Developers plan app invasion

A report by Deloitte and ASSOCHAM has projected the mobile value-added services market (which includes mobile apps) to reach Rs 214.1 crore by the end of 2012 from Rs 158.6 crore in 2011. Mobile app developers in India are relying on the steady rise in handset penetration to whet the appetite for apps (applications) among youngsters.

Mobilewalla, the mobile analyst firm, says in 2012 there will be a mobile app explosion, due to the higher proliferation of smartphones and tablets. Developers from tier-I and -II cities across the country are flooding app stores with apps that act as transport fare checkers and even tell you how to wear a sari.

Sagar Bedmutha, founder and CEO of Optinno Mobitech, a Pune-based company, saw 100,000 downloads for his firm's app, smsBlocker. The firm is among the many itching to further cash in on the booming app economy and the 900 million mobile subscribers. Bedmutha's company has fine-tuned itself to develop mobile security related apps in 2012 for Google's Android, Windows and BlackBerry platforms.

Another app, Zephyr, by which a user can stream content of any Indian rock band on Java, Android, Symbian or iPhone, was downloaded 26,000 times in India. Prafulla Mathur, CEO and founder, Queppelin (makers of Zephyr) is now getting ready to tap social gaming and mobile commerce market this year. "Due to our mobile streaming platform that has given us good exposure, we have been funded twice. We are now looking at expanding to the South East Asian market within this year through our social gaming and mobile commerce apps," he said.

The company works closely with customers to build a product and then distributes it via pre-installation deals with handset manufacturers and distribution deals with telecom operators. In fact, the company has also developed 'Save the Tiger' social game on mobile, which was featured by Indian telecom major Aircel and downloaded 58,000 times in the first month itself.

Others like Ongraph Technologies are betting on social media integration into its apps to drive growth in 2012.

Smartphones touched the 10-million mark in India recently, claims a report by CyberMedia Research. Figures from the Indian research company IMRB suggest that one in three Indian urban internet users have accessed a mobile phone app.

But, it is not easy to turn every app into a success. "No one has the perfect solution. Since the audience is perfectly new, companies have been using the trial-and-error method for feedback from customers," said Rohan Dikhe of Social Web Factory, a start-up focussing on strategy and solutions for emerging social application platforms.

HI-TECH WARE Proliferation of smartphones and tablets will lead to app explosion in 2012
Company	Most popular app	Price	No of downloads
Queppelin	Zephyr	NA (will be pre- embedded in some handsets)	26,000 plus (downloads stopped now)
Optinno Mobitech	smsBlocker	Rs 791  (approximately)	100,000 (free   download version)
Ongraph Technologies	Ford dealership	Free (for dealers,   given by company)	1,000 plus (depending  on dealers)
SOURCE: Companies

Nikhil Verma of Ongraph Technologies underlined, "Discoverability of the app is one of the biggest challenges we have been facing, since there are thousands of apps available at any particular app store. Also, because of the issues of fragmentation, creating apps for different platforms is a huge task."