This guest column is by Prateek Saxena, Managing Director, AppInventiv

Mobile app development has become the most crucial task, which has a direct impact on setting up of different companies as a startup, and also regarding their marketing and popularity. Of course, nobody wants an insipid and monotonous app which is identical to other apps in the market. Here I am going to present the voyage mobile app developer goes through.

In the current scenario, as a technical or nontechnical startup founder, if you are thinking about developing a mobile application think again! According to a report from WMC forum, just in October 2012, there were 43813 new apps launched in iOS app store alone i.e. 1400 new apps per day. Can you imagine where those numbers could reach if you include Android app store as well in 2016? But many of them were completely fiasco. Developing a mobile app is a herculean task. Even to reach the app store you have to cross so many hurdles.

Here are some unfeasible challenges faced by mobile app developer as a startup founder.

1. App Discovery

The fundamental aim of developing an app is to make life simple, productive and pleasant. Keeping it in mind, creating an app which gets noticed is a grueling task. There are a way more good apps than there are successful ones, and that’s because many of the good ones don’t get investment. App discovery is extremely concerned with who are your users, what type of service they are expecting, their financial background and many others factors. Make sure while choosing developer team, it must be chosen gingerly.

2. Development Approaches

Of course, the world isn’t small so the field of . There are numerous development approaches i.e. Hybrid mobile app development (combination of native app & web app) Cross platform native app (app can be available for two or more platform like iOS, Android and even JavaScript, HTML5 etc) Platform specific native app (made for particularly one platform).

Deciding development approach will decide framework & mock-ups, UI & UX and many other imperative entities that mobile app is made of.  So user interaction is a total concern with choosing right development approach.

3. Investment Required

Once you have decided the development approach, to develop your app in real,  it requires ample amount of money (to hire the developers in case of you don’t belong to programming background). There is no one-time investment as after completion of development, to bring a new variety of features and for Iteration, adequate amount of money is necessary.

4. Device Compatibility

Our world is seemingly teeming with high-tech mobile brands. Challenges you might face are inevitable i.e. screen resolution, OS requirements, RAM and other factors and whether your app works on a smartphone or specific tablet or phablet. The main issue is choosing OS (either Android or iOS). For different OS you have to go for different SDK (software development kit), UI & UX, framework & Mock-ups and different iteration processes. Your app should run on a latest available version of particular OS as well as on an older version of similar OS. The empirical solution is to develop an app for each different platform available if you have enough investment. My personal opinion in the case of selection of OS goes for iOS, though both OS have their pros and cons.

5. Performance vs. Battery

Parameters such as an app design, UI, user interaction are important, but the main factors you should not forget are Performance & battery consumption. If you can develop a good performing, bug-free app which runs on minimum power, this challenge can be overcome. Developer team has to be specific about choosing right development tool (such as SDK) and be precise about device specifications as well.

6. Competition

Once you developed an app, you need to launch it into the app market, where as I mentioned before the gargantuan figure of apps are launched every day. As a startup, the biggest challenge is to stand out from the rest while creating an app. Even popular apps and games developers are struggling hard to make their mark.

7. ASO

ASO stands for App Store Optimization, is a process of optimizing mobile apps to rank higher in the search result. Just like SEO (search engine optimization for articles, images, and video content) is for websites, ASO works for mobile apps. Better your ASO, the more likely your app will reach thousands of devices. This is a most fastidious challenge that people have forgotten about. It also includes an imperative component of ‘App store rating’ & ‘App store ranking’.

8. Marketing & Promoting

Last but not least, as a startup, you should have precise knowledge about marketing and empirical way of promoting your app.  It includes PR & media plan, social & viral marketing & internationalization of app which mean the development of an app that enables easy localization for targeted audience, regions, and language.  You can put an app on the market in a weird but attractive manner that attracts consumers. There are several challenges that you will face: a crowded market, the same service provider as you, investment for promoting an app and others. To simplify marketing for you there are numerous tools like AppTamin, AppScend, MobileDevHQ, and Some other you should know about.

There are many other challenges like debugging, beta testing, prototype simulation & distribution of app to make it available in different languages. An auspicious app is about 90% marketing and 10% development (yeah you read it right 90%) but that does not mean development isn’t important.   

As a startup, developing a mobile app can be grueling yet fantastic at the same time.  Before you process for development it will be a great precaution to take a look in the market,and decide the factors that affected most during that particular period of time. Search for apps that are similar to yours read about them, whether they succeeded or failed. The combination of marketing, perfect time of the revealing product, development of most interactive app (quality product) & great development team can lead you to the doors of success.