Monetizing mobile on Android – and HTML5
Michael Davies | Thursday, June 16, 2011 at 12:55PM Future: Mobile 2011 – the Rutberg event at the St Regis in San Francisco opened with an interesting discussion amongst Twitter, LinkedIn, Skype and Groupon. For me, the key point of the discussion was an observation about one of the key differences between the iOS and Android business ecosystems – monetization.
Although some of these services, such as LinkedIn, do not (yet) pursue monetization on mobile, there was a broad consensus that the key challenge for Android is monetization; whatever the numbers say, Android customers are currently much less prone to spending money on mobile apps and services, and that’s a key challenge for this mobile business ecosystem.
Indeed, with the move to HTML5, these challenges may increase. Despite their limitations – such as the horrendous merchandizing of the Android Market – there is at least a clearly defined and well established path to market; this is not yet defined for HTML5. OK, so this may be a forlorn hope, but can we learn from these challenges with native apps, and do a much better job?
Who can we look to for this done really well?
Suggestions gratefully received.