Nowadays we can see thousands of mobile applications on the market. Most of them are made to the iphone platform, but we can find relevant numbers in the other ones also.

Althought the high number, if we deduce the unsuccessful ones, there will be only some dozens left.

We can divide them in four main categories: entertainment, personal utilities, branded marketing and corporate applications.

Each category has its own challenges but there are some critical success factors that applies to all of them:

1st: Perceived value – Without it, users won’t install the app.

In a world full of spywares, people just don’t feel safe to install unknown applications on their computers or cell phones.
As if this wasn’t enough, many platforms especially javaME, shows warning messages like “Application is untrusted and may be harmful to your phone” on the install process.
With all of that, most users only install applications they perceive real value.

But value means different things in each category.
In entertainment apps, value is the amount of fun it produces.
In personal utilities, value is how useful the app is.
Branded marketing applications usually include personal utilities or entertainment parts, and some bring both.
Corporate applications only succeed if they bring productivity, the main value in this category.

2nd: Usability – If it’s not easy to use, users won’t use them.

Some people may think that usability is easy to design and build, but don’t forget the differences between the phones.
They don’t share the same user interface, they don’t have the same screen resolutions, they handle user input differently (numeric keyboards, touchscreen, qwerty keyboards, trackball, etc) and their hardware have different weaknesses and strengths.

Now, with all that in mind, think again about building a fast application with an intuitive user interface. Pretty hard, isn’t it?

3rd: Compatibility. If you have only a few compatible phones, you will get only few users.

With the huge growth of the apple store, it is possible to have a sucessful app building it only for the iphone’s platform. But think about Apple’s market share… is it ok to forget all the other users?

But the problems are opportunities too, the market is growing, the phones are getting more powerful and the stores are popping up.

Here at Konkix we have created a platform that works with all current major mobile platforms (JavaME, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Iphone) with great usability and stability, so expect new products very soon!