| IT FOCUS
IT FOCUS What can technology do for my business? WHEN you hear a news story that runs something along the lines of: ‘Company x from a country that isn’t the one you are in has just been sold for several million dollars to Google, Microsoft or Facebook’, do you think to yourself why am I not part of that? All too often this is the case but we’re a talented bunch of inventors, engineers and business people here in the UK and we can be more involved, particularly when it comes to software. Mobile apps are delivered via a global marketplace that is incredibly simple to get into, albeit challenging to succeed in. Once an app has been created it is submitted to the respective stores to Apple, Google and Microsoft, other stores exist but these are the majors. If approved, it is launched in over 200 countries around the world accessed by billions of users. The total revenue paid to owners (developers) of mobile apps is over $6B USD in a 12-month period. The success of an app is largely dictated by marketing campaigns, market saturation, pricing and target audience. Some apps have a life span that spikes in what is commonly known as going viral. This is
where an app has reached a critical mass through its marketing strategy and is now being passed on by virtual word-of-mouth around the globe thanks to the Internet and its plethora of communication platforms. So what does it take? An app is like any piece of software and takes skill to create, investment and time to get it right. What you see as a highly successful high-quality app for 0.49p probably cost more than £50k to produce and might not have been successful right away. But these are the success stories because someone had the idea, stuck with it and made it happen – are you ready. n
It took some time before Twitter was understood!
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