What’s wrong with a mobile phone software that causes it to be deleted after a short period of time?
| The PC Internet era is gradually fading away, and the entrepreneurial wave of mobile Internet is surging. In 2014, China became the country with the largest number of smartphone users, and the rapidly growing number of apps is taking over the new trend. It is understood that there are currently more than 4 million apps in my country's major app stores, but about 80% of them are "zombie apps" facing elimination. Recently, analysts from iMedia Research Consulting pointed out that "the average life cycle of an APP is only ten months, and 85% of users will delete the downloaded applications from their phones within one month. After five months, the retention rate of these applications is only 5%." As for the reasons for the low retention rate, Ye Qian, vice president of Umeng, said, "Generally speaking, an APP has its own unique and relatively fixed life cycle. The main reasons for the current short life cycle are severe homogeneous competition and the lack of effective operation of some APPs, which ultimately leads to user loss." Through interviews and reference to materials, reporters from the "Daily Economic News" found that, in fact, the low retention rate of APPs is due to various "diseases." Due to the low development threshold and the saturation of the entire APP market, homogeneous competition has led to an influx of homogeneous applications in the market. One of the biggest reasons for homogeneity is that many APPs are currently developed with unclear positioning and confused requirements, which can be summarized into the following "symptoms". Forum disease: Some old APP entrepreneurs have experienced the BBS era, so they didn’t understand the difference between social networking and community from the beginning. Niche disease: In today’s market, everyone is talking about small and beautiful, but small and beautiful is definitely not just a niche. Westernization disease: Domestic entrepreneurs do whatever is popular abroad. In fact, many foreign products may not be suitable for China at all. The key to success is to analyze needs rather than copy the gameplay routines, find the unmet needs of the new generation of young people behind the routines, and meet them with localized new gameplay. One trick leads to another: Many products have really good ideas at the beginning, but lack the ability to continuously innovate and iterate. They invest resources too early in tactical operations rather than polishing the strategic product. This is a common problem for products that die as soon as they become popular. In addition to homogeneous competition leading to unclear positioning and confused demands for developers, improper operations and internal reasons of the developers themselves are also an important factor leading to a short APP life cycle. For example, some APP developers only focus on development, but are very confused about how to manage users after going online and improve retention rates. For example, at the operational level, developers need to make more use of tools such as statistical analysis, message push, and user feedback to achieve more refined user marketing and refined management of entrepreneurial teams. Ye Qian said that developers need to continue to meet user needs and focus on data-based operations. "Because users' interests are constantly shifting, this is both a test and an opportunity for developers." The reality is that, at present, most entrepreneurial teams find it difficult to meet the above requirements, and show the following "problems" in operations, management, and marketing. Promotional disease: Take a look at the Appstore and you will see so many promotional copies that make consumers want to try the product. However, most consumers will be disappointed after downloading. Excessive promotion has greatly raised user expectations. Once the user experience fails to keep up, even a very good product will inevitably be rejected. High-cost disease: The cost for consumers to participate in some APPs is too high. For example, if consumers want to find a sense of existence and belonging in an APP, they must take a video or record a sound or walk somewhere, which is extremely tiring. Switching cost disease: Some products are made with great care and are very good, but because the corresponding demand for the product may have been fully met by a competing product, the user's switching cost is too high. Entering the industry rashly: Social apps have the highest mortality rate. In fact, the threshold for social products lies not in ideas or products, but in operations. What is being tested here is the entrepreneur's understanding of users, control over resources, ability to dance with the platform, acquire users from the platform, public relations ability to create topics, and financing ability. There are too many entrepreneurs who don’t understand the situation entering the social APP field, so it is normal that the mortality rate is the highest. Information overload: For many social apps, the experience when users first enter is really amazing, but often after the number of users increases rapidly, these apps fail, fall into the ocean of information overload, and are gradually abandoned by users. Lack of financing ability: It is difficult for an APP to generate revenue on its own, but the APP wants to spend money desperately to increase the number of users. This requires a large amount of transfusion from investors, so the financing ability and timing determine the life and death of many APPs. Missing out on financing can sometimes be fatal. [APP entrepreneurs are "tight on money": promotion by swiping rankings increases costs] For APP entrepreneurs, promotion is a hurdle that cannot be avoided if they want to acquire users. A reporter from the Daily Economic News learned that the current cost of App promotion is quite high. Most APPs developed by entrepreneurs cannot afford more promotion expenses to occupy a good ranking unit and recommendation position in the App Store, which ultimately leads to a lack of exposure and no one is interested in them, and then they become silent in the vast ocean of APPs. In addition, there are various industry drawbacks that APP encounters during promotion. For example, the open secret in the industry - "ranking manipulation" has become another stumbling block restricting the development of entrepreneurs and to a certain extent has become a driving force behind the high mortality rate of APP. It is understood that at present, due to the extremely tight supply of ranking positions in the app stores, some APPs, in order to gain better exposure and display, will hire "water armies" and ranking companies to obtain rankings and resources through a lot of repetitive work, such as comments, downloads, retention, etc., and maintain a seemingly good operating status. In the mobile Internet circle, especially for gaming apps with huge cash flow, chart manipulation has almost become a standard. An industry insider pointed out that "both large companies and entrepreneurs are manipulating the charts. Some game companies even invest in ranking-manipulating companies specifically for their own games." What is more noteworthy is that the ranking-manipulating situation is mainly concentrated in the Apple Store. Although there are also many Android stores, they are not as serious as the Apple Store. In this regard, Li Weijie, CEO of Kuaishou, explained that this is mainly because Apple has no channels for external cooperation. Domestic Android channels and resource positions can be purchased through business cooperation. In other words, as long as you are willing to spend money, the Apple Store's application rankings are mostly based on Apple's very strict internal algorithms and high-quality applications selected by editors. They will not be interfered with by other factors. This guarantees objectivity and fairness to a certain extent. But for this reason, the Apple Store has become a hotbed for ranking manipulation. From this point of view, whether it is purchasing resources for business cooperation or "brushing the rankings", a certain amount of investment is required, which increases the cost of APP developers to a certain extent. For large companies, the investment in brushing the rankings may be considered "small money", but for developers who are just starting a business, it is a huge expense. In addition, entrepreneurial apps are also in an asymmetric position when facing channel dealers. Just as the above-mentioned entrepreneurs said, when faced with strong channels, they can only "go crazy." Because the channel has established a very solid position in the mobile Internet ecosystem with its user advantages, some strong first-tier application store channels have a profit sharing ratio ranging from 5:5 to 7:3, which shows how strong they are. This also shows from another perspective that the cost of promoting an APP is relatively high. It is understood that the generally defined channel refers to the app store, which can be divided into the Android store and the Apple store according to the system type. Due to the closed nature of the Apple system, users can only download apps from the Apple store. Although the Android system can download apps through Google's official app store Google Play, since Google Play cannot be used in my country, third-party app stores have risen rapidly. Li Weijie told the "Daily Economic News" reporter that the current Android channels can be divided into three types. The first type is the traditional third-party software store; the second type is the super APP, which is the distribution and replacement of APP within the APP, such as the points wall; the third type is pre-installed on offline manufacturers' mobile phones. At present, the daily distribution volume of domestic app stores has reached 360 million. These large application distribution markets account for more than 80% of the domestic distribution share. If APP developers want to acquire users, uploading applications to these different channel providers and obtaining traffic through various means become the only choice. [The window period for APP entrepreneurship is as short as 3 months, and it will die if it is difficult to gain a foothold] At present, China has the largest number of smartphone users, so countless entrepreneurs are pouring into the field of APP development. However, the cruel reality is that some apps are stillborn before they are even developed, some are dead at birth, and many more are still on the app market but have long been ignored. According to a report released by iResearch, the average life cycle of domestic apps is only ten months, and the retention rate of apps is only 5%. Has the emergence of a wave of APP deaths poured cold water on mobile Internet entrepreneurs? Who are the driving forces behind this wave of APP deaths? In recent years, with the rapid rise of mobile Internet, low costs and industry barriers, and little gap with foreign countries at the beginning, coupled with the demonstration effect of the successful listing of mobile Internet companies such as Cheetah and Momo, APP development has become a popular entrepreneurial direction. According to statistics from Umeng, in 2014, the number of domestic apps increased by 100,000 in just half a year. According to a report recently released by iResearch, the domestic application market has a statistical scale of more than 4 million applications, but zombie applications account for 80% of them. Among the 100 dead apps, social apps accounted for 35%, the category with the highest mortality rate. According to the reporter's understanding, there are a large number of entrepreneurs among social APP developers. How do these entrepreneurs who do not have sufficient promotion resources and product advantages view the cruel reality of the high mortality rate of APPs and how will they respond? "Daily Economic News" reporters interviewed some APP development startup teams and investors on this matter. One day off every two weeks Youcheng Building is located on the North Fourth Ring Road in Beijing, less than 200 meters away from Jiandemen Subway Station. It is a slightly old office building with no property management and elevators, only an aunt who locks the door on time at 10 o'clock in the evening. Due to the low rent, nearly 30 startups have gathered here. In the long and narrow corridor, you can hear hurried footsteps from time to time. Wang Chunguo settled his home here at the beginning of his business. Nowadays, Wang Chunguo and his team come to the office at 9 o'clock every day and usually work until 10 o'clock in the evening, with one day off every two weeks. This high-intensity work has lasted for nearly a year. Wang Chunguo was born after 1985. He was previously in charge of technology at Renren.com. In June last year, he and two partners decided to start their own business. In his words, the reason for starting the business was "I wanted to do something." As an APP developer, Wang Chunguo is lucky. At the beginning of his business, his team received angel investment, and the team has expanded from the original 3 people to the current 10. Wang Chunguo also told the reporter of "Daily Economic News" that the company is currently conducting its A round of financing. "Angel investors mainly focus on the direction and model of the app, while Series A financing will involve the app's operational data, such as the number of users, retention rate, etc. These data will affect the product valuation." An investor explained the investment logic. In other words, if the angel round is compared to trial and error, then the A round of financing is a long-distance race. Unfortunately, many APP developers find it difficult to survive until the next round of financing. Most of the time, APP development is like "a business that collapses halfway through." Wang Chunguo's entrepreneurial project is a sports social APP. Users can upload photos related to sports. The system will automatically classify them according to tags, geographic location, and algorithms, and recommend users with similar interests to users. Now this APP has 500,000 registered users. Wang Chunguo does not seem to care about the high mortality rate of APP as claimed by research institutions. Wang Chunguo told the "Daily Economic News" reporter that whether a product can be successful ultimately depends on whether it can grasp the pain points of user needs. The main reason for the failure of some APPs is the strategic errors of the product itself. Difficulties in promotion bring anxiety. Although Wang Chunguo does not care about the current high mortality rate of APP, the reporter’s biggest feeling at Youcheng Building is the anxiety exuded by these APP entrepreneurs, and the source of the anxiety is the promotion problem. "We are mainly worried about whether the product can gain user recognition. We have big differences internally on the product direction." An entrepreneur who declined to be named told the Daily Economic News reporter. It is understood that, generally speaking, the development of an APP can be divided into several processes, including preliminary research and development, formal launch, channel promotion, product operation, etc., which also include internal testing, version iteration, etc. After the product development is completed, the work has just begun. Developers need to promote it through different channels, connect to various SDKs, accumulate initial users, and make modifications and adjustments based on actual operating conditions. As far as APP is concerned, users and traffic are the most important criteria to measure the quality of APP. For some companies that are not short of money, they can spend money to buy users and traffic, but for entrepreneurial teams, it is very difficult to promote in this way. "We mainly promote our products through offline marketing and vertical platforms such as forums, BBS, and sports media." Wang Chunguo said that since it is a social product related to sports, its target users are more precise than taxi-hailing and group-buying apps. Therefore, in the early stages of product promotion, it is more spread through specific groups and word-of-mouth effects. However, compared with social apps, 500,000 registered users are not enough. Wang Chunguo said that in addition to improving product research and development, the money from the A round of financing will be used more to promote user growth. In the vast sea of APPs, “small steps and fast progress” is the best way. If you slack off even a little, you may be declared dead. Ye Qian, vice president of Umeng, said, "The window period left for the APP is actually very short. If the first version is not produced within three months, it will be difficult to gain a foothold in the market." Indeed, entrepreneurs can fall into the abyss if they are not careful. "If there is a problem with the payment system of a new product, it needs to be fixed quickly, but the review process of companies like Apple takes at least 7 days, and sometimes several weeks. In addition, there are many aspects of development that need to be communicated with Apple officials, which takes even longer. I once encountered a situation where it took a month just to communicate, and the whole team went crazy at that time." An entrepreneur described his experience like this, "At this time, I can only tell myself to stay calm and not rush, because rushing is useless." |
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