While planning for this merger, we adopted a simple rule: our customers only benefit. Everyone will retain access to the same features they use now. No one will have to modify their mobile applications to maintain their analytics. Every bit of data you’ve sent us will be retained – you’ll always have access to your reporting. When the integration after the merger’s complete, you’ll have everything you’ve always had, plus more features, better update speed, and the ability to get analytics on more smartphone platforms. Here’s how we’re doing this:

We’ve already decided that the basic infrastructure going forward will be Flurry’s. We were beginning to rewrite much of our system using Hadoop and HBase, to improve our scalability and update speeds. Flurry’s already done this – so this is what we call a ‘no brainer’. So we’re identifying all the features on Pinch Media that aren’t present on Flurry, and we’ll be adding them there. While this is happening, Pinch Media’s not going to go anywhere – everything will continue to work as it always has.

We’ll also be working on a bit of translation, so Flurry’s system can receive data from applications running Pinch Media. This is essential – there are hundreds of millions of application installs out there with Pinch Media code, and we’re going to continue to receive and aggregate every bit of information coming from those installs.

Finally, we’re going to combine our data sets. Your Pinch Media accounts and historical data will be migrated to the combined Flurry product. You’ll be able to get the same reporting you’re getting from Pinch Media via Flurry’s system, including your historical reporting. You’ll also get access to some of the features Flurry has but we don’t – by combining the companies, everyone gets access to a superset of features. Only when all this is done will we stop running two analytics systems simultaneously. At that point, we’ll ask everyone to log into their newly-created Flurry accounts going forward.

The Pinch team will all be staying with the combined company, working out of our New York office. Having a single analytics system frees us up to work on new products – once the integration is complete, we’ll be spending our time building systems that leverage our analytics data to help developers make more money, projects we’ve wanted to do for some time. If you’ve got any questions about the merger, there’s more information in our press release (.pdf) and FAQ, and you can always write our support line at support@pinchmedia.com.

Give us a quick overview about yourself
I’m the Director and lead programmer of DN Publications Ltd, a UK based computer software company. I’ve developed several computer games in the past but these have been Amiga and PC based. BATAK Duel is my first iPhone and iPod touch game.

Why did you move into the mobile space and what was your incentive to use the iPhone platform?
I wanted to move into the mobile space because I see big potential there. It’s a large and growing market for at least the next 10 years. I chose the iPhone and iPod touch platforms because I believe they are the best designed and most supported mobile platforms out there. Apple have done a truly great job with the iPhone and currently it’s untouchable.

Seeing as you recently released your first application, what is your marketing plan going forward?
I intend to promote the BATAK Duel game in a variety of ways, for example, sending out press releases, requesting game reviews from mobile gaming websites, publishing YouTube videos and announcing it on gaming forums. I’ll also be doing interviews (like this one:) to raise our company profile.

How have you integrated Pinch Analytics, and how do you plan on using it as part of your overall marketing plan?
I’ve integrated Pinch Analytics into BATAK Duel so we can track things like which parts of the game users are spending the most time on. We also track how many users take advantage of the OpenFeint social networking features.
Pinch Analytics helps us to identify many other useful statistics, for example, how many people are using OS 3.0 or higher and how many people are still using first generation iPod touches. This is all useful information and means that we can identify important market trends and react accordingly. Every iPhone and iPod touch game that we do in the future will use Pinch Analytics to its full advantage.

Do you have any piece of advice for independent and new developers that you would like to share?
I would say don’t just launch your app and then sit back expecting to cash in, in most cases this just won’t happen. Be as proactive as possible in getting the word out, for the first month or so after launching your app spend a couple of hours a day marketing it and don’t give up!
You should notice that the more you promote your app then the more it sells, so just keep promoting it! Also, make sure you create an official website for your app and include a development blog and Twitter support.
Finally, make sure you support your app by replying to all customers’ emails (be polite!), fixing bugs as required and adding new features to your app. If you do all of this then you should do very well indeed.

If you would like to find out more about Batak Duel and DN Publications, check out the website. And if you would like to track how your marketing strategies translate into resulting user behavior, register for an account at Pinch Media and let us know if you have any questions getting started.

-Adit Shukla

Give us a quick overview about yourself and company.
Adrian Ochoa, President of Avantar. Previous to this I co-owned an interactive yellow pages business directory service targeting Latin America, which eventually sold to TELMEX (NYSE: TMX).

Avantar is a leader in local search with nearly 3 million downloads and delivers 8 million monthly local search results. Our most famous applications are Yellow Pages (#1 downloaded Navigation app), Showtimes (”Best Movie App” Macworld), and AirYell (local navigator). We also just launched the first Facebook Yellow Pages App and will soon expand our products to other smartphone platforms.

Our business is not in development of applications. It is as a provider of a local advertising search solution for publishers. We are currently working on a turn-key advertising data feed solution for any type of app publisher that can provide local search queries.

Why did you move into the mobile space and what was your incentive to use the iPhone platform?
I’ve been an Apple enthusiast and customer since the inception of Apple. Apple’s hardware and software helped me to create a successful movie production and advertising agency for Latin America.

Having always kept up with all their technologies, the buzz about the iPhone, geolocation capabilities, and GPS on mobile couldn’t be ignored. So, with my expertise in the yellow pages industry it was a perfect fit.

We started development months before the App Store launched, and were approved just in time to have two of our apps be the first of the 300 at the grand opening.

When developing a marketing plan, what would you say has been the most successful strategy/avenue for promoting and increasing visibility for your projects?
First to market.

How has Pinch Analytics helped with app development, promotion, and marketing?
Intelligent data is key to smart marketing, development and promotion decision making. With Pinch we can tell how frequently our apps are being used, which notifies us if something is wrong and needs further looking into, or if something is working right that increases our traffic. We can also tell how many new users we have and what version of our apps they are using.

Do you have any piece of advice that you would like to share?
In the now highly competitive landscape I would suggest you focus on capturing a niche that’s not well served and excel in it. This is your best shot at long-term growth and profitability, unless you get lucky enough to be featured somewhere and strike it rich as a “one-hit wonder.”

If you would like to find out more about Avantar’s Apps, check out their website. And if you would like to track how your marketing strategies translate into resulting user behavior, register for an account at Pinch Media and let us know if you have any questions getting started.

-Adit Shukla

Give us a quick overview about yourself and company.
I’m CoFounder and CTO of IntuApps, our mobile brand that focuses on app design, development, and strategy.  We’ve developed more then fifty apps and have seen great success in downloads/engagement for several of our apps, including one that hit the #1 spot in the App Store.  Since 1994, when I founded RustyBrick, I’ve been developing custom web software and technologies for businesses and organizations.

Why did you move into the mobile space and what was your incentive to use the iPhone platform?
As soon as Apple announced the SDK, we joined in.  We started writing software for Jewish iPhone users, and then we partnered with NY marketing agency, Intuwin, to launch our mobile brand, IntuApps.  Our incentive – the rich features of the SDK coupled with the unprecedented marketing distribution channel of the App Store.

How do you differentiate yourself from other developers when working with brands, retailers, or book publishers?
We do everything in house which translates into more cohesive apps.  Our designers, developers and sales people all use iPhones.  This really helps the whole process in understanding what is involved in creating an intuitive user experience.  And, for retailers, it is usually necessary to communicate with their backend systems; so, we differentiate ourselves by already having such experience in building and customizing existing infrastructures.

When developing a marketing plan, what would you say has been the most successful strategy/avenue for promoting and increasing visibility for your projects?
iPhone apps are all about what is hot in the news.  We wrote an app called Swine Flu Tracker which got so much press.  It wasn’t the app that was outstanding, it was the timing.  If you’re the first and release at a good time, you’ll get press.  Press = downloads.

How has Pinch Analytics helped with app development, promotion, and marketing?
We are able to see how people use our apps and develop updates accordingly.  Also, we can monitor things like usage across the world.  This helps us decide if we should release a localization for different countries.

Do you have any piece of advice that you would like to share?
You wouldn’t release a website without Google Analytics, why would you release an app without Pinch?  It’s essential to track usage and engagement no matter what medium.

If you would like to find out more about IntuApps’ offerings, check out their website. And if you would like to track how your marketing strategies translate into resulting user behavior, register for an account at Pinch Media and let us know if you have any questions getting started.

-Adit Shukla

Our Estimates

Pinch Media has a model which we use to estimate the size of the App Store as a whole, based on the relative performance of both paid and free applications using Pinch Media, as well as the ranking of applications using Pinch Media in Apple’s App Stores around the world.  Based on our pool of data – which covers over 10% of all downloads – we believe approximately 610 million of the over 2 billion App Store downloads so far have been of paid applications, or approximately 30%.  We believe this translates to approximately $900MM in overall developer revenue since the launch of the App Store. Paid application downloads drive the large majority of App Store revenue, although this revenue is not evenly distributed among developers.

Although paid applications make up 30% of the downloads we see, they’re about 77% of the 100,000 titles available in App Store. There’s definitely a disparity between the typical downloads of a paid application and the typical downloads of a free application.  However, paid applications can still reach a large audience – more than half of iPhone/iPod Touch devices in our database have installed and used a paid application.

The ‘Typical’ Paid App

If we take the data on the thousands of applications running Pinch Media, and weight it so it corresponds to the actual distribution of iPhone applications (our data has a slight tendency to come from highly-ranked applications with more downloads), the average paid app performs as follows:

~9,300 downloads
(vs. average free app downloads: ~71,000)

~$12,100 revenue
(net to developer: ~$8,500)

That’s not to say this is a common result!  The arithmetic mean can be misleading.  App Store sales and distribution are ‘top-heavy’, with the most popular applications receiving a very disproportionate amount of sales.  A small segment of developers do dramatically better than this average.  Most do much worse.

Downloads aren’t linked to price

While it’s common wisdom that lower-priced applications are downloaded more than higher-priced applications, we don’t see this in our data.  The average $0.99 application using Pinch Media is not downloaded substantially more often than the average $4.99 application.  We still see dramatic changes in sales when any one particular application adjusts its pricing – an application selling X units at $0.99 will sell a small fraction of that at $4.99.  We suspect that the relatively strong performance of $4.99 applications are a reflection of their quality, and a sign that the App Store will support higher prices for an engaging experience.  Users only start to display strong sensitivity to price at price points above $4.99.

Paid Apps are used more than free apps

Paid applications as a whole are used slightly more often and for slightly longer periods than free applications – potentially a reflection of application quality or a consequence of increased user attachment to items that they’ve paid for.  Lower application usage by pirates (see our previous blog post) suggests that paying for something does increase a user’s attachment to it.  Usage by price point is harder to explain – $4.99 applications are used significantly more than $0.99 applications, but $9.99 applications are used significantly less than $4.99 applications.

The Presentation

Last Word

This post was adapted from a presentation at the last 360iDev. Look forward to more of the insights we shared at the conference in our upcoming posts, by subscribing to our RSS feed and following us on Twitter.  If you’re an app developer and are interested in tracking your own user statistics, you can sign up with Pinch Analytics for free.

- Greg Yardley

Give us a quick overview about yourself and company.
I’m a long-time Mac developer, relatively new to Cocoa. I started doing iPhone development in early 2008 when the SDK was announced. I founded Mundue LLC in July 2008 in order to publish my own apps. It was originally a part-time effort for both myself and my wife Trish. Today we have 9 casual games on the App Store. Our latest reMovem Halloween Edition was released in early September to coincide with the current holiday season.

Why did you move into the mobile space and what was your incentive to use the iPhone platform?
I wrote a Mac version of the reMovem game several years ago, but never released it. Then I rewrote it in Qt to be cross-platform (Mac OS and Windows) but still didn’t release it. Then I rewrote it when I started doing Cocoa, and when the iPhone SDK came out it occurred to me that this would be a good fit for the iPhone. After finishing an iPhone app for my day job, I spent a couple of weekends developing the free version of reMovem. I thought there was a great opportunity to publish to the App Store with its existing large customer base and worldwide presence.

How did you turn your concept into an actual business?

It debuted two weeks after the launch of the App Store, and became an overnight hit. I spent a couple of weeks developing more modes and released them as the paid version of reMovem. Because the free version was so popular I was expecting the paid version to be at least a modest success. However, we knew we needed to develop more apps and I immediately started working on the next one, which turned out to be iKeno. We released two additional games by the end of the year.

What would you say has been the most successful strategy/avenue for promoting and increasing visibility for your apps and your company?
We promote our apps in many ways: press releases, in-app ads, print ads, web site ads, cross-promotion within our own apps, Facebook fan pages, and twitter accounts. We promote our company in person at conferences and user group meetings, and I run a local iPhone developer meetup in the Boston area. We believe our most successful strategy has been the hybrid free/paid model for reMovem. The free version is used to upsell to the paid version with additional game modes. We also translated reMovem into 13 languages in order to increase its appeal throughout the world. I think in the early days of the App Store we were able to maintain the momentum of reMovem by having frequent updates. Fortunately it made Apple’s 2008 top ten free games list. Any mention by Apple is golden, and this helped keep reMovem free in the top 100 for several months. In January, one of our other games, inFact World, was featured as a “Staff Favorite.” This led to a 20x spike in downloads briefly, followed by a slow decline as it was rotated to the second, then third, page on the iTunes App Store main screen.

How has Pinch Analytics helped with app development, promotion, and marketing?
By adding analytics to some of our games we have a deeper knowledge of how users interact with them. For example, we know that a significant percentage of iPod touch owners are still on iPhone OS 2.2.x, and we will continue to support them as long as it is practical. Pinch Media’s analytics enabled us to recognize a recent milestone when the one billionth game of reMovem free was played. That represents something just north of 2,700 years of cumulative game play. This is just since we began counting in January. Wow!

Do you have any piece of advice that you would like to share?
For the indie developer it’s not enough to be a good programmer. You may need to wear many hats: testing, marketing, graphics, PR, etc. Don’t short-change any of these roles. All contribute to the quality of your product and ultimately to your success.

Take a look at our web site http://www.mundue.net and http://www.removem.net for more information on our games. My development blog is at http://blog.mundue.net. And if you would like to track how your marketing strategies translate into resulting user behavior, register for an account at Pinch Media and let us know if you have any questions getting started.

-Adit Shukla

A few months after the launch of the App Store, developers began reporting unexplained spikes in their new user numbers, spikes that were completely irreconcilable with iTunes Connect reporting on new downloads.  After investigating, it unfortunately became clear that this wasn’t an error in our reporting, but instead was due to application piracy.

To help developers better understand their traffic (and to cut down on customer support requests!), Pinch Media introduced jailbroken phone and pirated application detection to our analytics library and reports this June. We wanted to get developers a better handle on where their users were coming from, as well as some insights into the costs of piracy – both in terms of lost sales and in infrastructure costs, since many applications have a server back-end.

Piracy is a global phenomenon, and rates of piracy in the United States are relatively low compared to other countries.  The below chart shows pirated installs as a percentage of total installs, segmented by country:

Interestingly, piracy is negatively correlated with per capita national GDP.

Just over 60% of paid apps using Pinch have been pirated.  This estimate is also low, since application pirates occasionally disable our tracking.  When an application is pirated, an average of 34% of all installs are cracked — in other words, about half of legitimate paid downloads.

Typically, pirated applications see a significant increase in usage immediately after the application is cracked and distributed, followed by 2-3 weeks of comparatively high but decline activity and culminating in low but significant piracy over the lifetime of the application.

Pirated applications are used less frequently, less intensely, and for a shorter overall length of time than purchased applications.  For instance, the retention rate for pirated installs follows the same overall pattern as the retention rate for legitimate purchases, but drop-off is significantly higher.

Frequency and duration of use follow similar patterns, with pirate usage lagging legitimate usage.

We suspect application pirates use applications less for a few reasons.  First, because a purchase has not been made, pirates are less qualified – their attachment to the application is much more tenuous.  Second, pirates often install applications in bulk – and with more applications to choose from, pirates spend less time in any.  Third, all jailbroken phones (whether the application is pirated or not) suffer from increased application crash rates, which may result in more-frequent uninstalls.

All of our stats point to a common conclusion: pirates stick around less than an average user.

Try Before you Buy?

Many pirates argue that their piracy is legitimate, because it allows them to ‘try before they buy’ and therefore ensure they’re receiving good value for money.  To test this, we first set a baseline for typical conversion rates by looking at several dozen ‘lite’ to paid application pairs.  ‘Lite’ applications are relatively common in the App Store, and by giving the user a sample of the paid application experience also provide an opportunity to try before buying.  The average “lite” to paid conversion is approximately 7.4%. In other words, about 1 in 14 people who try a free ‘lite’ application go on to purchase the paid version.

If application pirates are purchasing applications in order to try before they buy, we would expect to see a similar conversion ratio.  In fact, pirated-to-legitimate conversions are approximately 0.43%.  About 1 in 233 installations of a pirated application eventually become a legitimate purchase.

EDIT: The Presentation:

Piracy in the Appstore

View more presentations from pinchmedia.

Last Word
This post was adapted from a recent 360iDev presentation. Look forward to more of the insights we shared at the conference in our upcoming posts, by subscribing to our RSS feed and following us on Twitter.  If you’re an app developer and are interested in tracking your own user statistics, you can sign up with Pinch Analytics for free.

- Greg Yardley

Give us a quick overview about yourself–your team and company.
My name is David Steinberger and I run (along with John Roberts, my business partner) comiXology.com and our suite of comic book related services and apps. We have two main iPhone apps: comiXology (for print comic) and Comics (for digital comics).

Our goal at comiXology.com is to create an ecosystem for comic book consumers, and to introduce more people to the joy of reading comics. Through our services and applications, we connect comic fans to great comics (physically and digitally), publishers, creators and local comic shops. You can connect to local retailers and order books to pick up at the store.

Our team consists of many people helping with: web, editorial, service and app development.

Why did you move into the mobile space and what was your incentive to use the iPhone platform?
The iPhone is compelling for any graphically-oriented product or media, so it’s jumping off point for comiXology’s mobile apps strategy. Passion for comic books is very personal, and it just makes sense to be able to carry the passion with you to read or check in with what’s new at any time.

Our first app for the iPhone, comiXology, shows a list of what comics and merchandise are arriving at your local store, along with all our editorial work from the website (columns, podcasts, etc.). It lets comic book aficionados prepare their pre-order lists for comics that are coming out on Wednesday (new comic book day!). With the graphic orientation of the iPhone, showing tons of covers and preview pages became not only possible, but very compelling.

As for digital comics, the density of pixels on the iPhone screen combined with the power of the processor and SDK made digital comics really work for the first time, arguably on any device. The comics look amazing on the screen, and our patent-pending approach to presenting them really works well on the iPhone.

Wired.com said that we had “solved the problem of reading comics on the small screen.”

How did you turn your concept into an actual business?
Creating the business comes from a combination of 3 years of hard work and receiving the backing of individuals that believe there is a big market out there. Our goal has always been to become a unique player in the comic book market, and we’ve achieved that position. We’re a consumer-oriented business that connects disparate parts of the market via technology, and extracts a small bit of value from each part. So, we have a terrific consumer experience that gives us revenue producing subscription services for retailers, amazing PR opportunities for publishers and creators, the ability to sell mobile apps and digital comics, etc.

What would you say has been the most successful strategy/avenue for promoting and increasing visibility for your apps and your company?
We are the market leader in iPhone comics for one reason alone: we have the best of what’s available in the form that both consumers and reviewers of apps prefer. Making a great product that people want to use is absolutely #1. Without it, any other strategy is useless.

Now, of course we support our app with lots of standard marketing moves, reaching out to reviewers, buying some advertising, putting together great PR with our content partners, and more. We’ve also recently added tweeting directly from the app so people can tweet about the comic they just purchased. But without a high quality, beautiful, well-functioning app to support it, none of that would matter.

How has Pinch Analytics helped with app development, promotion, and marketing?
It’s been great to get to know our users better, and we’ve recently made even more changes to our analytics code to capture more information. The analytics code was a snap to integrate. We’re actually approaching 10 years of accumulated use time of our app, and that’s an amazing statistic to know. Most importantly is to see what’s working and what’s not working for the consumers, and our next update should give us much more of that information.

Do you have any piece of advice that you would like to share?
On the analytics side: be very thorough on the analytics side from the start. We missed a few opportunities to get data from our app that would help us promote more effectively, gain new partners, and support our consumers. Take the time to pick out all the actions you’d like to know about, and analyze that information to make a better consumer experience. Tracking what is used the most in the app, or what is used the least can indicate usability problems or let you know people are using the app in an unexpected way that you can improve in your next build.

On the app dev side: Build a feedback function into your app. This is invaluable.

On the customer service side: Answer every feedback email. This builds loyalty and one-to-one relationships with consumers. This will increase the value of your brand.

Chceck out comiXology for the latest about comics for the iPhone platform. And if you would like to track how your marketing strategies translate into resulting user behavior, register for an account at Pinch Media and let us know if you have any questions getting started.

Give us a quick overview about yourself–your team and company.
Our company is called Raizlabs. We’re located in Boston and have been building apps since the SDK came out. We do a lot of iPhone consulting for companies and we also build our own applications. Our focus is on creating great mobile experiences that fit in your pocket.  We’ve built utilities, financial tools, fitness applications, music apps, games and travel products. We try to set ourselves apart by focusing on design and quality.

Why did you guys start to develop mobile apps and what was your experience coming into developing for the iPhone platform?
We had been developing desktop products and websites prior to the iPhone. We saw the iPhone as a catalyst for a change in how people would use their phones. It’s much more a mobile computer then a music device or just a phone. We wanted to get on this platform early. The transition for us was fairly quick. The iPhone is a fun platform to develop on. It gives us access to many tools and allows us to solve a new set of problems. In many ways it has a lot of the things we like about desktop applications and the benefits of web-based tools as well.

How do you come up with ideas for your products like Tip Calculator?
For us the idea of a Tip Calculator wasn’t a new one.  It’s been done many times, in the same way. The real idea was for us to figure out what unique problems really needed to be solved. For us we focused on the scenario where everyone has a big meal while one friend has something small.  We’ve seen this scenario in our own experience and splitting the check is always a problem. We wanted to build a tip calculator that would make this scenario easy and fun instead of a chore.

We try to bring this type of problem solving to all our applications. It’s not about the idea itself. Most ideas have been done before. The real trick is figuring out what unique thing you’re able to do to solve the problem.

Once you have an idea for an application, how do you go from concept, to creating an actual business?
Our business is creating great products. In general app ideas don’t turn into businesses, it’s the other way around. It’s much easier to take an existing business and develop an app to help that business grow. In our case our business is developing mobile software for other companies. Our tip calculator app isn’t our core business; it’s a tool to show off the type of work that we do. We’re not in the tip calculator business, our business is building great products.

Our process for turning ideas into products is pretty straight forwward. We do a lot of white boarding and sketching to create a compelling wire-frame. Using this foundation we can develop the core aspects of the application. While we’re doing this we also can itterate on the look and feel of the product. From there we do a lot of testing to make sure the app works the way we want. We test the application with users to make sure we got it right and ship the product. From there we listen to our customers and make sure we address issues that come up.

What would you say has been the most successful strategy/avenue for promoting and increasing visibility for your apps and your company?
Don’t build crap. It’s that simple. The best strategy for us has been to build products we believe in. Products that we care about and spend time on tend to do much better then products that are done quickly.  If you care about every pixel it seems that customers notice and help socialize your apps to friends.

In terms of marketing we’ve had pretty good luck using PR channels to get the word out. We’ve also done fairly well using social tools like Facebook and Twitter to help spread the word. We’ve had less luck with advertising, especially for low cost apps.

How has Pinch Analytics helped with app development, promotion, and marketing?
We use analytics to answer questions about our target audience. This really helped us in the transition to OS 3.0. It has also helped us as we decided what languages to internationalize and how much time we should spend worrying about piracy. Pinch gives us data about who’s using our app and when it’s being used.  It allows me to say things like: 72% of our tip calculator users are male. 50% are over 30 years old. There’s no other way we could have gotten that data.  This tells me who I should target my message for and where I should be spending any advertising or PR budget.

Do you have any piece of advice regarding the development of a successful application or anything else that you would like to share?
We get a lot of companies that approach us about “building apps” and while we do build a lot of apps the real question companies should be asking is how to build their business.  Apps are usually part of a larger puzzle and the companies that are doing really well at this are not building one-off apps such as Emoji, Flashlight or fart apps; they are building sustainable long term businesses.  My advice is to focus on building a business and create apps that support the business.

Our website www.raizlabs.com has additional information on our philosophy and process as well as links to all of our apps.

If you would also like to keep tabs on user behavior, register for an account at Pinch Media and let us know if you have any questions getting started.

-Adit Shukla

Give us a quick overview about yourself–your team and company.
Drew and I are both 20-something year old recent grads from Georgia Tech. We saw an opportunity to do something different and fun when the App Store hit, so we gave it a try. There are two of us working on iPhone “full-time” (in addition to day jobs) plus a friend who has just come on part-time.

Why did you guys start to develop mobile apps and what was your experience coming into developing for the iPhone platform?
We both had internships for mobile tools developer AppForge before they were purchased by Oracle. That coupled with the generally good form factor and SDK for iPhone drove us to develop for the platform.

How do you come up with ideas for your products like BillMinder and PlaceTagger?
We try to think of problems we need solved and write apps we would like to use. So far they have all been useful. We’re about to throw a fun app into the mix, though.

Once you have an idea for an application, how do you go from concept, to creating an actual business?
We whip up an ugly prototype, get it working, then ask our artist to rework the UI. They improve the UI from a UX standpoint as well as aesthetics. After that, we put it on the store and hope it’s a success. It’s pretty competitive — mainly marketing is difficult.

What would you say has been the most successful strategy/avenue for promoting and increasing visibility for your apps and your company?
First and foremost is making a great product. We also frequent forums like MacRumors to get feedback from users. Asking blogs like TUAW for feedback helps but they get so many requests that it’s unlikely to get their time.

How has Pinch Analytics helped with app development, promotion, and marketing?
Pinch has been critical to our success. It told things like how many recurring users we had and what features were used most so we could focus our limited development resources.

Do you have any piece of advice regarding the development of a successful application or anything else that you would like to share?
Yes, make a quality application and listen to your users. Most of our features are user suggested features. Design is just as important as development, in our opinion. Don’t skimp — pay a good designer for their time as it’s well worth it.

Anything interesting you would like to share?
Since we started using Pinch Analytics (version 1.5), 44,726 unique users have used BillMinder for a combined time of more than 12 years 79 days 4 hours.

Take a look at return7’s website or read their blog for up to date information about about their products and their findings. If you would also like to keep tabs on user behavior, register for an account at Pinch Media and let us know if you have any questions getting started.

-Adit Shukla