Smart Ways to Market Your Smartphone Apps

App developers are struggling these days to find users for their smartphone apps. The main reason is, understandably, "the competition". iPhone's App Store has more than 500,000 apps, while Google's Andorid Market is bulging with 250,000 apps. One may easily conclude marketing is important for any app to survive. Some of the effective app marketing techniques are listed here.

Inside the app store: Give a suitable, catchy name to your app. App description in the iTunes page or in the Android Market page plays a vital role in making an app hit and don't forget the importance of screenshots. You should be ready to rework on app descriptions and screenshots as long as you can and try to find out the impact of the changes carried out.

Play with the price: If you are not going to give your app for free, you should play smart while pricing your app. Find out what your competitors are doing and try to outsmart them in this area. Sale announcements can create buzz around the app. In 2009, Peggle, an iPhone app, did it successfully. Offering a free, lite version can also lure users to buy the full version.

Press Releases: Press releases help the app marketing in many areas like branding, publicizing and boosting it's downloads. If you can't afford to spend much on this, you can avail the help of free press release sites. Some of these sites will also submit it to Google News. If you think, you can't write and publish press releases, avail the help of a press release expert.

Updates: Don't strive to provide all the features in the first version - it is very hard and it won't help you in marketing. Save some features for the updates. Otherwise, every time you update you have to tell, "Minor bugs fixed". Updates can be used for creating a buzz around your app. While updating, avail the help of press releases again for marketing. Many times feedbacks would help you in making necessary changes in the updates. Listen to feedbacks.

Submit to blogs: There are many app marketing sites and review sites. Submit your app to as many sites as possible. You can avail these services at a cheap cost, if not free. If they demand money for publishing, please find whether they would provide links to your app's iTunes page and more importantly your website.

Track your growth: There are many tools available to track the downloads of your app. Some of them offer this service for free, while some other tools will ask you for money. These tools equip with various charts to understand the understand trends.

Develop a great app: With these few techniques, there are tons of other marketing techniques to that could make an app a successful one. You can get to Top 100 with a mediocre app, but it is very hard to stay there. The mediocre apps would also spoil your reputation as an app maker.

There are many more effective ways to promote a smartphone app. If you are planning to launch an app, feel free to contact Alpha Digits (alphadigits.com\contact) for help. We can help you in the areas like writing and publishing press releases and submitting the app to the websites and directories.

Steve August is the author of this article. He is an expert press release writer and article writer. He will also publish articles and PRs in appropriate websites. He helps promoting apps and websites and runs an app marketing website Alpha Digits. You can avail his help at steveaugust@hotmail.com.

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Windows Phone 7 Shaping the Mobile Market

The current smartphone operating system market is a two horse race between the Google-owned Android platform and Apple's iOS. Together, the two operating systems make up 67% of the smartphone OS market share. The RIM Blackberry OS is the closest competitor to the mobile giants right now, controlling 20% of the market. However, market research giant IDC projects that by 2015, Windows Phone 7 will not only compete with Android, iOS, and Blackberry, but will actually outsell the latter two and become the second most popular mobile operating system.

Windows Phone 7, often abbreviated as WP7, is Microsoft's smartphone operating system that provides an innovative user interface and a feature set similar to their home computer operating system. Released in October 2010, Windows Phone 7 has received mostly positive reviews. Specifically, critics have praised the fluidity of the phone's navigation system and the incredibly responsive touchscreen controls. Minor criticisms have arisen that claim the e-mail system is not user-friendly, and some reviewers were disappointed by the lack of multi-tasking ability.

Microsoft plans to amend WP7's shortcomings by releasing an update in fall of 2011 codenamed Mango. The update is promised to bring hundreds of updates to the OS, including improved e-mail, state-of-the-art multi-tasking, universal search, and innovative phone and social media integration. Microsoft also unveiled plans to introduce to the platform an HTML5-friendly Internet Explorer 9 along with Bing Vision, a feature that will allow users to take pictures of products with their phone's camera and receive info about them online.

The fixes and added features that the Mango update promises to provide are the major reasons for IDC's speculation that the sudden growth in Windows Phone 7. Some analysts have raised their eyebrows and doubt that an operating system which currently holds only 9% of the market will be able to increase in popularity and overtake mobile titan Apple so quickly. However, WP7 is swiftly growing and boasts more applications in its mobile marketplace than the Android platform did at the same age. Remember, skeptics also doubted the iPhone's ability to compete in the mobile market upon its initial release.

The new features Windows Phone 7 promises combined with its already spectacular and responsive user interface will undoubtedly sway some smartphone users into switching operating systems. Whether or not WP7 actually overtakes iOS and becomes Android's biggest competitor in the coming years, both Apple and Google should be worried that Microsoft is going to swoop in and seize at least a portion of their customers. The release of the Mango update could mean the smartphone OS market shifting from a two horse race to a three company showdown.

For more information about mobile application development, visit Magenic Technologies who have been providing innovative custom software development to meet unique business challenges for some of the most recognized companies and organizations in the nation.

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