Coming soon
Coming soon
With Apple keeping a tight leash over the App Store, app developers need to pay special attention to the Cupertino giant’s hardware sales to help guide and inform their development choices. So developers need to be taking serious interest in the recently announced third quarter results announced by Apple, which provide some vital clues into the future of the ecosystem and what developers should be creating next.
On the surface, it appears as if Apple have had another broadly successful year in the hardware market. While year on year net profit was down from $8.8 billion to $6.9 billion, the fact that revenues held steady at $35 million suggests that Apple’s decision to cut their margins on iPads with the iPad mini hasn’t negatively affected their overall revenue performance. So far, only really interesting to the market analysts amongst you.
But within that positive statistic relating to overall revenues is another fact that developers, product design managers and other strategists need to be considering: iPad sales are falling. With year on year sales down from 17 million in the June quarter of 2012 to 14.7 million in the latest results, it appears that tablet sales are suffering from lying outside the smartphone bi annual upgrade cycle and the lack of new top of the range products.
That could mean tangible changes to the way that developers handle their approach to the platform. Take the strategy of revenue generating behemoths Supercell. Their strategy for monetising their games Clash of Clans and Hayday was based on a tablet first approach, which prioritised iPad gamers and their unique user habits all the way to $2.4 million revenue a day.
But if the market for iPads is steadily becoming saturated, then developers will need to be prepared to catch the next wave to maintain their success on iOS. And, while many analysts are tipping wearables as the next field, our advice is much more reassuring: pay attention to making your iPhone experience as good as possible.
The reason is simply one of volume. Despite misgivings from some over the USP of the 5th generation of the device, iPhone sales continued their increase to an extraordinary 31.2 million devices in a single quarter; up from 26 million the year before. That growth is happening even before the rumoured low cost iPhone hits the shelf; meaning that there is likely to be continued success for developers able to cash in on handset touting users.
Early signs of the potential success of this route can be seen in the success of King’s Candy Crush Saga and Gung-ho’s Puzzles and Dragons. While both apps retain impressive tablet presences, the puzzle driven gameplay remains perfect for one finger interaction necessary to make smartphone gaming intuitive; putting them in prime position to retain their revenue leadership in the increasingly phone driven environment of iOS.
So in the near future, we think that developers shouldn’t be going for iPad only or necessarily iPhone only (even with the market seemingly shifting that way). We believe that developers and designers simply need to be thinking “multiplatform” and adapting their gameplay to fit both the content consuming context of iPad usage and the one touch, quick use world of iPhone users.
Because, as many of you will have been hearing, context is increasingly important to mobile developers and this definitely includes the context gifted to the user by their device choice; a choice that consumers appear to be making increasingly in the favour of the iPhone.
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