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In any mobile app development effort, there needs to be a balance between development cost and a return on the invested effort. In the world of enterprise mobility, an important part of evaluating an app development project is understanding the upfront costs and making a case for the business benefit that app will deliver. Although these calculations are often difficult to make in the enterprise, nowhere is this better recognized than in the world of consumer apps.

Between the Apple App Store and Google Play, there are approximately one million consumer apps available for download by users of thetwo most popular smartphone OS platforms. Survey data presented by Intel at a recent Intel Developer Forum states that 63 percent of consumer mobile apps earn less than $5,000 per month in revenue. A full third of the apps only earn between $100 and $500 per month. And 76 percent of users who download an app stop using it after three months. Based on this data, it is safe to say the vast majority of consumer apps never come close to earning back their development costs.

Obviously no business can afford to approach their mobile app development based on these averages. If they did, very few mobile business apps would ever get built. However the calculation for business apps differs from consumer apps in these ways:

  • For most business apps, “earnings” equate more to the financial benefits derived from greater productivity and efficiency delivered through a mobilized business process;
  • Most business apps can expect to be in use for considerably longer than three months.

Knowing these details, many business leaders have already designed and deployed mobile apps inside their organizations after assessing where they could get the best 'bang for their buck'. There are many approaches that companies can use to determine where to make mobile investment, but there is only one that is interactive and fun. If you are a business leader looking for some mobile app project guidance, I suggest that you check out the new SAP Mobile App Advisor. This beautifully designed tool takes you through a series of questions to help you identify mobile app opportunities that deliver the greatest value to your business based on your use of mobile devices, size, focus, and more. You can even use the tool on your mobile device, click the image below to get started!

SAP Mobile App Advisor

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