A successful mobile app development begins with a great idea. Its execution requires systematic planning that will lead it to success.

1. internetsearchinc.com
Deepak Wadhwani
A successful mobile app development begins with a great idea.
Its execution requires systematic planning that will lead it to
success. Surely, not every mobile app succeeds. The mistakes
sometimes lead to the failure of an app. Here we learn from
mistakes about why some of the mobile apps fail eventually.
The two biggest app stores are Google Play for Android and App
Store for iOS. Some others include Amazon app store, Ovi (Nokia),
Windows phone store and Blackberry World. In 2013, there were
800,000 apps in the app store and only 80 of those apps got 1
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2. million dollars in revenue. Majority of the apps failed. Everpix and
Hailo are examples of apps that failed most.
Everpix was built by Latour and his friend. Everpix organizes your
pictures and stores them online. Also its sorts the pictures and
pulls out the best pictures using an algorithm. In 2012 Latour and
his friend had 55,000 users and solid financing. In 2013 they were
out of money.
Everpix had two problems. First, the team was focusing on getting
it right. It was a great app. Everpix was simple, clean design, lots
of functionality, and fun features such as Flashback so that people
are enticed to use it every day. Flashback gives the user a photo
which was taken that day in the previous year.
They spend a year and half in developing this app. When it
reached the market, Everpix was broken and out of time to raise
the capital. Everpix couldn’t get the users it needed to sustain
growth in spite of being a great product.
Another problem was Everpix failed to sell this app. The team
wasn’t sales people. They were developers and designers. They
failed to have the business acumen they needed to sell their
application to users or get funding.
Hailo is a mobile app that you use to hail taxi cabs. Hailo has some
features in common with Uber; they both hail taxis. There is a
difference between Uber and Hailo. Uber recruits drivers with black
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3. cars. Hailo works with yellow cabs. Hailo comes from London
where taxis are a luxury. With $100 million dollar funds received, it
hit the New York City. It was bailing in North America all together.
Hailo then failed. Two reasons why Hailo failed are intense
competition and flawed business model.
Hailo was ready to take New York by storm when the decision to
legalize e-taxi services went in their favor. A host of other similar
taxi services such as Uber and GetTaxi were also ready like Hailo.
The original plan to deal with this was offering an amazing price for
yellow taxi cabs and yields the higher-end market to Uber. Uber
began a strong competition which got worse after UberX entered
the fray. Hailo was slowly defeated in the competition by Uber in
combination with the small saturation levels among yellow taxi
cabs.
Hailo would have saved itself with a little more research in the
market. Hailo comes from London where taxis are a luxury and
streets are twisty and confusing. In London taxicab drivers are
really amazing sources of information. Most London taxicabs
drivers carry smartphones which is required for Hailo.
In New York City it is much easier to become a taxi driver than in
London. Cabbies in New York City have far less training, makes
less money and often do not carry a smartphone.
Finally, Hailo’s entire premise is that cabbies need help finding
fares. As it turns out, that’s not really the case — yellow cabs in
New York City have been ticking along fine. Therefore, Hailo was
not just that needed. Hailo worked excellent in London but didn’t
work in New York City. We can learn how important it is to adapt
from Hailo’s failure.
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4. You can learn about app marketing from Everpix’s failure. You
need to market your product to bring it to the consumers. Here are
some of the goals to make a mobile app successful:
Making a great experience
Creating a product that users want
Making money
If you are starting an app company, you need to have the will and
set of skills to promote and sell your product. The best product
needs some serious marketing efforts in this highly competitive
world. Know what the story of your product or service is. Also
know how to tell the story of your product or service.
The most common reason for failure of apps is because no one
knows it exists. With over 700,000 apps in the app store,
customers won’t find your app unless you tell them about it. Some
of the apps no one knows about are amazing.
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5. Sometimes many excellent app ideas are badly executed. A few of
the reasons for bad execution include lots of crashes caused by
bugs, bad performance, forced registration of personal data etc.
These issues are usually not fixed even if the feedback from the
customer is clear. A mobile app is rated low because of bad
execution. Therefore, the mobile app fails.
If your app is competing with other apps, then your app must stand
out and be different. You must consider the advantages of mobile
apps vs mobile websites. Consider factors that make a mobile app
better than a mobile website. If there are no advantages then
perhaps there is a better alternative.
In many cases no customer wants an app or service in the first
place. Many people aren’t using their mobile phones primarily to
interact with brands or find out about products, and when they do
so, they want to do them through the apps that they already use for
other things. Mostly they play games, do online shopping directly
from websites and use social networking sites.
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