
Mobile App Developers Are Suffering - mada299
https://medium.com/@alexaustin/mobile-app-developers-are-suffering-a5636c57d576
======
nostrademons
There's a fundamental categorization mistake that the author makes, which is:

If you think of yourself as a "mobile app developer", you've already lost.
You're a commodity, just like the other 4 million app developers.

Instead, you need to think of yourself in terms of the industry your app
_services_ , not the technology used to accomplish it. You're a transportation
network that's coordinated through your mobile phone. You're a personal
shopper that you call through your phone. You're a way to share moments with
your close friends.

If you do this, your growth strategy becomes "Make yourself valuable enough
that people see their friends or competitors using you and want in on a piece
of the action." It's completely independent of what Apple & Google decide to
feature in the app store. It's harder because you can't just write some code
and put it out there, but also a lot more under control of the entrepreneur.

And there are still _plenty_ of opportunities where the widespread deployment
of mobile phones gives you an opportunity to do things 10x more efficiently
than how they're done now.

~~~
swah
Please write a book, Jon! You have a thousand valuable insights in one of the
worst possible places for us to re-read them ;)

~~~
nostrademons
Maybe some day I'll start a blog. I try to stay relatively focused on my own
startup attempts (that's where the insights come from, after all ;-)), so HN
is just my way to blow off steam and indulge in a little distraction.

