Mobile Application Development – A Fragmented World
An increasing amount of competition is always a good sign for the customers as they are then considered to be the kings. However, the mobile application development market has seen different signs in the recent past with fragmentation becoming the talk of the town. Newer platforms are being launched and users are being spread across. Eventually, one assumes that the industry is left for the ones who have the financial muscle and the rest have to die.
When there is a surge in the number of competitors in the market, it is always meant to be heartening news for the customers. Stifling competition would infer that customers are at a premium and they would hence be pampered. The pampering might metamorphosis into nose diving prices or other benefits which will keep them interested. However, the mobile phone market, like some of the other IT markets, reflects a divergent view. Fragmentation has crept into the market and that is plaguing the players in the industry with a dilemma- dilemma of whom to reach out and which platform to tap.
The broadening of the market and consumer base has ushered many platforms into the system which have segmented the customers across the different available platforms. Hence, now a mobile application development company has to either have deep pockets to be able to attend to all or most of the available platforms or niche has to be maintained, confining one's body of work to only one or two platforms. In either case, it seems like twilight in the industry; where many mobile apps development firms have already started fading in the dark and the rest are making crucial attempts to stay afloat and see the brightness of the day.
Therefore, today a mobile apps development professional has to choose between platforms. Not only does attending to more platforms means higher cost, but; one has to also entertain the different requirements that each platform poses. Therefore, smaller players are being swept out of the industry and the new ones are experiencing tough entry barriers.
All of this does bring a bone of contention that the customers are going to lose because of this phenomenon. Lower competition, especially in a monopolistic market, is never the greatest of signs for customer satisfaction. A mobile apps development company, today, manages to exist not because of its innovation or customer service but probably because of the thickness of its wallet. Therefore, the customers are missing out on the innovation that they could have expected had there been more competitors in the market who would have competed to grab a piece of the customer’s mind, attention and consideration set. Not only does this mean that there are fewer options in the customer’s hands but one might also have to accept standards which are below the ones one would expect had there been more people competing in the market.
Therefore, when it comes to mobile application development, there is definitely an element of fear in the market as there is increasing amount of fragmentation and new mobile application development company is finding little inspiration to be a part of the industry.