App developer Group Ecological Survey: Where can I make money?

July 6, the U.S. Data monitoring agency AppAnnie said the first quarter of this year, the iOS platform in China app downloads ranked second in the world. But in stark contrast, China's iOS platform revenue only ranked eighth in the world. China has an average of 0.03 dollars per download and one-tenth of US $0.28 trillion.

The data again resonated with the domestic developer community.

Over the past year, the tide of openness and cooperation in the Internet industry has set off huge waves, whether it is the internet giants, mobile operating systems, or telecommunications operators, have been "open" banner.

The industry has praised the open platform and even said that the "spring" of grassroots entrepreneurs is coming. Which platform is more conducive to "growth"? Developers have a set of standards, and users and benefits are no doubt the rule of choice for their platform. While nearly 70% of developers are still on the brink of profitability, they still believe that a good platform will bring them opportunities.

Operator platform dilemma

China Mobile, Nokia and BlackBerry have hosted their own developers ' conferences during the Asia Mobile communications Show in Shanghai, in an attempt to compete for 1 million developers in the country with technology, operations and partitioning. The three meetings are scheduled to start at 2:30, but because of the participation of many industry bosses, "utilitarian" developers have flocked to China's mobile boardroom.

Beijing All-day Information Consulting Services Co., Ltd. director Gao to the "daily economic news," the reporter said: "Nokia and BlackBerry are not mainstream, China Mobile can also, but only the ring tones, music, video class applications also a little hope that the other basic No." ”

It is understood that the company's original cell phone SP business, and operators have countless links, and now in China Mobile App Store Mobilemarket (hereinafter called Mobile Mall) to do a third party application development, but the income compared to the SP is a nosedive, "the original monthly earn a hundred thousand of very easy, Now every month to earn more than 10,000 pieces, in the mobile app Store, music, video and books are more easily profitable applications. ”

Although Mr. Gao is not satisfied with the benefits of the mobile mall, he is lucky compared with other developers.

China Mobile Internet Base Mobile Mall market, said, as of this June, the Mobile Mall of the total number of registered users up to 200 million, the amount of the sunshine up to 2 million, enterprise developers 7,696, personal developers 3.72 million, more than 120,000 applications on the shelves. However, the rapid development of the application of the same time, the income has not been upgraded, the current sales in 50 million yuan, and with developers to take a 37-divided model.

From this we can see that developers from the Mobile mall gain is stretched. A developer to the daily economic news reporter revealed that China Mobile mall compared to other operators of the application store is good. "Mobile users have a good willingness to pay, and Unicom and telecom app stores have lower sales." ”

Zhigang, a telecoms operator, believes that while platform opening is an option for operators to make up for their innovative capabilities, it is a problem for operators to adapt to the environment of mobile Internet.

So far, the three major operators have completed the deployment of an open strategy. Last August, China Telecom first issued an open platform, the opening platform was officially launched in March this year, and last December, Unicom also issued a wo+ open system.

Industry analysts believe that the identity of telecommunications operators destined to attract many users in the application of the payment, the largest source of revenue will still be data flow costs, so difficult to escape into the fate of the pipeline.

Xingdong, chairman of the Internet lab, said in an interview with the Daily economic news that the mobile Internet was a big advantage in the early stages of its development, but the core of the industry chain began to shift to app stores and the Internet because of their lack of openness. In the open platform operation, operators should be more market-oriented, open way to do, otherwise the next stage of the trend of platform monopoly will be more obvious, their status will be weakened.

Internet platform to recruit developers

And operators are in a different situation, the Internet open platform business is in full swing. In addition to Tencent, Baidu, Shanda, Alibaba, Sina and other giants, Renren, net and other SNS sites are also claiming their open road. However, due to the differences in platform capabilities, the situation of developers is also very different.

Tencent Open Platform Marketing department related to reporters, as of this May, the platform has accumulated more than 400,000 developers, the application of more than 200,000. Tencent to the developer's total score of more than 1 billion yuan, the single application of the highest monthly income into more than 20 million yuan.

The same giant Baidu relies on a powerful flow portal to occupy a place. Baidu Technology Vice President Wang Jin to the daily economic news reporter disclosed: "In 2011, we provide developers with billions of income, 2012 this number will increase at least 3 times times." At present, Baidu Open platform has gathered 60,000 developers, through the audit of the number of applications more than 80,000. ”

Wang Jin that developers are the most important users and traffic, otherwise the technology is no use. At the Baidu developer Conference, he described his vision so much, "we'll inject the search ads into our partner's interface and then split the ads." "This is certainly a significant attraction for third-party application developers who are struggling to make a profit."

In terms of partitioning, Tencent set a gradient, for monthly income within 100,000 yuan of small and medium-sized developers, Tencent will not participate in its split, monthly income between 100,000 yuan to 1 million yuan developers, developers into the upper limit will be increased to 70%, monthly income of 1 million yuan to 10 million yuan scale of developers, and Tencent each take 50%.

June 8, Sina Weibo official game platform micro-game also officially into the game revenue-sharing phase, and identified 3:7 of the divided scheme. Compared with the simple increase in proportion, happy NET also allows the third party to apply embedded ads.

In response to the current platform debate, Liu Xingliang, a prominent it commentator, said in an interview that building an ecosystem is critical to developing an open platform, "No matter what policy is being given, if it does not create a business value cycle, it cannot benefit developers, and the platform is not permanent." ”

IOS6 Application Impact Market

By the end of last year, the size of domestic mobile phone users reached 356 million. Driven by a huge user scale, China is now the world's second-largest mobile application market. With the increasing penetration of 3G and smartphone in China, the demand for mobile applications is growing.

The huge market demand and the tempting partitioning of the open platforms have made developers feel that everything is going well. But at the same time to provide developers with the platform, the platform itself gradually improved and strong, but also brought them impact.

At Apple's Global developers conference this June, the new iOS6 system, in addition to discarding Google Maps, has been "replaced" by a number of obscure small and medium-sized applications.

According to incomplete statistics, IOS6 eliminated the third-party app has more than 1000. For example, Apple's new application "Passbook", can store boarding passes, membership cards and movie tickets, to many engaged in the application of lbs coupons developers brought "extinction."

A product manager engaged in LBS product development said to reporters, "This is a landmark lethality products, essentially solve the traditional products and bills of information, and is flowing." ”

"Our revenue does not depend on individual users, so we are not too worried about platform profitability," said Sheng, head of mobile platform development at Shanghai Hui-Guang Technology Development Co. The biggest challenge is how to innovate. Good application must be stared at, whether it is a big game company or platform itself, want to copy a application cost is very low. What we should think about is to improve our professional service ability, such as increasing the combination with the traditional line industry, it will not be so easy to be copied. ”

Sheng with a "express query" function of the application as an example to explain that the application because of offline data and business with close, other developers or internet companies want to replicate is not so easy.

In this regard, xingdong that for a large platform, a single application is only one or hundreds of thousands of points. Each application is gradually fragmented, it is difficult to play a leading role for users. And with the development of the market, the status of the major platforms will continue to be strong, if the platform and developers for users, it will destroy the newly established ecosystem, in a monopolistic environment, the cost of the entrepreneur will become more and more high.

The dilemma of developer choice

As the open platform grows, the choices of developers are diverse and difficult.

"Although a lot of platforms, but can not casually find a flutter up." In terms of platform influence, Baidu, Tencent, Taobao may have advantages, but Shanda, SNS in the social entertainment and gaming field has a unique advantage, according to the characteristics of the product to choose. "Shanghai Cool Teng Network Technology Co., Ltd. CEO Wu Qinghai told reporters."

It is understood that Wu Qinghai development of the application of "star Horoscope" has been in Tencent wealth Qualcomm, small wallet, QQ space and friends online operation. He said: "Last year just online when the monthly income is only two thousand or three thousand yuan, now can earn seven thousand or eight thousand yuan, the development cost is actually 10,000 yuan." ”

Seemingly good returns did not make him satisfied, "although Tencent's platform is the most popular, but the promotion of small developers is not enough." The platform for individual developers of the audit is very strict, large companies are more easily accepted application. ”

A small game developer, who declined to be named, also told reporters, such as Tenpay, Alipay and other open platforms just started, is the user's preferences to determine the market. But now many platforms have changed, like Shanda, Tencent's game applications, developers if want to improve the effect, they need to spend money to buy ads.

The developer revealed that his game at present in Happy Net, Renren and other SNS types of sites have operations, but the effect is not ideal. Although these sites are not lack of popularity, users do not develop the habit of paying. Tencent, by contrast, is demanding a third party development game, but is still the one that he most wants to connect to and devote most of his energy to.

In fact, the power gap has made most small and medium-sized developers vulnerable from the start. Industry insiders said that the cooperation agreement is basically open platform for the one hand, developers can only passively accept. Yi, Secretary general of the Mobile Internet Industry Alliance, believes that the domestic open platform is mainly the Internet giants to the site and the interests of the new division, "Many so-called open platform is not really open, more is playing the guise of open to scramble for developers, and further competition for users." ”

In addition, the most realistic problem facing developers is survival. The latest data show that in the first quarter of this year, 48.7% of domestic third-party application developers are still at a loss;

July 6, the U.S. Data monitoring agency AppAnnie said that the first quarter of this year, the iOS platform in China app download ranked second in the world, but revenue only ranked eighth in the world, China's average per download income of only 0.03 U.S. dollars, is the United States users 0.28 U.S. dollars one-tenth.

AppAnnie Business Director Yu Junde said: "Many domestic application developers know that Chinese users have a low willingness to pay, so they simply made free, relying on advertising revenue." ”

However, this profit model is still difficult to achieve. Chen Yu, chairman and chief executive of the group, in an interview with the Daily Economic news reporter, admits that it will be some time before the current phase of mobile Internet access to advertisers, and that if the business does not reach a certain size, it will not attract advertisers. “

Even so, open platforms still give grassroots entrepreneurs a chance. Some developers are currently looking for more development-friendly models to expand the market to corporate users. Wu Qinghai told reporters: "Now I will do some for Taobao sellers or suppliers of electrical services, will be applied to Tenpay and Alipay platform sales." For example, such as chat robot applications, each month to the user fixed twenty or thirty Yuan service charge, the income will be more stable, this than the price of one or two yuan of personal applications more market. “

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)