Comments for Beta Minus

Comment on My retirement from mobile app development by Louella Stoudamire

Louella Stoudamire — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 00:40:24 +0000

I have to say that for the past couple of hours i have been hooked by the amazing articles on this blog. Keep up the great work.

Comment on My retirement from mobile app development by V

Sat, 30 Apr 2011 15:45:26 +0000

About point no 4: Customers won’t pay.

Also be aware that there are a lot of countries where WP devices have been launched through official channels (carriers), yet people cannot buy anything from the Marketplace. I’m sorry, but that’s just a retarded business decision. I live in Romania and I’m a WP7 owner and (mostly) happy user of the platform. But I’m enraged by the fact that MS doesn’t want to take my money. I had to change my LiveID location setting to UK just to be able to download trials and free apps… Taking this point into consideration, I think it’s generally better (for the users) to have add supported free apps. However, since most adds that pop up in app/game are targeted towards US, UK and maybe a few other countries, you won’t get many clicks from other parts of the world.

Comment on My retirement from mobile app development by Andy

Andy — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 07:40:04 +0000

How’s that t-shirt business going Kevin?

Comment on My retirement from mobile app development by Boris

Boris — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 07:37:17 +0000

Kevin, obviously, you’ve never been to Iceland.

Comment on My retirement from mobile app development by Kevin

Kevin — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 02:11:34 +0000

I’m not sure exactly what one should take away from this post. Perhaps that if you don’t invest a modicum of effort into how people will experience your app, how they will discover it, the potential market or even whether it is a good idea – mysterious forces will not align to bestow riches upon you.

On lesson 4 (customers won’t pay) : Pricing expectations for mobile apps are very low and both advertising and to make a fortune both direct revenue models necessitate more volume than an app that tells you what’s on the other side of the world (poorly at that).

There are numerous methods that have proven successful for other developers, including, but not limited to: in-application content purchases, online services which the app supports and affiliate arrangements.

On lesson 5 (only the top apps get downloaded) : This really betrays the extent to which you lack imagination. Other software products, and indeed many other businesses have somehow become profitable without being listed in a directory of ‘new’ and ‘top’ businesses. Indeed most successful apps don’t achieve great popularity though these means bur rather things such as:
- word of mouth referral
- marketing efforts
- social hooks

The world isn’t going to pony up a million dollars for an app to help them find their lost car, especially if the app’s name is Carlos and it’s icon is a fucking *wolf*.

Comment on Some thoughts on Windows Phone 7 by chris

chris — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 02:28:23 +0000

Hi there – thanks for the comments! They recently opened the Marketplace for reporting, and I have to say my figures are dismal (barely double figures for any app). I’ll do a post once we start getting reliable figures and I’ve worked out how to talk about them!

Comment on Some thoughts on Windows Phone 7 by biggie_smalls

biggie_smalls — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 13:59:50 +0000

Great post Chris! Fun to read, and I completely agree that it probably is the best phone dev. platform out there.

Do you have any sales numbers of your apps? Apparently Microsoft doesn’t allow developers to track the number of sales using the dashboard. Have you tried adding your own tracking mechanism? I’m really curious about the number of sales. (especially since the number of apps already surpassed the total number of apps in the WM 6.x marketplace)

biggie_smalls

p.s. I really enjoyed reading your posts at the msdn marketplace forums about Carlos and Proximity.

Comment on Interesting use for Proximity: Tracking fellow skiers by Cornell Haddenham

Cornell Haddenham — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 00:16:06 +0000

Stunning article. Bookmarked it right now. Thanks.

Comment on Interesting use for Proximity: Tracking fellow skiers by links for 2010-06-08

links for 2010-06-08 — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 08:02:11 +0000

[...] Interesting use for Proximity: Tracking fellow skiers « Beta Minus Chris Rae has his phone text his wife when he is near the bottom of the lift so they can meet up. A very cool and smart use of mobile software. Chris wrote this application for windows mobile called "Proximity" and it does stuff when you are getting close to a destination. He first wrote it to keep from missing his train stop, but here he uses it to solve the ski lift waiting problem… (tags: windowsmobile mobile gps skiing snow) This entry was posted in Links. Bookmark the permalink. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL. « Automated Virtue [...]