April 5, 2011
Every since the early days of the smart phone, mobile application have been creating added value to the cellular phone industry. The business strategy for creating apps usually follows one of two marketing ideas. Many companies create an application and fire it onto the market with the hopes consumers will download and pay a dollar or two for the application, never to be heard from again. Other companies, such as Rovio [1] the creators of Angry Birds, have developed a loyal customer base by offering more and engaging the user in order to acquire feedback.
Angry Birds developer Peter Vesterbacka told Google in an interview. “Angry birds is the first example of a brand that was created on the mobile side and is now going everywhere,… We didn’t treat this as just a disposable app that you throw out there and some people download it and they forget about it… We focus on retention. We really want to build the audience and keep the audience. That’s why we’ve been doing free updates for the game since the beginning, every four weeks or so. When we do an update, about 80 percent of the people who download the game get the update.” [2]
So how do you go about creating mobile applications that create loyal customers in this fast passed cutthroat environment?
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