Mobile Apps in Nigeria

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It is quiet interesting that mobile apps download and use in Nigeria is not working out. for instance, popular websites/startups like Hotels.ng and Jovago don’t have apps? Even the proud Jumia Which have an app with over “1 Million” downloads can’t make up for the justification of those downloads from Nigerian users. PS: After an intensive research, I found out that Jumia mobile app users has “less than 9% downloads from Nigeria”, 30% from Egypt and over 56% from kenya among others. this is to imply that the 1 million Jumia App downloads accumulated from various countries, not Nigeria alone.

so why is there a low rate of app downloads in Nigeria. PS: Except social media apps and gaming apps.

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Your first sentence is all wrong. Also if you market your apps, people will download. Konga has 500K downloads btw. Naij has a million. We could go on and on about non social and gaming apps that people use daily.

People are using apps. They are using Nigerian apps.

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Broadband penetration, speed and affordability on the one hand. On the other hand, how many Nigerian mobile app-based products or services serve equivalently important purposes like your Uber, Facebook, Google Maps, Nike fitness apps? Moreover, there was a previous conversation here on a slightly similar topic on the importance/need of building a mobile site and mobile app or one of them for a product/service and which should come first, and @efemoney responded aptly as to why some mobile app-based products/service may or may not see significant uptake. However, if a product or service targets and solves, in a unique way, a very important daily problem faced by a particular user demographic with a very large number base, its mobile app will not only witness significant downloads but also a high frequency of daily use

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I think it is working. It depends on how valuable it is to your users.

From my experience most apps failed in Nigeria because app developers are always carried away by their own ideas. I usually like to develop apps that can be used by Nigerians and the rest of the world so that the app will have a universal appeal.

2 years ago when I wanted to develop a chemistry android app. There were lots of chemistry app in Play Store but I studied most of them and see what is missing. I made small modification then I realized that most people are looking for an app like that.

It is not as if it is a huge success but right now the chemistry app has around 800,000 downloads and Nigeria is among the top countries by downloads.

Despite how bad the UI is it is still getting thousands of downloads everyday. Content is king as the say.

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But why are Nigerian based download stores having a very low traction…

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Because I can get all the good stuff on Google Play, or at the very least, get the app directly from the developer’s site. Is it such a bad thing?
Seriously, do we really need “Nigerian” app stores?

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I think the truth is if your app solve a problem and meets daily, need with little publicity it we get the download you need. If you reinvent a product that have already gained ground there possibility that the problem u pointed out will crop up.

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i don,t think we really need an appstore, although they might make discovering Nigerian app easier…just saying

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Wrong…very wrong…wrongest.

Now you are just tying yourself up with your shoelaces, social media and gaming apps are getting downloads but not other types, what other types?

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@leovipes Hmm not sure about your original claim about Nigerian apps not working out. Please by what measure or stats are you judging this against. Also you forgot one industry whose apps perform well and native to Nigeria… bank / finance apps.

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Thumbs up @inducesmile for your app success stories.

A key element of successful app is that users really love using them. App developers need to know what customers want before building their apps. These statements captured it aptly

You can check out 11 ways to boost your app downloads on low budget

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you forgot lindaikeji

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how come with 800k users its still not a success. Is the challenge in numbers of active users

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It depends on how you measure success and the benchmark you are using.

If I compare the app with many similar apps from Nigeria, it is a success but when I know that some apps are getting 10 million downloads in 2 years then I might not consider 800,000 in 2 years a success.

In total, all my apps have around 2.2 million downloads

The good thing is that I make good money from it despite the fact that I have not updated them for 6 months or more.

WHY I DON’T WANT TO FOCUS ONLY ON ANDROID APP BUSINESS

The pattern I have seen in Google Play and with my little experience, I have ideas that can get millions of download within a year now but I don’t want to execute them now.

BECAUSE I CAN"T PREDICT GOOGLE

1 Google Account Ban

It is hard to follow all their TOS (Terms of Service) changes and it usually end up in ban account. Your business and money will die with it.

2 Low Ad eCPM

I make money through Google Ad but right now the eCPM keeps going down. For example, you can make 3000$ in a month last year and by this year with higher download numbers and active users you will be making 1500$

Personal Preference

Because I have a family I want to make sure that I can make a plan every month and pay my bills not hoping on what GOOGLE decides.

New experiment I did about alternative income online vs Android App revenue

I have a domain I bought 2014 but I could not find any more use for it. I decided to use it for experiment.

I created a blog for android tutorials. Around middle of last year I became serious with it.

The blog has been growing and the result after a year and is surprising.

I am getting lots of freelance android, iOS, Java and Php projects right now and I make more money monthly in dollars than Android App reveune.

This has been wonderful sources of alternative incomes.

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Very insightful… And exactly the kind of answer I was looking for. I have picked a few lessons. Thanks for your tine