游戏邦注：本文原作者为移动网页设计代理机构Mobile Web Up公司的创始人Aaron Maxwell。

几乎每个行业都加快了向移动领域进军的步伐，原因不言自明：移动领域正在飞速发展。据最新资料显示，全世界使用短信沟通的人数已经超过了电子邮件用户，持有手机的用户也超过了信用卡使用者。

但困难的是，移动科技具有多个层面，大家不知如何入手。手机应用、移动网页和短信这三种形式是移动领域的基石，但移动支付系统和广告服务也正是时下业内热议的话题。你该选择首先关注哪一种？

对许多公司来说，第一个答案就是“iPhone应用”（游戏邦注：这里仅指iPhone应用，而非普通手机应用），但也有人把目光转向了移动网站。关于这两者哪一个更重要，业内一直为此争论不休。如果你只能择其一而行之，那么究竟该选择手机应用还是移动网页？

手机应用具有一个明显的优势，一般来说，一款制作完善的手机应用提供的用户体验，总比最理想的移动网页更优越。我并不认为这一点存在争议。

但是我发现，人们很少讨论的一个话题就是开发成本。制作一款在多数智能手机平台运行良好的网页应用并不难（游戏邦注：这一点要取决于该应用的特点，对图片效果要求很高的游戏应用例外），但开发一款原版的iPhone应用总是比制作一款跨平台的网页应用更费劲。如果你想让Android、黑莓用户同时使用一款原版的手机应用，那就得根据各个平台特点逐一开发产品。

apps

手机应用类型

手机应用可以划分为两种类型：

·直接创收类型

·市场营销、品牌推广、客户服务类型

第一种类型的应用，总让人联想到媒体大篇幅地报道某个富有上进心的开发者，在业余时间自己开发了一款应用，然后由此一夜发迹，摆脱了给大公司打工的日子这些激动人心的故事。这一行也确实还有不少公司通过开发和销售应用大获成功，他们的创收途径包括付费下载、应用内置付费功能、订阅服务，或者更间接的广告赞助模式（游戏邦注：比如说《愤怒的小鸟》Android版本）。

如果你要开发收费产品，原版的手机应用就是最佳选择。移动网页并不能植入iTunes计费系统，它在计费这个环节输给了原版手机应用。如果要对你的移动网页收费，那就得推出自己的计费解决方案，这对移动领域来说可是个高难度的要求。

不过这种创收型的手机应用并非本文所述的重点，我们要讨论的是为市场营销、品牌推广和客户服务而开发的第二种应用。在这一领域上最典型的例子就是星巴克或Target Stores推出的应用。

这些应用基本上是免费产品，它们的主要用途就是大范围地宣传和推广品牌价值。如果我们选择开发一款手机应用，它可以获得多少潜在用户？

移动网页的用户覆盖范围更广

单纯从“我可以获得多少潜在用户”这个角度来看，最佳的移动市场营销工作非短信服务莫属。据comScore的移动市场份额报告显示，几乎68%的美国手机用户都曾经使用短信服务。

当然，比起手机应用及移动网页，短信服务的优势就不那么明显了。如果使用手机应用，你可以获取多少用户？使用移动网页，情况又如何呢？

对移动网页来说，要做到这一点非常容易，从使用手机浏览网页的用户数量就可以得到答案。在2010年底，全美浏览移动网页的手机用户超过了36%，几乎占短信用户的一半左右。

至于手机应用的情况就更有趣了，我在数周前去了旧金山的笛洋美术馆，当时他们正在庆祝自己的官方手机应用发布的好消息。但有一个问题：这个应用只能在iPhone上运行。而像我们这种Android和黑莓手机用户则无缘使用该产品。这反映了开发手机应用所面临的一个现实问题，iPhone应用只能在iPhone手机上运行，你必须针对各个平台分别开发应用才行。

在北美市场占主导力量的三大智能手机平台分别是iOS、Android和黑莓。以下是这些手机平台在2010年第四季度全美手机用户中所占比例：

·iPhone：6.75%

·Android：7.75%

·黑莓：8.53%

·总计：23.0%

换句话说，如果你仅开发一款iPhone应用，那就只能争取到不足7%的手机用户。如果你开发的是用于市场营销的应用，那就得考虑这个市场份额究竟值不值得你投资。

如果你打算针对这三个平台开发不同版本的应用，那你就需要投入三倍的开发成本。而且即使是覆盖了这三个平台，你所获得的用户也仍然仅占移动网页用户比例的一点零头。

虽然我在这里没有提到Windows Phone 7，不过相信微软和诺基亚联姻一年后，WP7将获得更大的市场份额，多数移动网页有可能在诺基亚/WP7上顺畅地运行。不过创建一款银光手机应用倒真不是什么容易的事了。

手机应用开发成本更高

手机应用的开发成本还会增长，因为目前还没有统一的标准，所以很难判断手机应用的平均开发成本是多少。但根据一般的开发数据，我们可以暂时将它估算为3万美元的设计、执行和部署一款高质量的iPhone应用。至于Android和黑莓的应用开发成本，我还没有找到相关的调查数据。因为这两个平台的市场分散性更大，所以不难判断，它们的开发成本至少不低于3万美元。

最重要的是，开发一款可获得80%智能手机用户的应用产品，一定比开发可争取90%智能手机用户的移动网页应用成本更高。我指的不是双倍的成本，而是五倍，甚至十倍的开发成本。

在多数情况下，这种情况还是可接受的。正如上文所言，有时候你还是想开发至少在质量上比移动网页更出色的产品，或者你认为开发一款高质量的原版手机应用，可以获得更丰厚的回报。对于消费者银行、国家连锁商店等大规模的企业来说，他们有足够的资本，所以可以这么做，获得较理想的投资回报率（ROI）。但如果你的预算在10万美元以下，那么开发手机应用就不是个理想的途径。

那么开发移动网页的成本又是多少？虽然我目前还没有找到任何有关移动网页设计和开发的成本数据，但从我们公司运营项目的情况来看，开发移动网页的成本一直低于“一般”iPhone应用的3万美元。

关于ROI

那么你每投资一美元，可以获取多少潜在用户呢？如果保守估计全美共有2.34亿的成人手机用户，那么我们就可以得出以下的结论：

换句话说，你在移动网页上所投入的一美元，可以获取比原版手机应用多五倍的用户。而且这还是在移动网页的开发成本与黑莓、iPhone应用一样的前提下所做的保守估计。

那么这是否就意味着你不能开发手机应用？当然不是。这其中会涉及许多因素，如果一款应用的用户转化率可以增加10倍以上，那么它就不只是收回成本这么简单了。但这个障碍是很难克服务的，如果你想跨平台争取用户，那就得考虑投入额外成本。

不管你选择的是移动网页还是原版手机应用，或者两者兼顾，你都有可能从中获利，因为移动领域一直在不断发展。无论做出哪种选择，都请先从成本角度出发，才能让自己的项目获得最大化的收益。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

Is Developing a Mobile App Worth the Cost?

Aaron Maxwell is founder of mobile web design agency Mobile Web Up. You can find him on the agency’s mobile business blog, where he writes about mobile and social media.

Almost every business is gearing up their mobile strategy. No secret why: Mobile is really taking off. There are already more people on the planet who communicate with text messages than with e-mail and more people who own phones than have credit cards, according to the latest statistics.

The difficulty is that there are many facets of mobile technology. Apps, websites and SMS form the broad foundation. But mobile payments and advertising are rich topics on their own. Where do you focus first?

For many companies, the answer has been “an iPhone app” (notice I said iPhone app, not mobile app. More on that later). But people have also been looking into mobile-optimized websites. That has led to a kind of debate in some circles about which is more important. If you’re going to only do one, is it better to make a mobile app or a mobile website?

Apps have one clear advantage. In general, a well-made app can provide a far better user experience than even the best mobile websites are capable of right now. I don’t think this is controversial.

Really, though, what I often see missing from such discussions is cost. It’s often not that hard to make a web app that will work well on most smartphones (depending on the nature of the app — things like graphics-intensive games being an exception, etc.).

But making just a native iPhone app is usually harder than making an equivalent cross-platform web app. And if you want Android and BlackBerry users to be able to have a native app, too, you often have to build each platform from scratch.

Types of Apps

Let’s make an important distinction here. Apps can be divided into:

Those that are meant to directly generate income, and

Those that are built for purposes of marketing, branding, or customer service.

The first type is the topic of all those heartwarming stories about some enterprising developer creating an iPhone app in his spare time, from which he is making more than enough to quit his job coding TPS report generators at BoringBigCo. There are also real companies that do create and sell apps, quite successfully. The income comes from charging for the app directly, in-app purchases, and subscriptions, or less directly, through advertising (think Angry Birds on Android).

If you’re charging for your mobile product, a native app is the way to go. A mobile website can’t integrate with iTunes billing, which — in addition to providing a ready market of 125 million mobile users — makes payment a snap. Charging for access to your mobile website will require rolling your own payment solution… a tall order on mobile right now.

While interesting and exciting, this category of mobile app is not really what we’re talking about in this article. What’s relevant is when companies produce apps in the second category, for the purposes of marketing, branding or customer service. Good examples are the Starbucks or Target Stores apps.

These are normally free, since the whole point is to get them distributed as widely as possible. And that changes the discussion completely. If we make an app, how many prospects and customers will it reach? That puts a ceiling on the potential success of the app as a marketing channel.

The Reach Of Different Mobile Channels

From a pure “how many prospects can I reach” perspective, the best mobile marketing tool is text messaging. About 68% percent of American cell phone subscribers sent a text message in late 2010, according to comScore’s mobile market share report.

Of course, you can do things with apps and websites that you can’t do with SMS. So how many people can you reach with an app? And how many with a mobile website?

For mobile websites, it’s easy. The best indicator is how many people actually browse the web on their mobile phones. As of late 2010, it’s currently over 36% of all U.S. mobile phone subscribers. So, about one half as many people as you can reach with a text message.

There is more to the story for apps. I was at the San Francisco de Young museum a couple of weeks ago. They threw a little shindig to celebrate the release of their official mobile app.

The only hitch: You could only install it if you had an iPhone. Those of us with Androids and BlackBerrys couldn’t play. That reflects a current reality with apps. An iPhone app only works on, well, iPhones. Your app has to be made separately for each platform.

In North America, the most important smartphone platforms right now are iOS, Android, and BlackBerry. How many mobile users are on each? Here are the ratios in the U.S., as a percentage of all mobile phone users, for the last quarter of 2010:

iPhone: 6.75%

Android: 7.75%

BlackBerry: 8.53%

TOTAL: 23.0%

In other words, if you decide to only make an iPhone app, fewer than 7% of all mobile phone users will be able to use it. If the app’s primary purpose is marketing, you’ll need to decide whether this reach is big enough to be worth it.
And if you develop three different apps to cover these three most common platforms, you’re going to potentially triple your cost. All so you can reach only a fraction of the number of people you can get with a mobile website.

To make things worse, I’m ignoring Windows Phone 7. A year from now it may have a very significant market share, thanks to Microsoft’s joint venture with Nokia. Most mobile websites will work fine on the new Nokia/WP7 phones the day they are released. But creating and pushing out a Silverlight mobile app is no small task.

Apps Aren’t Free

The costs for this can add up. There’s no such thing as a “typical” app, so it’s hard to give a meaningful average cost. But as a general working figure, we can say it costs at least $30,000 to design, implement and deploy a brand-quality iPhone app. I haven’t found published studies for the equivalent costs for Android and BlackBerry, but since the device fragmentation is greater, it would makes sense that the costs are at least similar.

All the above means that, at the end of the day, creating a set of mobile native apps that reach, say, 80% of smartphone users is going to be far more expensive than creating a mobile web app that reaches 90% of smartphone users. I don’t even mean twice the cost; I mean more like five, maybe even ten times the cost.

In many situations, that’s acceptable. As noted, sometimes you want to do things that just aren’t possible with a mobile website, at least with good quality. Or maybe it is possible, but you know you can create something of better quality with a native app, so that the result is more engaging. For enterprise-scale organizations like consumer banks and nationwide retail stores, they have the capital, and the ROI justifies it. But if your budget for mobile is under $100,000, it may not be a good approach.

How does a mobile website compare in cost? I haven’t found any published study of the typical cost for mobile web design and development. But from my experience running a company that does just that, I can tell you that it’s almost always less than the $30,000 for an “average” iPhone app.

What’s the ROI?

Given all this, how many prospects will a venture reach per dollar? At a conservative estimate of 234 million U.S. adults with mobile phones, here’s the breakdown:

In other words, you can reach nearly five times as many people per dollar invested with a mobile website rather than a native mobile app. And that’s conservative, assuming it costs just the same to create the BlackBerry app as it does to create the iPhone app (it doesn’t), or that a mobile website will cost the same as an equivalent iPhone app (generally, not even close).

Does this mean you shouldn’t do an app? Of course not. There are many other factors involved. If an app user converts 10 times more frequently, for example, the difference is more than justified. But that’s a big hurdle to clear. And if you want to reach users across more than one mobile platform, you have to consider the extra capital investment as well.

Whether you go with a mobile website, a native mobile app, or both, you’ll probably benefit. The continued mobile explosion will make sure of that. Just take care that you get the most bang for your buck by doing what’s best for your business. （source:yahoo.com）