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Huge news this week with the announce that Parse is to shut down on January 28, 2017! Download the entire episode now to listen to our thoughts on the announcement plus lots more. Here's a quick look at the app business news items we covered this week:   There could be a new 4 inch iphone coming in March http://mobiledevmemo.com/memo/iphone-5se-could-be-new-4-inch-handset/?d=e If this rumor is true it means developers will have to continue to support 4 inch screens indefinitely.   iPhone sales slowing drastically according to analysts http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/iphone-sales-growth_us_56a78bb1e4b0b87beec5f8e2?ir=Technology§ion=us_technology&utm_hp_ref=technology A few interesting points from this article: Apple sold 75.5m iphone in the October-December quarter, a 1.3% increase over previous year. Slowest previous quarterly growth was 6.8% in 2013. Apple reported a quarterly profit of $18.4 billion, the largest in history. But the company predicted revenue will decline next quarter, its first drop in years. Parse is shutting down! http://blog.parse.com/announcements/moving-on/ Unbelievably, Parse have announced that they will retire all services from January 28, 2017. They are offering a database migration service to move from parse to any Mongo DB database + ‘Parse Server’, which lets you use the Parse API on your own node.js server. ABP listener Reinder de Vries wrote a

This week in mobile app business news: Gordon Ramsay partnering with Glu, the company behind Kim Kardashian's hit app. Glu has a history of partnering with celebrities to build successful apps and it seems Ramsay is next in line. http://venturebeat.com/2016/01/19/gordon-ramsay-joins-kim-kardashian-in-glu-mobiles-gaming-stable/ App Annie have released their 2015 Retrospective. The report looks at key data from across the mobile app industry in 2015. Lots of great insights in this one. http://blog.appannie.com/app-annie-2015-retrospective/   An ecommerce platform has just released a new mobile app that is designed to support black owned businesses by ramping up the ability to purchase from them. The app is called Purchase Black. http://mobilemarketingwatch.com/first-ever-all-black-marketplace-mobile-app-debuts-from-purchaseblack-com-64774/   Venturebeat's take on the App Annie 2015 Retrospective. The key takeaway from this one is the fact that Google had 2x more downloads than Apple, but Apple had 75% higher mobile app revenue. http://venturebeat.com/2016/01/20/app-annie-2015-google-play-saw-100-more-downloads-than-the-ios-app-store-but-apple-generated-75-more-revenue/   More acquisitions in the mobile space with Spotify acquiring two social messaging apps. They purchased NY based company 'Cord Project', and Dublin based 'Soundwave'. http://www.thedrum.com/news/2016

Today we're speaking with Rachel Cook, founder & CEO of tech startup Seeds. Seeds is an incredibly interesting new platform that creates a real win-win-win situation for mobile app developers, entrepreneurs in developing countries, and Seeds. Seeds helps 'compel spending on mobile through the power of social good'. Or put another way, they help you sell more in-app purchases by contributing part of the IAP cost to micro-loans that help entrepreneurs in developing countries. App users are more inclined to complete an in-app purchase if they know a portion of the money is contributing to social good, so they end up buying more stuff. We haven't seen anything like this before. You really need to listen to the entire interview to get an idea of how powerful this might be for developers. Download the episode now to learn more about Seeds. You can also learn more over at their website, playseeds.com

This week in mobile app business news: Apple says apps and in-app purchase sales were $1b for the 2 week holiday period. This set new weekly records for traffic and revenue back to back. http://mobiledevmemo.com/memo/app-store-games-bring-in-1b-in-revenue-during-december-as-clash-of-clans-tops-the-charts/?d=e iOS shipped more units than windows last year. The 2 year refresh cycle of mobile devices was a contributor to this, as well as the decline in Windows PC sales. Also mentions that iOS 9 is now on 75% of devices. http://mobiledevmemo.com/memo/iphone-shipments-overtook-windows-in-2015-for-the-first-time-ios-9-adoption-hits-75/?d=e Apple is killing iAd. This article mentions that iAd would continue as a self-serve ad platform, but that is not the case. iAd is closing completely.http://www.buzzfeed.com/johnpaczkowski/apple-iad?utm_term=.ybAWv0brb#.nbX9dp8j8 Apple continues to push in to the education sector by allowing multiple user accounts on iPads with ios 9.3:https://www.apple.com/education/preview/ There is talk of Apple killing the headphone jack. Over 200,000 people have signed a petition against it.http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/08/over-200000-people-have-signed-a-petition-to-stop-apple-from-killing-the-iphones-headphone-jack/

Welcome to the first ABP of 2016! We're kicking off the new year with plenty of fresh mobile app business news including details on the Oculus Rift release, data showing how to sell more stuff in your apps, and plenty more. Here's a look at what we covered: Soomla Mobile Games report https://soom.la/resources/2015-q4-data-report.html Soomla just released their mobile games report for Q4 2015. It contains lots of useful insights into monetization and retention in F2P games. Some key points: - 45% of app paying users make their first IAP within 1 hour of downloading the game. - 4% of Android users pay, while only 1% of iOS users pay - 6 % of all players complete an IAP in Asia, compared to 2.5% in the USA   Uber /Lyft Claim Their First Casualty http://www.forbes.com/sites/briansolomon/2016/01/06/ubers-first-casualty-san-franciscos-largest-taxi-company-filing-for-bankruptcy/ The largest SF taxi service announces it's plan to file for bankruptcy. This just goes to show how big of an impact services like Uber are having on the taxi industry. Flurry Data on usage growthhttp://flurrymobile.tumblr.com/post/136677391508/stateofmobile2015 Flurry just released their latest data on user growth. Key points: Total sessions up 58% y/y - with 40% estimated from existing users (compared to 20% in 2014 and 10% in 2013). Time spent in medium sized phones up 85%, phablets up 334% (iphone6+ and Samsung Galaxy note) Personalisation apps saw sessions balloon more than 330% in 2015. Mostly driven by emoji apps (keyboards). News & magazi

In this week's app business news roundup we looked at the outlook for apps and advertising in 2016. We also shared our thoughts on what will be big in 2016 and what will remain hype. Here are the news items we covered: Rumors of Apple looking for acquisition targets. GoPro might be on the shopping list http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2015/12/16/apples-200b-warchest-ramps-up-acquisition-talk/76565250/ Apple have a $200bn cash reserve and everyone is wondering how they will spend it.   App Annie highlight the rise of retail apps http://blog.appannie.com/mobile-holiday-shopping-rise-of-retail-on-android Android outpaces iOS retailer growth (app installs) in USA. iOS still leads in UK   App Annie 2016 Outlook https://www.dropbox.com/s/ll3e7xq695mn3by/App_Annie_Top_App_Predictions_2016_EN.pdf?dl=0 App Annie share their insights on what to expect from 2016 in mobile. Google Now on Tap, eSports, messaging apps, productivity apps and VR all get a mention   Mobile Ads Outlook http://mobileadvertisingwatch.com/exclusive-top-industry-execs-make-bold-mobile-advertising-predictions-for-2016-21273 We discussed the mobile ads outlook for 2016 on the back of an arti

This week in our live app business news roundup we talk about the best apps of 2015, the struggle for developers on the Apple TV, mobile advertising and much more. Here's a quick overview of the mobile app news items we covered: Apple announces best iOS apps of 2015 Apple released their annual list of editors choice apps plus the most downloaded apps for iPhone and iPad. The top app for 2015, as decided by Apple was Periscope. Tune in to the episode to hear the other apps that got a mention http://mashable.com/2015/12/09/apple-best-ios-apps-2015/   Deloitte Release Data From Their Global Mobile Survey Some interesting points highlighted by the survey: Checking our phones has become a constant in our lives. In addition to checking their phones more frequently during the day, 93% of smartphone owners have looked at their phones within three hours of waking up. For 18-24 year olds, that number is 97%.   When asked how often people used their phones to make an in-store payment, in 2014 5% responded that they had done it at least once. In 2015, 5% of respondents said they do it once a week. http://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documents/technology-media-telecommunications/us-tmt-global-mobile-executive-summary-2015.pdf   Mobile payments at Walmart Walmart have released their own mobile payment platform instead of using Apple or Google's existing solutions. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/10/business/walmart-prepares-to-enter-mobi

Adam Ben-David is the VP of Supply Side Platform at Supersonic, mobile monetization and user acquisition platform for the app economy. Adam helps developers utilize Supersonic's monetization tools to build & grow their app business. In this episode Adam shares some great tips on how app developers can improve their app monetization. We also talk about what you can do right now to prepare for the holiday season, which ad formats perform best, optimizing ad placements & much more. There is a ton of actionable information in this episode, so be sure to listen in so you can implement changes before the App Store lockdown happens. Get in touch with Supersonic & Adam http://www.supersonic.com adam.b@supersonic.com

This week in our mobile app business news roundup we take a look at how Facebook are making it easier to log in to apps on the Apple TV, Snapchat's announcement regarding deep-linking, Black Friday sales data & more. Here is the full list of topics we covered this week: Facebook releases AppleTV SDK. Allows FB login, sharing etc. The interesting thing to note here is that it uses a different login method to make things easier on TV. Users don’t need to enter their full Facebook username & password. Instead they can get a code sent to their mobile phone, and enter that instead. This helps make logging in to services using a TV remote much easier and will help improve the onboarding experience for lots of apps.   iOS 9 adoption hits 70% in November iOS 9 adoption rates continue to climb. Unlike iOS 8 which where adoption was relatively slow for an iOS release, iOS 9 is being adopted rather quickly.   Google ads can now stream app demos We originally covered Google's announcement about live-streaming apps in this episode. Basically it allows users to view in-app content without having to download the app. Now Google have taken this a step further and have created Google ads that allow streaming of app demos in the ad itself! This means users can interact with the ad & test an app before actually downloading it.   Snapchat opens up deep-linking for publishers Snapchat continues to look for ways to support publishers & keep users inside the service. They have just a

This week in our mobile app business news roundup we discuss the gender gap in mobile game genres, Apple Pay, ad blocking, CPI data & much more. Here is the full list of topics we covered this week: Square, the mobile payment processor starts accepting Apple Pay. The new Apple Pay reader means retailers can accept Apple Pay payments from people on the go. http://venturebeat.com/2015/11/23/square-begins-rolling-out-its-apple-pay-reader/ In a closely related news item, Apple have announced that Apple Pay will be launching in China in February 2016. http://www.cnet.com/au/news/apple-pay-said-to-plan-launch-in-china-by-february/ New data highlights the gender split for mobile game genres. There weren't too many surprises here, but still some very interesting data on just how big the gender gap is for some genres. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/260116/New_data_highlights_gender_split_for_mobile_game_genres.php Latest Fiksu Data for October 2015 has been released. This month it highlights the continually increasing cost-per-install, as well as a large jump in the number of iOS downloads. http://venturebeat.com/2015/11/24/ios-download-soar-25-higher-in-october-for-popular-apps-even-as-cost-per-install-rises-20-since-2014/ Brick & mortar retailers are stepping up their mobile apps to encourage customers to use them more often in-store. http://venturebeat.com/2015/11/22/retailers-are-finally-giving-shoppers-a-good-reason-to-use-their-apps-in-stores/ More dis

This is a slightly different episode to usual. We discuss our favourite mobile app publishing tools and resources. Tune in to learn which tools we consider a 'must-have', which ones we couldn't live without for monetization, other favourites, and the new and interesting tools that we think have a lot of potential. Rather than going through a standard, boring tools/resources roundup we wanted to make it a bit more interesting. We created 4 'categories' and took turns to name our favourite tool for each. Here are the categories: Essentials - the one tool you can't live without Favorites - Something else that you use most often Ad Network/Monetization Tool - If you had to pick one, which would it be? New and Interesting - What tool have you started using or plan on using that you are excited about?   Links to tools/resources mentioned in this episode: Parse Xplode Branch Facebook SDK App Annie Google Admob Facebook Audience Network Localytics  

We're continuing our live weekly app business news roundups on Blab.im, and they continue to get better each week! This week we were luck to be joined by 'Hit Tennis' creator Mark Johnson who provided some interesting insights. Mark even jumped on the live video stream for a chat after we finished recording, so those who were there live really got more than they were expecting! If you want to come along for the live recording next week, just head over to Blab.im at 4pm PST on Thursday. Search for 'Chidgey' and you'll find the stream. And here is what we covered in this weeks app business news: Smaato report - Mobile advertising soars in developing countries The latest report from Smaato showed that mobile advertising in Latin America and the Asia Pacific region continues to soar. Venezuela and Indonesia both showed 80% plus growth in digital advertising revenue. http://www.adotas.com/2015/11/mobile-advertising-soars-in-developing-countries-according-to-new-report-from-smaato/   Apple updates iOS search algorithm This is big news for any publisher with apps in the Apple App Store. The latest algorithm change that happened on November 3 has seen most apps ranking for new keywords and big changes in rankings for both keywords as well as category rankings. It seems like most people are still in the dark on exactly what changed, including the industry leading ASO companies who have been very quiet on the issue. http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/13/app-store-search-just-got-smarter/ Sensortower have provided some early insights into the changes here: https://sensortower.com/blog/apple-algorithm-insights   Mobile chrome doubles from 400m to 800m in 12 mths Over the last 12 months Google Chrome use has doubled to a massive 800m monthly sessions. This demonstrates the increasing dominance of mobile when it comes to accessing the web, as well as the continued adoption of Android

In this episode of the ABP we took a look at some slides from a recent Google conference called the 'Mobile Leadership Program'. At the conference Google shared lots of data and stats that formed a view about how marketers should approach mobile marketing strategies. There are 5 slide decks in total, which add up to a lot of information to consume. As always, we've aimed to distill it down and present the most interesting points for you. Here are some of the main talking points in this episode: 41% of executives report making a business purchase of over $5,000 from a mobile device. That's a lot bigger than we expected! Some amazing stats from Google Play including 60% of apps have never been downloaded 20% are only used once after installation 95% of apps are abandoned within a month The top 7 reasons why people uninstall apps A nice overview of how remarketing works (Google centric view) Plenty of insights in here about mobile marketing strategies that we hadn't seen before, so we think you will find lots of value in this episode. And here are the slides if you would like to check them out Click here to tune in now on iTunes

Today's interview is with Alex Berman, chief marketing sumo at InspireBeats. Alex shares some great insights into how you can generate more leads and get more paying customers for your business. This is particularly relevant if you're in the B2B app space. Once you have prospects on the phone, it's relatively easy to make the sale. Getting them to agree to a phone call is the hard part, and Alex shares tons of great tips for doing that in this interview. Alex shares actionable tips on how to: Identify who your ideal target is. Finding who to contact & how to actually contact them. Moving from an email conversation to a phone call. Find new prospects efficiently. This is super important! If you've ever tried to do manual outreach you will understand how time consuming it can be. Avoid spamming by doing some research first. The discussion also dives into what a B2B sales process looks like compared to a B2C sales process & what you should expect. It really is vastly different and much longer than your standard B2C sales process, so being prepared and having reasonable expectations around that is really important. Alex also shares some numbers around what is considered a good conversion rate on cold outreach to email, and then email to phone conversation. There really is a lot of valuable information in here for anyone interested in the B2B space. To listen to this episode now on iTunes, click here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/app-business-podcast-mobile/id737665548?mt=2 InspireBeats provide done-for-you lead generation. Their services include finding qualified leads for your business and sending you the details every month. They also offer packages where they find the qualified leads, handle the outreach and book phone calls with each lead for you! The Inspirebeats team have also put together a free course. Check it out here: http://www.inspirebeats.com/course.html To find out more, or get in touch with Alex head over to Inspirebeats.com. Alex is on Twitter: @alxbrman

Another great mobile app business news roundup recorded live on Blab.im this week. We covered all kinds of topics including running ads on the AppleTV, iPad Pro, mobile partnerships, billion dollar revenues in China + more. Here’s a quick run down of this weeks news items: Applovin launches appleTV SDK. This opens up in-app advertising for publishers who have apps on AppleTV. With bigger screens generally attracting bigger ad revenue, it will be interesting to see how ads perform on the TV. http://venturebeat.com/2015/11/05/applovin-launches-an-sdk-to-put-ads-in-apple-tv-apps/   iPad Pro was released this week and is available now. During a recent talk, Tim Cook made a prediction that it will usher in the end of the PC. Hard to imaging that playing out but only time will tell. http://www.canberratimes.com.au/technology/technology-news/apples-tim-cook-declares-the-end-of-the-pc-20151109-gkuv5b.html   Swrve buys marketing autmation company adaptiv.io in a move towards more omnichannel marketing. We'll continue to keep an eye on this mobile-first, mobile centric space. http://adexchanger.com/mobile/nosing-in-on-omnichannel-swrve-buys-adaptiv-io-snags-21-3-million-in-series-c/     Tencent grows mobile game revenues 60%, and makes $1.19 billion in profit (grew 2x faster than other online gaming). This again demonstrates the scale and rapid growth of the Chinese market. It feels like we are seeing a new set of mind-boggling numbers coming out of the Chinese mobile market every week.

Retention is one of the most important, if not the single most important every app developer needs to understand. Improving retention will have a positive flow-on effect to almost every other metric you are tracking, and at the end of the day higher retention equals higher profits.   In this episode we walk you through some of the most effective ways that any app developer can increase retention in their mobile apps.   Some of the methods are surprisingly simple and easy to implement but have big effects. We also get into some more complex methods that the big guys are using to keep people coming back.   Here are the resources we mentioned in this post:   Applift - Time to Start Thinking About Retention: http://www.applift.com/blog/retention-over-installs   Thanks to ABP listener Emelio for suggesting this topic. What else do you guys want to hear us talk about? We do this to help you, the ABP listeners, so please keep those suggestions coming!   This episode brought to you by:   B7Dev – Top notch software development at affordable prices.   Click here for iOS development from just $20/hour. That’s 20% off just for ABP listeners.

This episode is a good follow-up after our recent chat about increasing retention. In this episode you'll learn what we mean by 'onboarding', how it helps you monetize apps more effectively and how you can improve the onboarding experience in your own apps.   Here's the list of what we cover:   Understanding the end goal, or action that you want your users to complete. This could be making an IAP, sharing the app via social etc. Starting to get into the mindset of asking yourself how to move users towards that goal. Building an onboarding process that increases retention while encouraging users to take the steps required to reach the end goal. We also discussed some interesting statistics that support the case for designing a good onboarding experience. These numbers emphasise how important it is to have an onboarding process that guides new users to making an IAP (if that's your end goal) on day 1. Here are the numbers:  58% of purchasers made that purchase within 1 day of installing the app. 55% percent of those people who completed an IAP went on to complete a second IAP within the first 14 days. and 25% percent of them went on to complete 5 IAP’s in the first 14 days of using the app. All of the points we make about onboarding apply to both games and non-game apps. And if you are looking for ideas on how you can build a great onboarding experience for your app, check out this list: http://uxarchive.com/tasks/onboarding

Another great mobile app business news roundup recorded live on Blab.im this week. We covered all kinds of topics including Ceelo Green, iOS 9 hacks, big scale mergers and more. Here's an overview of this weeks news items: Activision Blizzard buys King (creator of Candy Crush) for $5.9bn This makes them the biggest gaming entertainment company in the Western world. Second only to Tencent on a global scale. Tencent is a Chinese internet company that owns WeChat, has a stake in Epic games (Unreal, GoW, Infinity Blade), stake in GLU, stake in Riot Games (League of Legends). Read the full article here: http://venturebeat.com/2015/11/03/how-the-5-9b-activision-king-deal-rewrites-the-landscape-of-gaming/   Ceelo Green is releasing his own app in January Hyperpower Game Group is developing it. Green’s game will start out in Atlanta, Green’s hometown. As Green, you have to earn points to make your next city and stage in life. It will involve cars and take players inside Green’s new album, Heart Blanche. As a reference for how much potential there is here, Kim Kardashian’s game generated $74.3 million for Glu Mobile in 2014. http://venturebeat.com/2015/10/30/ceelo-green-chases-after-kim-kardashian-with-his-own-mobile-game/   Firm claims to have a hack that allows them to remotely compromise iOS 9 devices. The firm, Zerodium, put out a bounty of $1 million for the hack last month, and earli

Never heard of 'use rate' as a mobile app metric before? Neither had we. That's why AdColony's latest monetization study caught our interest. It focuses on making sense of Use Rate and presents a bunch of interesting data on how use rate affects revenue, session length and more. AdColony have done a good job of presenting data that we don't usually see in this report. But as always it's important not to jump to conclusions when looking at these things. Tune in to hear us dig in to what the figures really mean (or don't!). Here are some assumptions made in the report that we're sure you will find interesting: Higher use rate drives increased ad ARPDAU Increasing use rate can increase eCPM Higher use rate improves ad monetization efficiency As far as data filled reports go this one is a bit on the lighter, easier to digest side of things. Plenty of good info for you to think about during your commute. Read the full AdColony report: Making Sense of Use Rate

Sensortower have just released their latest Data Digest. This one covers everything that happened in Q3 across the App Store and Google Play. Sensortower uses their Store Intelligence product in the creation of the report, which provides data to mobile publishers to help them make informed decisions. Find out which apps were downloaded most, which categories are growing fastest, which companies dominated the charts and lots more! Here's a small taste of what we talked about in this episode: Which apps generated the majority of revenue from iPhone and which ones did better on iPad How publishers used ads to monetize effectively Which countries monetized best The ad creative strategies used by different types of apps Check out the full Sensortower Q3 Data Digest here.