SEARCH

Open Letter to WAC from the Mobile Developer Community

 

 

DEAR: Wholesale Application Community (WAC)

From:  Mobile Developer Community

 

We’d like to thank you for recognizing the importance of the hard work and creativity the mobile developer community brings to the mobile ecosystem by collaborating on the WAC initiative.  It is no small feat getting 24 operators to the table!  We appreciate that you want to work together to make our job of mobile development easier and less risky.

We know the value we bring to the mobile ecosystem is as significant as the value that comes from our operators, OEMs, operating systems, and various other service providers.  It is value that must not be compared by measuring annual revenues and stock prices.  It is a value measured by the role we play and the risks we take.  Without mobile developers providing the applications your customers demand, your companies would not grow and your shareholders would be disappointed. 

We’d like you to remember, that the average mobile development company is small.  Many of our annual revenues are tiny in comparison to your executives’ monthly pay cheques.  Therefore our worries and risks are different than yours, but no less significant.  We worry about making monthly payroll so our colleagues and their families can eat, and about our investors giving us breathing room to develop rather than create powerpoint presentations for board meetings.

What mobile developers lack in size – we more than make up for in our creativity, innovation and a passion for this industry.

And we want to work with you to make the industry better for all of us.

With that in mind, we write this letter and provide our comments so we can be part of the solution; and you have the opportunity to hear the developer voice when making your decisions.

 

Developer Priorities

The following priorities were identified by members of the mobile developer community at the recent WIPJam session held at CTIA Wireless in Las Vegas on March 22, 2010.  

Additional comments are also being collected on the Comments page.

 

1. Create an OPEN marketplace

  • -as few barriers between developers and users/customers as possible
  • -make entry requirements low and easy
  • -add quality measures (ratings, reviews, etc.) so that users can easily separate the good apps from the not-so-good
  • - opportunities to jointly market (not just big brands)
  • - a good discovery engine
  • - good reporting tools, and real-time submission are key (transparency in approval is a must) and active response times to necessary APIs are needed
  • - good system to cycle through apps
  • - don't allow folks w/ money and mobile advertising to game the app stores; rank by engagement

The consensus was that there shouldn’t be big hurdles for developers to get their apps into WAC, meaning that there shouldn’t be a huge amount of qualification or large investment needed, resulting in a relatively closed marketplace accessible only by large companies. However, there needs to be a means to separate the wheat from the chaff in the way of recommendations and rankings so customers can find the best apps. Developers are interested in having their work be available and widely distributed but also want to be able to differentiate from applications of  low-quality.

 

2. Alternative distribution methods needed - especially for Enterprise apps

  • the app store model doesn’t fit every need, especially for enterprise apps that would need to be pre-configured or securely delivered to only certain users (for instance, think of the difficulty of delivering a preconfigured enterprise app to an iPhone user)

 

3. Quicker review and posting of applications needed

  • -long review times actually discourage developers from quickly responding to problems and fixing bugs, and enhancing their apps, according to the audience
  • - the app stores with the lowest certification barriers actually have the highest-quality apps because of this

 

4. Allow publishers/developers to respond to feedback

  • -  Developers want to work in partnership with the App Stores to provide quality applications and be responsible to users
  • -  Developers want to be able to respond directly to both positive and negative feedback, meaning they want to be able to get good info from users on suggestions and problems, but also want to be able to answer reviews they see as unfair (the way some app store reviews are set up biases them towards negativity
  •  - not fair to require us to pay for feedback

 

5. Certification – A new model is needed

  • - a general preference for an optional certification/badging program  and a balance between the costs of any certification and its benefits.
  • - any certification program has to add value for the user – NOT just the platform or app store provider. That is, certification is pointless if it doesn’t provide any visible differentiation or security for the user.
  • - “If it makes us money, we’ll invest in it,”
  • - “Money we don’t spend on certification, we can spend on marketing and awareness building,”
  • - certification can get in the way of iteration/quick bug fixes

 

6. Help us with marketing and awareness building

  • - Developers want help with marketing, as for most their core competency is development
  • - The spread of app stores appears to have largely solved developers’ distribution concerns, but not their sales and marketing concerns.
  • - “If there are already 150,000 apps, how do you differentiate if you’re app 150,001”

 

7. Increase/expand the definition of mobile device

  • - Developers expressed a hope that WAC would support devices other than phones

 

8. Payments and Revenue Share need improvement

  •  - make it easier to get going
  • - higher payout rates (70/30 is still too low for the value provided)
  • - lower refund rates are needed
  • - more secure payments would lead to fewer returns
  • - faster payouts to developers

 

 

We believe these priorities would provide an easier/faster development environment, that will also lead to an increased level of quality applications.

We look forward to working with you to solidify the above points, to provide additional input into WAC as you implement your plan, and to see the mobile developer ecosystem grow to its full potential.