To create the Next Big App, all you need is a good or compelling idea, some tenacity and mobile development skills. The good news is that app revenue is on the up: the Statistics Portal has put together a graph depicting worldwide app revenue growth in 2015, 2016 and projected growth in 2020.
Here we list some small app success stories to motivate you on your path to becoming a mobile developer.
Five Small App Success Stories
This is one of the most surprising success stories out there. It was created by a 24-year-old Lebanese developer called Paul Salameh. The game is based on the Japanese digital pet Tamagotchi, but Pou is a colourful, mobile version of this game. It’s wildly addictive. Says Salameh: “People really relate to Pou, and they think it’s cute.”
It costs $1.99 in the Apple app store and is free for Android users (with in-app purchases). The app spent a lot of time in the Top 5 Paid iOS apps lists, plus it achieves between 260,000-320,000 downloads per day by Android users.
(2) iShoot
Ethan Nicholas, the developer of iShoot, is a self-taught coder. This was his first app, which he developed on an ancient Macbook using Objective-C (he learnt to program as he went along). Unbelievably, he managed to hit $37 000 in one day. The game: a simple battle shooting game. He has made about $600 000 in profit from his game.
(3) Bubble Ball
This is a 72-level physics puzzle game with tools, ramps and planks, from simple to challenging, that was downloaded 2 million times from the Apple iTunes store during the first two weeks of its release. And here’s the most astounding part: The developer, Robert Nay, was only 14 years-old when he came up with the idea for this app. At one point the app surpassed Angry Birds as the number 1 spot for free games on the Apple app store. Both versions of the app, Android and Apple, are free and the game has been downloaded more than 16 million times!
(4) HER
When Robyn Exton, 28, came up with HER, a lesbian dating site, she was motivated by observing the problems with current lesbian dating apps. They were just reconfigured gay male apps, states Time magazine. Says Exton: “They would always be gay male sites that would be re-skinned and turned pink and purple.”
But women look at profiles differently from men and what motivates them to send a message also differs from guys. For example, women tend to follow a lengthier courtship. “For us, it takes about 10 days before women meet each other and there’s a whole number of conversations in between.” Her app uses this kind of research to make the experience much better for users. HER has accumulated a following of several hundreds of thousands of users in the UK and the USA, and has had over 500 000 downloads on Google Play.
(5) Impossible
This app developed in 2013 by Lily Cole, an English model and actress, was set up as a social network for altruists. It took three builds to get it right! Users can ask for random acts of kindness or offer kind acts of their own. It has since morphed into a open source favour trading platform. Impossible launched in 2014 and achieved 50,000 downloads in the first month.
Here we’ve listed five app success stories. But beyond the opportunities to make good money, developing Android apps has several other reasons for successful growth:
- High Demand – as we know, tech jobs are on the rise. There’s an anticipated 12% growth in tech employment by 2024 (compared with 6,5% projected growth in other industries). This translates into 48,500 additional tech jobs. The 13 top tech skills include Mobile Application Development, states an article in Forbes.
- Price – if you choose to develop for Android, there’s no annual fee unlike the Apple platform, which charges you a set fee each year. Also, the Software Development Kit, or SDK, is free. And these development tools offer advantages, because Android Studio runs cross-platform – i.e. on both Mac and Windows machines unlike iOS, which only runs on Mac.
If you’re keen to become a mobile developer and turn your rad app idea into reality, consider enrolling in our a Mobile Developer Bootcamp. The course can be taken part-time and online. You’ll also get your own personal mentor for one-to-one coaching whenever you get stuck or confused. And lastly, you can try the course for free by signing up for a free trial.
