When You App, You Can Really Love
The New Gold Rush?
Billboard reports that the Yankee Group research group predicts a new “gold rush” for the mobile app market with an estimated 7 billion US smartphone app downloads by 2013, generating potential revenue of $4.2 billion. Though the average cost of an app is currently 99 cents, the Yankee Group sees the mean cost of apps ballooning to $2.37 within the next four years.
Right now, apps are extremely expensive to develop: projected costs of development for an IPhone app can range from $10,000 to over $150,000 (see Extranet’s article). This article also notes that new apps are being generated faster that new IPhone customers and, as the Billboard article points out, these new app numbers will grow rapidly within the next few years. However, as development costs come down, more platforms are adopted, and some “white-label” solutions appear for apps, this could be some economic good news for musicians as another potential revenue stream.
There have already been some early app adopters that have developed apps to broaden the artists’ interaction with their fans as well as their fans’ interaction with other fans (e.g. Nine Inch Nails). These artists can develop new content for their apps and distribute their apps on different platforms as apps overall continue to gain in popularity. All in all, I look forward to seeing mobile technology continue to improve and musicians embracing this new frontier.
Tags: apps, IPhone, new opportunities, revenue