Domestic not making money to encourage developers cottage

Editor's note: The Mobile internet market is already a new area of entrepreneurship that cannot be overlooked, and more and more developers are working around the clock in this market of opportunity and innovation. In this case, developers of the iphone and Android platforms are particularly focused, where do our developers go in a market dominated by the two giants, one to the left and one to the right? TechWeb intensively interviewed major domestic developers and launched a series of reports on the eve of the storm: app developers.

"TechWeb Report" Bo see a developer of Evans is testing an iphone application: blowing candles. It's a customized birthday gift for a company that lights out a candle on the iphone. There are a lot of similar outsourced orders. And this is just one of the Bo look at Evans Business, in addition to outsourcing, the company's larger market in app development and training.

APP Store is gold mine for domestic development don't make money

"Most of the iphone developers are now targeting overseas, making no money for domestic applications," says Zhang, CEO of Bo. The first is the number of intelligent terminals in China, followed by more excellent applications are pirated, in addition, Chinese users do not have good pay habits. ”

And for foreign applications, early to make money easier, and with the increase in the number of applications for small and medium-sized development team, making money more difficult. Even so, the App Store is still a gold mine. One is the growing number of iphones, ipad terminals, and the high-end iphone users, with high consumption, which has become a widespread consumer activity in North America. ”

Zhang said that the future by selling software will not make money, providing value-added services is a trend.

Currently, the iphone applications are mainly entertainment, leisure, less than 10% of commercial applications. Many industries, such as online banking and lbs, use the iphone as a terminal device. Zhang predicts that the proportion of commercial applications will grow as the number of end-users increases. ”

Not optimistic about the domestic app platform

Since the second half of 2009, China Mobile, China Telecom, Unicom and other operators and Lenovo and other manufacturers have launched their own mobile app store. Zhang to its not optimistic, said "domestic application platform for a short period of time no hope."

"Apple's App Store provides a fair environment for developers, and domestic app stores rely on ' relationships ', relationships, supermarket doors, and a lot of good ideas not being discovered, which is unfair to developers. "3G is the content of the dispute, mobile app Store should focus on the interests of developers." The unfairness of the domestic platform causes the developer link to be weak, the application quantity is few. ”

Apple's App Store, he says, also has drawbacks, such as a lack of auditing standards, but there are guarantees of fairness and a great attraction for developers.

Encourage developers to take the cottage route
　　
"It's not a good strategy for many developers to be too perfect and to be new." Too much pursuit of perfection, resulting in a long development cycle, the cost of large, users are not necessarily recognized. The life cycle of an application is only 3-4 months. "Zhang said.

"Developers want to make money in the short term, they can copy ideas and use price tools." "Zhang's view is that the development of iphone applications is not complicated, China has a cottage culture, suggesting more developers to take the cottage route, through imitation to reduce development costs."

Developers have mixed feelings about the idea of Shanzhai. Some developers point out that China has not yet a copycat, take the shot of the product, homogeneity is very serious, mainly because of the industry's overall mentality impetuous. There are also developers who believe that Shanzhai ideas are not plagiarism, but a strategy. "In the Apple App Store, the same type of game often has a lot of money, such as the first is a little girl to imitate you talk, the second protagonist replaced by a cat, download volume is also very large." ”

Android application development is unclear

Liu also said that Apple is not too attached to the Chinese market, may lose the Chinese market. The number of Android terminals will eventually overtake the iphone. "The number of handsets using Google's Android operating system worldwide will overtake the iphone in 2012 years," according to a market research firm ISUPPLI.

"Even so, the prospects for Android application development remain unclear, mainly because there is no uniform standard." "Apple is iOS hardware and porting costs are low." Android phones need to develop different versions for different models, the cost of development is high, and the next Android harsh payment system is not perfect.

Shortage of talent in domestic developers

Zhang said that the mobile internet in the initial stage, Sina, Tencent and other Internet companies to speed up the layout of mobile Internet, developers in great demand. In less than a year, Mr. Evans has delivered more than 200 developers to internet companies. Sina, Tencent, Sohu and so on, and Bo see Evans signed 3G training agreement, "now still in short supply, the demand for developers has been scheduled to early next year." ”

Love Totem Studio Marketing director Xiao also believes that there will be more and more app developers in the future. "At present, the number of developers compared to PHP, Java programming and other talent is very small." "(The)

About Bo See Evans:

Bo See Evans is a large domestic, early start of the 3G Mobile application development Company, 09 into the domestic 3G training education industry. Now the main core members have more than 80 people, the business is divided into three parts: independent research and development, training and outsourcing. At present, the company's application in the app store up to 40, download up to 4 million times. The company recently launched 4 apps for the ipad, the top three in the North American region for two consecutive weeks.

Series reports:

Outsourcing merchants Love Totem to change push independent app:91 assistant hinder development

Thematic：

Eve of the storm: app developers