‘App’ y New Year

The Android market and the ‘app phenomena’ is growing and brings with it many opportunities for developers of mobile applications to distribute their content to a wider audience.
The rub is finding a universal and easy way of monetizing these apps via Mobile Application Billing.

Whether these paid content and services are real-world physical goods or digital services, the ability to make money in this new ‘application economy’ requires providers and developers to employ in-application billing and solutions allowing them to sell content, virtual goods and add-ons from within their app.
The last few years have been dominated by iPhone and the ease with which you can buy and pay for iPhone apps. But look deeper and there are flaws to the platform that makes it a rigid, one-dimensional platform for the distribution and sale via in-application payments. Android allows more possibilities and not having an established, exclusive, billing portal like the Apple App store in place it means there is room to innovate and find more effective billing mechanisms that can give multilayer possibilities for billing, with up sell and cross-sell models easier to implement and perform.

Developers for Android payments services need the ability to monetize to cover costs of service creation and maintenance. There are some other platforms that theoretically can allow one to pay for an app in the Android Store, but they also have their limitations, and don’t allow anyone to reach full potential.

The first is that they do not support in-application payments for Android apps, meaning no billing options are available once the user has loaded the application and using it, meaning immediately you cannot try to monetize on upgrades or 'additional features' that could be up sold to existing users of an app. Having in-app mobile payments is the most logical choice.

The other issue is that these options only cover a few countries where developers can publish paid apps. If your country was not among them, you simply cannot publish any paid app in the Android Market. In-app Mobile Payments is a natural choice then.

txtNation and Accumulate (now trading as Flexion) have worked intensely over the last year to develop a strong focus on in-application billing and can now enable clients to roll out their Android applications in over 80+ markets. The payment trigger is SMS but the user experience is very different. The billing occurs in-application with a ‘canned’ SMS being sent when the user clicks a ‘purchase’ or ‘upgrade’ button within Flexion’s content wrapper environment. Otherwise known as a payment wrapper. The user need not exit the application, sending in an SMS with specific content, this is handled for them, and they can remain in-application during the entire transaction.

Danny Marino, Territory Manager EMEA said: ‘We are already seeing many clients around the worldwide deploy Flexion’s wrapper technology and its working really well. Suddenly transactions are taking place in countries where before a developer would have very little chance of selling to. We did receive objections in the early stages regarding the out payments on SMS compared to other payment methods however what is a higher % of nothing?! Which was the sales potential people had in markets such as Brazil, Nigeria, Thailand and many others before they implemented our SMS billing in-application. Flexions fantastic work to get their wrapper working as well as it does, bundled with txtNation’s expansive PSMS coverage has meant a great, great product with lots of revenue generating potential’.

Mobile Payments can be a bit more expensive than typical mobile app-store billing infrastructure, but in many cases the default billing is not sufficient or just not available for you – in our case we have both issues.’ Stated a client who came to txtNation recently to look at the options available.

txtNation and Flexion have partnered to pool together the strength of both companies in offering the best in mobile application payments worldwide.,

Flexion have led the way in billing for content via Android Payments option, with their content wrapper technology. Content producers using the Flexion solution are able to distribute their content widely and monetize on it once its native to the users handset. ‘Try and Buy’ strategies work fantastically well and the wrapper also gives the freedom of being able to offer cross and up sell opportunities as well. We’re talking about a far more intelligent system then just the simple – ‘see it, buy it’ process of the Apple app-store.

Both companies believe it is key to be able to offer operator billing, on content already native to the users handset, in as many markets as possible, naturally widening the sales potential with the aim to ultimately generate more revenues.

You can read more about txtNation:
www.txtnation.com

Accumulate
http://www.accumulategroup.com/webb/flexion/why.jsp

About txtNation

txtNation is an award-winning provider of billing, content and mobile messaging solutions.
Our focus on flexible solutions, intelligently supported, has made us one of the most trusted providers in the business.
Our established connections to the world's mobile network operators, and our ability to source new connections on your behalf, means we help your business at prices that fit every budget.
We have developed strong partnerships with industry to ensure our solutions are saleable, well-connected and secure.
txtNation is an established registered company owned and operated privately in the United Kingdom, with an excellent history of innovation and support for business.

You can find out more about txtNation and the services we offer at www.txtnation.com or by emailing sales@txtnation.com or calling +44 (0)1752273491.