MediaTel Mobile event: The app gold rush is over

Speaking at MediaTel Group’s Come on Mobile… Stand Up and Deliver! event on Friday, David Fieldhouse, owner and strategy director at Lucidity Mobile, said the heat is coming out of the app market now, after an initial gold rush.

Fieldhouse said the focus is no longer on app v browser, but on what app? With so many apps available, the key is how to promote apps. He added that businesses are “doing apps for the right reason now, which is good”.

Ian Carrington, mobile advertising sales director at Google, agreed, saying the future will be in products that enable consumers to find apps quickly and easily.

“There is so much competition to get your app out there,” he said. Carrington talked of the challenge to get an app in the top 10-25 list and keeping it there. “It needs constant promotion”.

Meanwhile, Facebook’s head of mobile partnerships EMEA Fergal Walker talked of the customer experience being the end goal for apps – “the most important thing is to provide relevance and immediacy,” he said.

Shan Henderson, owner of Morfolk and former head of sales at O2 Media, used the NatWest app as an example of a brand working with an operator to target key customers.

O2 Media and NatWest partnered to push the banking app directly to NatWest customers by using sort code information. 80,000 O2 customers bank with NatWest. 30% of those installed and used the app, according to Henderson.

He complained that despite the success of the partnership, other banks (and brands) have been slow to follow suit.