Archive for January, 2011

We are happy to make a new case study from Dictionary.com available today describing how they used push to increase user engagement with their mobile app. Like many companies who have a successful mobile app, their decision to use push was a natural evolution.

“We wanted to enhance our users’ learning experience by increasing their access to our Word of the Day feature through push notification. Push noti-fication offers our word enthusiasts the added value of accessing one of our most popular features without the need to directly access the app.,” said Lisa Sullivan-Cross, General Manager, Mobile at Dictionary.com

Part of the key to their success was they identified an already popular feature of their website and mobile app as an ideal candidate for push messaging. As you look at using push messaging or more engaging rich push capabilities, it is important to focus on the things your customers are already using or information that they are trying to access. This will help you avoid the trap of devolving into simple marketing messages that could lead to turning off push, or worse, uninstalling your app.

Dictionary.com had great results based on their careful use of push. While many apps decrease engagement over time, Dictionary.com was able to increase their app engagement of an already very popular app. To learn more download the case study now.

Our friends over at the Guardian U.K. released two new iphone apps last week. The Guardian integrated Urban Airship’s subscriptions library, which is built on top of Apple’s in-app purchase capability. Our Subscriptions solution enables end users of the app to purchase and pay for subscriptions via their iTunes account and  supports the app by providing the ability to track subscription length, make subscription content available to the end user on up to 5 devices that are associated with that user, and provide a “restore content” workflow in the event that a device is lost, reset, etc.

What’s cool about the Guardian’s use of Subscriptions is that there is no actual content download. Instead, content is unlocked to subscribers. Our offering is a simple turnkey user-management layer that sits on top of in-app purchase to offer a monetization workflow. This is where we see the market headed – as it becomes easier to make feeds “unlockable” to paid subscribers, subscriptions are a realistic and viable model for any app.

As we have written before, we are seeing tons of interest in the subscriptions model across all types of apps; this revenue model is not limited to traditional publishers or content providers. We are getting many inquiries from app publishers looking to monetize their app via subscriptions and we’re pleased to be able to help. Note: stay tuned because this capability is about to get even easier.

We’re increasingly seeing our customers in need of more than just one component of the Urban Airship platform. In addition to subscriptions, The Guardian also integrated push notifications giving them the ability to engage their users even if the app isn’t open. This creates a feedback loop, complete with user call to actions.

The Guardian iPhone app is pretty slick. The U.S. version is advertising-supported and offered as a free download. If you live outside the United States, the app is a subscription-based service without advertising, and is available for £2.99 (roughly $4) for six months and £3.99 (roughly $6) Initially, you will need to download the “intro” app which appears in the “free” category and offers you a taste of the new-look app and the option to subscribe for the full service. Users downloading the subscriptions version will be asked to provide their email address but this is optional. An email address enables users to restore content to new devices, should they lose or upgrade their iphones. The app will also function on iPads, though it is not optimized for this device.

We closed our series B back in early November and since then we’ve moved into a new location, we’ve planned an open house, and of course have been hiring to round out the team.

The engineering team has grown under the leadership of Mike Herrick who joined in November as our VP of Engineering. Additions to engineering include Nick, Erik, Eric, Marc, Matt and Jeff in the last few months. Friggin’ amazing team coming together.

On the business side of the house we’re excited to announce a few new faces joining in February:

Dylan Boyd is joining as our VP of Growth. From Dylan: “After working in interactive for so many years, I realized how much mobile is going to be a massive driver of consumer relationships and touch points. I spent this past year working and studying on mobile, apps and mobile web which has really allowed me to hit the ground running with Urban Airship. In my first meeting I witnessed one of the strongest engineering and product teams I have seen in years and that was the ultimate tipping point for me in the focus, understanding and commitment to the product. I am excited to help introduce the power of this software stack, marketing data and one to one personal interaction for companies, brands, carriers to to whom these new mobile devices are allowing for more targeted and personal relationships.” You can see why we hired the guy.

Scott Townsend has joined as our Marketing Manager helping drive our marketing efforts. For six years Scott has been a Marketing Manager at Google, helping companies build their digital strategies. He has helped create successful campaigns for Burger King, Coca-Cola, Coldwell Banker, Papa John’s, Unilever and many others. He has helped top executives better understand changing consumer behaviors and empower their brands. He just moved from New York to Portland and is excited to join our community. He’s got an amazing energy and the entire team is excited to have him on board.

Mike Keister joins us from Webtrends as our Director of Sales. Mike is a Digital Marketing sales expert with more than 12 years supporting, designing and executing revenue generation models. Mike has extensive experience helping customers achieve greater business results with solutions focused on enhancing online channels previously at Jive, Webtrends, WideMile and Tripwire. He has successfully worked with leading companies in Media, Retail, Financial Services, Telecom, Technology, and Travel.We’re super excited Mike is going to be leading our sales efforts moving forward.

Little known fact: 42% of Urban Airship is named “Michael” or “Scott”. Think about that.

We continue to see all kinds of momentum in mobile and a huge need for the Urban Airship mobile platform. This team is a great start to what is going to be an amazing time for this company. The best is yet to come.

There is an article out on TechEye and a number of other places pointing to Windows 7 being the fastest growing mobile OS for 2011. Our own 2010 Mobile App Developers Survey backs this up in terms of developer support of that platform. While only 5.9% of our developers responded that they supported Windows 7 in 2010, 24.4% indicated that they will be supporting it in 2011 showing an impressive 414% growth rate this year.

That said, measuring growth rate certainly doesn’t tell the story of mobile OS success. 24.4% support in 2011 pales in comparison to iOS’s 90% and Android’s 73.8% support numbers. 2011 will certainly be important for Microsoft to gain and accelerate traction in a market for smart phones that has been passing them by, but it’s important to remember that intention does not equate to adoption.

What do you think? Does Windows 7 matter?

Mobile app growth is no secret as apps are being downloaded more than ever; a recent TechCrunch article reports that a typical iOS device has downloaded an average of 60 apps per device, up from 10 in 2008. What the article doesn’t say is how many of these apps are free vs. paid or whether or not the app publishers are making money off apps. Yet as businesses look to monetize mobile apps, in-app purchases are becoming increasingly important to their strategy.

Our recent 2010 Mobile App Developers Survey found that an increasing number of app publishers are looking to generate revenue from their app. While in 2010 a full 33% of the developers we surveyed indicated that they weren’t making money off their app, only 13% indicated that their apps wouldn’t provide revenue in 2011. Although a large number of app developers still intend to make money from downloads and advertising revenue, in-app purchases showed the largest jump in importance to developers. The percentage of developers who plan to use in-app purchase as a revenue source will grow from 8% in 2010 to 31% in 2011.

This trend was further backed up this week in an eMarketer article, “In-App Purchases Become Major Mobile Revenue Stream.” This article highlighted the growing importance of in-app purchase to mobile revenue:

“Within the realm of apps that are directly monetized, whether by paying for the app itself, paying for items within the app, or both, in-app purchases are becoming much more important to developers. They more than doubled their share of iPad app revenues, from 12% to 29%, between June and December 2010. Over the same period in-app purchases on iPhone applications increased from 36% to 49% of revenues—now taking half the market from traditionally paid-for apps.”

If you are evaluating your mobile revenue strategy, whether you have a paid app or are exploring a freemium model, be sure to include in-app purchases in your discussion of how to build a profitable app.

The momentum toward mobile computing platforms continues unabated. As we mentioned in a previous post, the news for mobile app developers keeps getting better. Another indicator of this trend is reported by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that the 2010 Word of the Year is “app”. They report:

“According to the American Dialect Society, which is holding its annual meeting at the Wyndham Grand in Pittsburgh this week, the Word of the Year that bests sums up 2010 is: app.”

While this won’t translate into any kind of meaningful revenue streams for app developers, it is a strong indication of how quickly mobile apps have moved to the forefront of computing attention. As more businesses than ever move in this direction, we at Urban Airship couldn’t be happier to be providing a platform to help these developers create apps that are successful, engaging and profitable.

Whether it’s the Verizon iPhone, new mobile devices at CES, or more attention to mobile applications in general, we hope the good news keeps on coming. While 2010 may have been the year of the app, we think that 2011 will be the year of the successful and profitable app. Here’s to a fantastic 2011 for the mobile app community!

By just about any account, the announcement on Tuesday from Verizon looks to be the launch of the iPhone on the much-heralded carrier’s network. The reality is that while this is great news for a whole new swath of customers for the iPhone, its also a huge boon for mobile app developers.

Mobile publishers now have a huge opportunity to reach a whole new swath of users with their apps. We learned in our 2010 Mobile App Developer survey that devs are looking hard at how they can succeed on multiple platforms and Android continues to dominate that conversation. Giving Apple a new carrier to sell their phones on domestically will be huge for their bottom line and that of the developers on iOS.

I spent last week at CES in Las Vegas and saw a whole bevy of new connected devices with a fair chunk of them running Android. Motorola had some compelling new offerings as well as Vizio, the world’s leading LCD TV manufacturer, also announced new phone and tablet offerings based on Android that work with their TVs. All of these devices and all of these options means ever-connected mobile devices and the apps that run on top of them are here to stay. We couldn’t be more excited here at Urban Airship as we know our customers will continue to need tools and services to engage and monetize their apps over time on all of these devices.

We look forward to the announcement on Tuesday.

We’re excited to share the results of the Urban Airship 2010 Mobile App Developer Survey we did at the end of December. While some of the findings may be obvious, some surprised even us – not easy, given that we talk to developers all the time in our line of work.

The No. 1 takeaway from the results, for me, is that 2011 will be about mobile strategies affecting the bottom line. Developers are looking for ways to measure success of their apps and for ways to monetize over time. As I mentioned to Robert Scoble in our recent chat about the mobile market, I’m predicting huge growth for in-app purchase in the coming year, especially once it becomes available on Android. Looks like you agree — according to the developers in the survey, implementations of in app purchase will jump from 8% in 2010 to 31% in 2011. In-app purchase continues to be a huge driver of revenue over time, and we believe 2011 will only continue that trend.

In the past year, we’ve seen apps get great traction initially, with huge download numbers, but then wane after that. All the more validation that the freemium model may just be the golden ticket. We were really interested in the GigaOM post about the freemium model coming into its own with over 30% of app store revenue coming from the 1.34% of apps that have in-app purchase enabled.

iOS and Android continue to dominate and while it appears to be a two-horse race, we do see a few platforms nipping at their heels. One of the biggest surprises was the increased interest in Windows Phone 7. Our own work here at Urban Airship around the platform have left us very interested in developing for the platform and developers are echoing that sentiment. Microsoft appears to be executing well on a strategy of declaring platform bankruptcy and starting from scratch. Mobile is just getting started and having a platform with little/no baggage is going to pay dividends for them in 2011.

BlackBerry will see increased usage of their platform and their foray into the tablet space could be interesting. The biggest concern we have seen is with their platform complexity for developers. It’s hard to use BlackBerry solutions and make them work across a complicated matrix of software versions and devices. Nokia is in a similar space; the efforts around MeeGo have yet to reveal the fruits of their labor.

Most telling however is the report from Gartner Research on Q3 ’10 smartphone sales. Although RIM and Nokia saw 50% increases in growth (total shipments over a year earlier), they lost serious market share to Apple and Android. Our survey shows developers are seeing this and acting accordingly.

All app success is driven by a need to manage your installed base and the content or messaging being delivered to those apps. Mobile stands to be significantly more disruptive to more industries and verticals than the PC or web ever were. If you aren’t working on your mobile strategy, you can be sure that your competitors are.

Thanks to all you who participated in the survey. We’re really excited about what 2011 is going to bring and we’ll be here with new features and services that help developers succeed with their mobile strategies.

Download the report here