Lean Analytics

Chapter 10. Model Three: Free Mobile App

A third business model that’s increasingly common is the mobile app. If you’re selling a mobile application for money, you have a fairly straightforward sales funnel—you promote the application, and people pay you for it. But when you derive your revenue from other sources, such as in-game content, paying for features, or advertising, the model gets more complex. If, after looking at the business model flipbook in Chapter 7, you’ve decided you’re running a mobile app business, then this is what analytics look like for you.

The mobile application has emerged as a startup business model with the rise of iPhone and Android smartphone ecosystems. Apple’s application model is tightly regimented, with the company controlling what’s allowed and reviewing submissions. Applications for the Android platform may be downloaded from the Android store or “side-loaded” from sources that aren’t tightly controlled.

For Lean startups, an app store model^[34] presents a challenge. Unlike web applications, where it’s easy to do A/B testing and continuous deployment, mobile apps go through the app store gatekeeper—which limits the number of iterations a company can undergo, and hampers experimentation. Modern mobile apps are getting around the gatekeepers to some degree by feeding in online content without requiring an actual app upgrade, but this takes extra work to set up. Some developers advocate trying out the Android platform first because it’s easier to push ...