Next Generation Wireless Applications: Creating Mobile Applications in a Web 2.0 and Mobile 2.0 World, 2nd Edition

3.2 WHAT APPLICATIONS CAN I SELL?

Let's tackle the relatively simple question of what applications you can sell. Let's imagine that you have an interest in making money from mobile applications. What are the types of product that you could create? The same question applies to an operator, except they would ask what type of applications they should deploy. The question ties back to our concentric networks ecosystem model described in Chapter 2. You could create an application to run anywhere in that model, as long as it adds value. Whom it adds value to and how it adds value will determine how you might make money. I tend to think of there being three types of mobile application:

1. User applications
2. Component applications
3. Infrastructure applications

These are explained as follows:

1. Create a complete application with an interface visible to the users, for which they might be willing to pay money to use it. I shall call these user applications. Examples include games, instant messaging, push email and probably the types of applications that many of you reading this book have in mind when thinking about mobile applications.
2. Create an application used by the operator as a building block in an applications ecosystem to support a user application, but that isn't necessarily used directly by the user and is almost never used without other components. I shall call these component applications. Examples include presence servers, identity servers, video codecs, streaming servers, on-device ...