next LinkedIn.
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