Choosing the right idea for mobile development, case study from my own experience

When I decided to pick an idea for my first ever mobile application, I decided to make it simple for two reasons:

First I wanted something easy to implement while learning the platform, in my case it was Android, without entering into much complexity.

The second one is I needed to test “Time to Market” and it was really a success by finishing the first version in 2 hours!

My first application published on Google Play (Known as Android Market previously) was Pregnancy calculator

At the time when I was thinking about an idea for me to develop as an application, I was having a conversation with my wife about a relative who get pregnant and we were trying to guess when the baby will be delivered. This was the trigger that made me decide that this is a good idea to start with. I knew that there were couple of applications that do the same thing at that time with very appealing UIs and more functionalities. But I decided to continue saying to myself “What should I care?” it is just a testing application. After few hours of work and a memory refresh for Java, I completed the application, paid Google for having a developer account and “Voila” my app get on the market live in few hours.

I had no clue about how the people will react when they see this application, but I thought that no one will care to download an application written by a new developer with relatively too simple graphics and few functions.

The surprise happened in three days when I saw that the number of downloads reached 100! Then the exponential graph started to appear as per today 27,000 users installed this application on their devices.

What does that mean?

From my own case and by observing some people I worked and other startups I was watching I reached to some facts that everyone who is willing to enter into the mobile world should consider:

–      Don’t underestimate any idea even if you find it stupid, people like sometimes simple apps and get addicted to them.

–      Don’t care about making you application fancy at the beginning, that will come with time (Even I was lazy and never overhaul mine J)

–      Don’t worry if your idea already exists in the mobile app stores. The trick here is that people like to explore other opportunities even if they have what they want. In addition you can always find features not implemented and you can make your valued point based on small differences.

 

As conclusion, if you are an entrepreneur with developing skills and willing to have your mobile application, start by focusing on your idea today whatever it is; if you are not a programmer don’t say that the idea will stay an idea, try to find someone you trust and let him/her start developing it for you, because if you don’t start now, in few minutes maybe another one will start doing so, it is a fast changing world!