5 aspects of fighting competition in the mobile app development industry

Let’s face it. We live in a world where literally anything you want can be delivered right to your door.

The evolution of smartphones and mobile apps has brought many changes in almost all areas through various mobile app solutions

People today use mobile apps for a wide range of everyday tasks like chatting with friends, making hotel reservations, and even managing complex business processes at their fingertips.

The mobile app development market is experiencing explosive growth and everyone from individual entrepreneurs to big businesses and well-known brands are investing millions of dollars in mobile development.

Despite the fact that entering the mobile development market is easy enough, the real challenge — stay afloat in it.

According to Statista, there are more than 2.46 million mobile apps, the App Store hosts about 1.96 million apps.

Suffice it to say that a good mobile app idea is not enough right now to successfully enter the market and start generating millions of dollars in profits.

But if you’re hungry to dominate the mobile app market in your industry — you’ve come to the right place.

In this article, I share the top 5 ways you can win the competition and reach the top of the App Store

5 Ways to Combat Competition In Today’s Hyper-Competitive Mobile App Industry

5 ways to fight the competition in

1 – Optimize ASO for greater visibility in the marketplace

Today, if you search for an app, even a simple one like a reminder app, you’ll get dozens if not hundreds of results.

Today if you are looking for an app, even the simplest one like reminder — you will get hundreds if not thousands of suitable answers. And this is when ASO (App Store Optimization) comes into play. ASO for mobile apps — is the same as SEO for websites. Just like SEO and mobile app marketing — ASO is the best way to get free app installs from organic search.

Now with the increasing competition in mobile apps, experts advise avoiding overcrowded categories like chat or photography and going for medium competition categories where the app has a better chance of winning the competition.

2 – Don’t fight where you can’t win!

Private entrepreneurs, especially newcomers, cannot and should not compete with startups that have received huge venture capital investments like Mailbox or Candy Crush Saga.

The fact is that such startups usually get a tremendous amount of investment in development and marketing to release an app of the highest quality.

And when you try to compete with them — you’re not just going to have trouble winning the battle. It will be hard enough just to survive.

You need at least a few hundred thousand users to earn thousands of dollars, and the chances of you getting that kind of popularity competing with the monsters is next to nil.

It is better to pick a small niche and learn from your competitors to avoid making frequent mistakes and reach the next level of app development.

3 – Learn from the competition

Competition can be viewed from two different perspectives: it can be seen as a threat to prosperity and give up, or it can be seen as a rapidly growing market with limitless possibilities.

The fact is, competition —s not always a bad thing. Although competing against multi-million dollar startups can be not that much fun 🙂

The important thing — is that you can always learn from the mistakes of your competitors. Learn what to do from successful apps in your category and avoid the mistakes losers in your field make.

Take the Revel-Social app as an example. It’s a photo-based social. A network that allows you to communicate with professionals and bloggers.

It was built by Simon Czaplinski — model turned startup. Along with his development team and co-founder, Simon studied successful apps like Tinder, ‘Grindr,’ ‘Blendr,’ and their strategies for success. They used ‘Draw Something’ and ‘Word with Friends’ to explore gamification.

The main thing to take away from this advice — study how and why popular apps are so popular and repeat their successes.

4 – Promote before you launch and promote vigorously.

One of the main mistakes made by beginner developers and entrepreneurs — they wait until the application is completely finished and only then they start promoting it.

You see, there is already too much noise on the Internet. If you want to be heard by your audience — you need to remind them of yourself as often as possible and the sooner the better.

Also, you’ll often need a dozen to a hundred ad campaigns to get the attention of the masses, which is why pre-launch advertising is so important.

So, start promoting as early as possible and using various approaches. For example, you can create a couple of teaser videos to start generating buzz for your mobile app.

So start promoting your app the sooner the better. And take different approaches. For example, you might prepare some teaser videos to start the hype around your mobile app development.

5 – Problem solving and user experience

In every startup, the founder dreams of creating a popular mobile app with millions of downloads. But because of hyperactive competition, few reach this point.

If you look at successful apps you will notice common characteristics inherent in all of them. It’s about solving user problems and intuitive user experience.

For the most part, popular apps are so popular because they focus on immediately solving a user’s pain or closing their immediate need in a way that is better than the competition.

In today’s reality, though, that may not be enough either. You may also need to ensure your app is comfortable and usable.

For example, successful and popular apps make it easy for the user to learn how to use the app and improve the user experience.

Conclusion

Mobile app development — not an easy path but definitely worth considering. And if you stick to these five tips — you won’t need to fear competition in the marketplace.