Europe needs joined-up thinking on apps

For the past 15 years, researcher and innovator John Breslin from NUI Galway's Insight Centre for Data Analytics has been involved in creating online communities, most recently founding Technology Voice, an online publisher, and co-founding StreamGlider, a smartphone apps company.

As project leader for the European Union’s Eurapp project, which has a brief to scope Europe’s app economy - to highlight strengths and weaknesses and inform policy - he has particular insights on the growth of the app economy and how demand for app development skills in Europe outstrips supply.

Here, Breslin talks to Science|Business about the current state of the app market, the role the EU can play in nurturing it, and the need for more digital education.

Q: There are many categories of apps - books, travel, education and games, and so on. Which are the most successful in Europe?

A: In terms of the European companies, the main success areas are gaming apps like King, Supercell, Gameloft; dating apps including Lovoo and Meetic and Global positioning system (GPS) apps such as Garmin.

Q: Is it becoming indispensable for all companies to get us to download an app?

A: We know how the web previously changed the way we purchase goods and find services and with mobile devices becoming an accessible and convenient way to do this instead, many businesses have realised that it is as important to have an app as to be on the web.

There are many reasons why a business may want an app – not just to have a public-facing app that can be downloaded from an app store, but they may want to have an app that is used by their client companies for business-to-business [interactions].

Q: With tech valuations increasingly catching the eye - Facebook’s US$19 billion acquisition of whatsApp being the most recent case in point - are we seeing the growth of a maturing app market or a bubble?

A: I think the WhatsApp deal is more of a customer and platform play rather than what you may associate with most apps. As a replacement for traditional telecomm services - text and later voice - and with a huge and growing user base, it's fair to say that WhatsApp isn't your typical app.

However, there is still the potential for apps that provide better communications methods to achieve similar success – the likes of Skype, Viber and Mailbox come to mind – making mail and chat and other long-established and commonly-used forms of human communication better.

Q: What is the incentive in creating your own app, given that the chances of return on your investment are not guaranteed – as in the case of free apps?

A: If you have good content, then the rise in in-app purchasing is quite attractive. So we've seen not just games providing in-app purchases, but music lesson apps, magazines, and more. But a more significant question is, how many people rush into creating an app because of popularity – for example, the spate of Flappy Bird clones after the game withdrew from development - without doing a thorough analysis of what areas are crowded, what are the growth trends, etc.

Companies like Priori Data provide sophisticated analyses of app market trends across the main platforms, which could help app developers decide where to go.

Q: Europe has seen many great gaming app successes, Angry Birds being the standout. Is this likely to continue?

A: Yes, I believe so, because there is a critical mass and an ecosystem of these companies that is supported by associations and networks like ANGI [Association for the Nordic Games Industry] and Spelplan [Association of Swedish Game Developers] in the Nordic states.

Q: The UK government is making steps to promote digital education through a scheme to introduce coding in schools. Should everyone in Europe be taking note of this?

A: For sure. One of the things that was apparent in a recent Eurapp survey was the shortage of developers with app skills. It's still such a new area that the colleges and training agencies haven't ramped up their output - or updated their courses - to account for the range of app development skills that are now required.

Mobile platforms have turned the traditional web user interface models on their head, as many companies which have tried to port their web systems to mobile have found out. Rather than everyone doing their own thing, a joined-up approach across Europe to introducing app modules into our college courses – or complementing/augmenting content in existing web development and design modules - could help.

If we can teach web development at secondary school level, and programming skills via Scratch or its predecessor Etoys at primary school, there's no reason we can't teach some app skills in schools as well. Resources such as MIT App Inventor make it easy to build an app in the browser, and community-driven efforts like Coder Dojo are skilling up kids in app development too.

Q: What do you see as the role of EU regulators in the app market, then?

A: It would be nice if the EU could facilitate better matchmaking between large companies with an app need and development teams who can fulfil it. The Enterprise European Network (EEN) helps smaller businesses to connect and find partners, and perhaps some app marketplace could build on such a model to allow, let's say, a DIY and garden chain with no in-house app developers to find a team that could help them roll out either business-to-customer or business-to-business apps to fit their requirements.