Mobile App Stores: The Developers’ Perspectives

Mobile carriers and device manufacturers — including Palm, RIM, Nokia, Google, Samsung, Microsoft and now Sun and Qualcomm — have recently launched app stores or announced plans for one. We’ll hear the developers’ perspective on this newly flooding channel. Is it necessary to build an app for each store? What are the pluses and minuses of each virtual location? How do you price? Does advertising work in mobile apps, and if so, how?

To the challenge of writing your application for multiple handheld platforms, add the challenge of distributing it in multiple online (and even brick-and-mortar) stores. Truphone, as the first company to offer a mobile VoIP application for the Apple Store and Android Market (before Skype), has been on the forefront of app store distribution. Recently, Truphone came out with an app for Blackberry, and a program for selling the service through the Blackberry dealer channel. Truphone can tell attendees why and how they developed apps for each store, how to handle user perceptions of “quality” and free versus “premium” applications.