Understand Why Mobile Application Is Successful

Have you ever pondered with one of this question on why mobile application is  successful? You will be able to understand why you should jump into mobile application today after reading this and the previous post.

To kick start this topic, I would like you to think of this, how many application have you purchase on your smartphone, tablet or such? Personally I do purchase several application and one of them include Papago, a GPS application which cost about $50 in the past I think but it's $24.99 now. Although this is a utility application, people who travel a lot would purchase them as they are cheap as compared to a GPS tablet which is installed on the car itself. Having this Papago on my iPhone allow me to bring it everywhere and I am able to download it to all my apple devices too. 

This works wonders and the best feature is that it using location services which means it doesn't need any WIFI, 3G or whatsoever which cost money. A tip to increase price of an application is to increase your value. 

Let's get on the topic while I put this aside. Do you know how Apple increase their potential sale of those paid application? It is simply by making the purchasing time shorter and easy. Just think about it, how many clicks do you need to take to purchase a paid application on your iPhone? Well, to be exact it takes only two clicks once you have purchase an application before.


This could be very dangerous if you handed your device to a small kid or your children. I have known people who handed their iPad to his children and by the end of the month they receive a bill from their credit card saying "MONOPOLY" which cost $1.28 (SGD).

For games application will be another ball game, if you would like to develop a successful game application you would need to understand human psychology unlike utility or self help application. One of the biggest game with tons of human psychology study onto it before the application is develop would be gambling.

Let me just do a simple case study to show you, you could just go to your marketplace on your phone. There would be normally a tab for "free application", "paid application" or "top grossing". For mine, it's AppStore so just head onto "Top Charts" and press the "Top Grossing" tab. 

The order of application goes like this...
1. Candy Crush Saga
2. Clash of Clans
3. Battle Camp
...
6. Slotomania - FREE
...
30. Poker by Zynga
...
35. Texus Poker
...
44. Texus Poker
...
50. Jackpot Party Casino - Slots
51. Big Fish Casino 

As you can see that mostly gambling application goes to the top few application for "Top Grossing". Notice how they earn tons of money by creating gambling application that are free of charge. Maybe you are wondering, "Nicholas, since these application are free, how do they profit from them without selling anything?"

These developers really understand human psychology... Since these application are free of charge, the person wouldn't think twice before they download them. This means that they would have a higher chance of opening the application, once they do, they probably would start playing the game. They would have some sort of game token or a play limit per day. Therefore when a person loses all of their game token, they wouldn't be able to play the application unless they purchase the game token which is similar to a real casino but they will be able to get free game token when they download the application. This means that the application developer need to create the game to be as addictive as possible.

Apart from using human psychology on gambling application, another famous application or rather the number one application in the top grossing, Candy Crush Saga also understand human psychology.

There was once when a friend of mine who was addicted to Candy Crush Saga, he asked almost everyone to download the application to sent him lives. If you played Candy Crush Saga, then you should know what I mean but if you don't let me explain it. 

Candy Crush Saga is a free application which looks like the photo on the side. It's like bejeweled application. It requires you to move the item to form a row of at least three same item. If you didn't know bejeweled it's look like shapes of circle, triangle, diamond, etc.. 

In Candy Crush Saga they limit your number of plays per day and once you reach the limit, it will show the 3rd photo. 

"You can ask your friends for extra lives or buy a full set instantly continue playing". They will give you around six lives to addict you and once you used them, you wouldn't be able to play anymore till you wait for your friends to sent you lives, wait for the next day or purchase them at $0.99.

So most likely they would agree to pay $0.99 to continue playing again. Even if they didn't, once the have completed a certain level, they would say something like, "Sorry you will not be able to continue playing until you purchase the full version of Candy Crush Saga". You can see how much effort is put into this game to make this an addictive application.