Nick Grant - Roam Solutions

• Started training as a Software Engineer with British Aerospace in 1997

• Diverse experience over 12+ years:

– Defence

– Education

– Banking (Boo! Hiss!)

– Retail

– Public Transport

• Established 2008

• Started as an iPhone App software house

• Now a specialist in Enterprise Mobile applications

• Flagship product used in Publishing, eLearning, Market Research, Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations

• Apple App Store launched start July 2008

• 1st iPhone App released end July 2008

• Free App

– Peak of 70,000 downloads in 1 week

• Paid App

– Peak of 7,000 downloads in 1 week

• 3 paid Apps released throughout August

• All 4 Apps reached #1 in worldwide charts

• Over 500,000 downloads, 85 countries

Sep-08 Oct-08 Nov-08 Dec-08 Jan-09 Feb-09

Earnings

Then

• Between 10 and 30 Apps being released every day

• Between 1,000 and 2,000 Apps in Store

• Bad Apps earned more than they deserved

• Good Apps achieved potential

Now

• 100s of Apps being released every day

• Over 400,000 Apps in Store

• Bad Apps earn what they deserve

• Good Apps drown in a sea of noise

• It’s probably been done already

• Competing with 400,000+ other ‘great ideas’

• Achieving ROI is extremely risky

– ‘App’ development still a specialist skill

– Users grudgingly pay more than 59p

– Apple take 30% royalty

60s 70s 80s 90s 00s 10sEarly Dumb Personal Internet Smart- MobileComputers Terminals Computers Phones Internet

Time

Storage/CPU etc. Screen/Keyboard etc.

• How do customers & staff use your website(s)?

– How many are viewing with a Mobile device?

– What kind of things are they doing?

• Buying things

• Making bookings

• Getting information

• What’s the User Experience for your Mobile website users?

1. Gather data from your website (% Mobile)

2. Build a Mobile-optimised website

3. Gather feedback from Mobile website users

4. Build a Mobile App if following criteria are met:

– Users demand offline/App-like experience

– Large enough numbers to justify investment!

• Consider all the Mobile platforms:

– iPhone: possibly most well known

– Android: fastest growing, backed by Google

– Nokia: biggest market share, partner with Microsoft

– BlackBerry: biggest corporate market share

• Approval of your App hinges on ‘utility’

• Consider buying an off the shelf template instead of building bespoke