Search and rescue
App success stories aren't created by app makers alone; recommendation sites make a huge difference. Mobilewalla is the latest startup that aims to improve app discovery.
Given that app stores are often fragmented and driven by their own commercial interests, founder Anindya Datta insists the idea of Mobilewalla is to provide an objective app search. "Mobilewalla provides the consumer a 360 degree view of all apps and their categories making navigating the mobile app universe a better experience for consumers," he said.
The app search engine serves as a launch pad to the numerous small-time app developers. However, it also hopes to help consumers in the bargain with its 114 different variables used for ranking the more than 625,000 apps over four different platforms.
Mobilewalla will be competing against established app stores - Apple, Android, BlackBerry and Windows, who pitch the merits of their own developers, and also independent mobile store GetJar, the world's second largest app store next only to the Apple App Store. The recent announcement that GetJar has raised a $25 million funding for what it calls the largest ‘open' mobile app store in the world could be a threat to Mobilewalla.
However, Mobilewalla won't sell apps directly. The app search engine currently allows a variety of searches across the four major platforms - Apple, Android, BlackBerry and Windows 7 App stores. It scores and rates all these apps as well as every developer in the market.
Market research firm Gartner recently forecast that global mobile app store revenues will triple from $5.2 billion last year to $15 billion in 2011, and keep growing to an astounding $58 billion by 2014. In addition, Gartner estimates total app store downloads will reach 17.7 billion, with 81 percent of those being free.
The company doesn't plan to sell advertising on the site; instead it hopes to generate mobile app data that will be valuable enough to sell to developers.
