The traditional application development pattern has already met the bottleneck CPI into the past

2 Editor's note: Technical blogger Andrew Chen, who focuses on mobile customer products, says traditional mobile applications have become ineffective as mobile ecosystems mature. Once upon a time, developers often use the following formula to attract mobile users: 1. Develop extremely good products--let Apple or Google recommend your application, and make a big push; 2. Application List--pay a fee for application installation, promote application 3. The installation has plummeted for years, and this formula has worked, and is particularly suited for start-ups and independent developers. But this classic formula is losing its effect and we can't find a replacement. Despite the growing popularity of mobile ecosystems, it is increasingly difficult for developers to attract initial mobile users. Over time, all marketing strategies will eventually lose their role. In the marketing market, the preconceived phenomenon is very common. If you adopt a new marketing strategy, you will initially reap a good result. However, this strategy loses its effect when the industry as a whole is doing so. At present, the mobile ecosystem has matured, we will discuss the following factors: Application store and product differentiation first, we have to face the obvious fact that the total number of applications has become large. In terms of total numbers, they now face 4 to 8 times times the competition for applications released from 2009 to 2010. Today, in pictures, shopping, information, local, film, and news applications, there are 2 to 3 high-quality applications in each category. New mobile developers are no longer competing with the first batch of apps. The figure below shows the rapid growth in the App Store and Android harsh applications: CPI is the past CPI, which costs per installation (Install). This is a network advertising model, each successful installation of an application, developers will pay a certain fee. Initially, CPI costs were relatively low. Developers have a lot of options, such as relying entirely on mobile ad networks, "Free to use one day" services, and so on. More importantly, there are not many companies using this type of publicity, so the price is very low. Subsequently, Apple banned some paid-for-installation service providers. At the same time, mobile game developers have found that there is a huge profit potential for iOS and Android platforms, and these applications have boosted CPI costs to some extent. As demand increases and providers decline, CPI costs rise. The figure below shows a gradual increase in CPI costs for iOS and Android platforms in the first half of the 2012 year: App Store editors indeed, Apple and Google App Store editorial teams can help with some apps, but they focus on customer needs and platform development goals. For Apple, my impression is that they are more focused on the top 25 apps, which are mostly from well-known developers. As a result, Apple editors do not provide services for all app Store applications. Customers should appreciate this practice, but it does not help the newly joined unknown developers. Is，Google editors have been more focused on tablet devices lately. Android is still struggling to compete with the ipad, despite the growing market share of Android handsets. If you want Google Play to recommend apps, you'd better choose to develop a tablet application. Google editors are also very concerned about Google +, but this is a digression. Investment shifts while investors remain upbeat about the mobile market, their attitude towards new client-mobile start-ups has changed. 2009 to 2012, the customer mobile market is very popular, a large amount of money into the market. Today, investors are targeting other areas. The Combinator project shows this. At the end of 2011, more than half of the customer mobile project. Today, many new projects are customer hardware, SaaS, and so on. Despite all the difficulties, the mobile future is full of hope. Mobile is still the best platform to start a new company, but we have to deal with new challenges. Some applications have been installed at 100 million and the market value is even $ billions of trillion, but the mobile industry is still just getting started. The next 10 years are more worthy of our expectation. (Edward)