Jump-Starting the European App Economy

Professor Joseph G. Davis

Senior Research Scientist, Getatapp Inc., Palo Alto, CA

School of Information Technologies,

Director, Knowledge Discovery and Management Research Group, and

Theme leader for service computing, Centre for Distributed and High Performance Computing

The University of Sydney

Basser Seminar July 2013

Smartphones and tablets as the computing devices of choice

• Smartphones and tablets already the computing devices that a very large number of people use most of the time,

• Desktops and laptops as devices for more intensive work, programming, large documents, spreadsheets, and institutional work

Basser Seminar July 2013

App Economy

› Forecasts of the app economy (combined value of paid apps, app-enabled purchases, in-app advertising

AppNation : US$150 billion by 2017

Developer Economics : US$143 billion by 2016

28% cumulative average growth per annum globally

This is likely to be an under-estimate since app advertising and the enterprise app economy are just taking off.

App Economy matters! Significant employment creation potential

Basser Seminar July 2013

EU Barriers to growing the App Economy

› Lack of vibrancy of the App innovation and commercialisation ecosystem,

› Impediments to encouraging new players to enter and existing players to stabilise and grow,

› Inter-related problems of

- Poor mentoring networks

- Patchy venture capital availability

- Inadequate marketing and business development support

- Market fragmentation, among others.

Basser Seminar July 2013

Proposed Solution

› Areas of opportunity to best assist app developers and start-ups to scale, enhancing the level of marketing and business development skills:

Help foster the institutional infrastructure needed to support the growth and richness of the innovation ecosystem through:

A publicly funded training program for app developers and entrepreneurs to be offered in three or four key cities

Funding the establishment of three app innovation and development hubs in selected EU cities

Basser Seminar July 2013

Use of financial inducements, competitions and incubator schemes

› The regional development hubs will be more than traditional business incubators; they will need to evolve into a physical and virtual gathering places for app developers and entrepreneurs and investors, venture capitalists, legal and business development people, and researchers, creative people, dreamers, and app consumers,

› Highly targeted business plan competitions for relatively mature app business plans in each regions, coordinated by the development hub – focus on substantive business models!

Basser Seminar July 2013

Use of financial inducements, competitions and incubator schemes

›Focus on app-related research and research-based design programs. Need for new conceptualisations of the open mobile web as very large collection of mobile surfaces!

The proposals need to be seen as integrated, synergistic, and mutually reinforcing with possible super-modular outcomes that can trigger a virtuous cycle of app-related innovation and successful commercialisation.

Basser Seminar July 2013

Thank you!