Why you should not build mobile app for your startup?
Programmers with advanced skill on the website or mobile app development creating some portals and calling themselves as founders and co-founders though they don’t have a full business set up and many of them are not registered.
But we cannot simply ignore their passion for doing business, among millions of programmers only a few wants to build their own business others want to contribute.
The very first step a wannapreneur who wants to start a business will look for a programmer as a co-founder that too specifically a mobile app developer.
Because nowadays everyone has a mindset if we are going to start a business then a mobile app is mandatory irrespective of whatever business it is going to be.
Even the word technology in 2kXX means a mobile app or website which is not the right definition.
Before we go and find a mobile app developer we should be aware of some numbers and facts which could guide us to take wise decision in our next business move.
Globally mobile usage increases 58% year over year, 80% of internet users own smartphones and 90% of the time on mobile is spent on Apps. The conversion rate of smartphones is also 3.48% (src: smart insights).
Image Credit : SmartInsightFrom the above figure, we get an idea that mobile app is the future of any upcoming startup and without apps, they cannot call themselves as a startup.
Don’t come to a point have an open mind and continue reading…
Yahoo stated that 90% of the time on mobile is spent on Apps but what types of apps is the question here.
Data from Flurry Analytics says
| Medium | Percentage of time spent |
| 19 | |
| Messaging/social | 12 |
| Youtube | 3 |
| Entertainment | 17 |
| Gaming | 15 |
| Utilities | 8 |
| Productivity | 4 |
| News | 2 |
| Browsing | 10 |
| Others | 10 |
(Out of 900 billion hours on Android apps India tops with 150 billion hours leaving Brazil second)
Now you must find where your business model lies in the above table.
There is also another interesting fact from Statista
Image credit :StatistaFrom December 2009 to December 2016 number of android apps on Google play store surpassed 2.5 million.
Games tops the category with 41.2% leaving Social apps to the bottom with 5.4% of device installs.
The above numbers are sexy and making you believe that apps are going to be the future of startups isn’t? Don’t be misguided.
Now put the numbers aside and let’s think practically.
Open your smartphone and see how many apps you have installed. Don’t count the default one.
Between Flipkart and Amazon, you might have chosen Amazon, between Uber and Ola you might have chosen Uber, between Grofers and Big Basket you might have chosen Big Basket since we have the love for SRK.
There are more than 400 hyperlocal startups in India but you are choosing between any two and those two startups spent huge money in advertising to become an established one and still trying to make profit business model.
As Peter Theil (PayPal co-founder) said a business with monopoly model reaps the benefit quicker and easier than it’s followers in his book Zero to One(Every entrepreneur must read this book before he thinks of starting any business), business came first reaps more.
In the name of Globalisation, entrepreneurs started copying a business model from a foreign country and paste it in their country and in the name Regional Startup a business model in one metro city is copied and pasted in another city in India.
If you do some lighter research you can find it easily lot of hyperlocal startups are operating in different regions with the same model under different name board.
In a race to increase the number of app downloads, funded founders are throwing some flashy deals and offers but clever end users install the app, get benefits and uninstall it.
To keep your app on their phone you must keep on giving offers but when you keep on giving offers you will never make a profit and soon you have to shut down the business as happened to the Mumbai-based startup founded by IITians.
There is always a well-funded unicorn in your niche who delivers deals every week to hold the people with them when you try competing with them you will burn your money.
One more case is, if a newcomer enters into your market in a similar niche to increase his downloads he will repeat what you did in the beginning and in this competition both of you have to compromise with the profit and end up not even achieving breakeven.
A Bangalore-based funded hyperlocal startup founded by IIM alumni’s announced an offer one kg onion one rupee to boost its app downloads but after few months they completely changed their business model and now they are into B2B. What happened to the money spent on to increase downloads?
Economic survey of India 2016 said there are 19,000 recognized startups in India and most of them are tech based product and service. In this 19k all the service startups are having their own app but how many apps end users are having on their phone.
As said before each category is dominated by well-funded unicorns with a huge number of downloads being an end user I will never prefer two different apps in the same niche.
Obviously, I go with the established one.
So emerging startups should spend their money on developing interactive and responsive websites with high SEO rank, should spend more on improving service quality and spend more on inbound marketing to establish your brand.
Read: Free website developers for your business
Once you started gaining momentum with quality service or product people will seek your mobile app for sure that’s what happened for TNM.
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