Though we tend to be fairly inclusive here at Übermind, every now and then a little exclusivity can be a good thing–secret projects, new technologies, and the such. Last week, a few Übies were summond to present at the Pacific Crest Conference in San Francisco. The discussion centered around the future of paid apps and whether all mobile apps will ultimately be free.
The audience was mostly comprised of investors, hedge fund managers, venture capitalists and analysts [yawn], but we suppose we need those business-minded types to keep the lights on and the latte coming for us bloggers. It seems like the business guys had fun though; take a look at the picture below and you see Über Biz Dev VP Donald Brady on a panel with some other business folk you may recognize:
Could you name them all? Well, just for the record, you’re looking at CEO of Pandora, the COO of Zillow, VP of Marketing from Flurry, and the CEO of JumpTap. If you’re not excited about the thought of all that tech sector brain power in one place, just forward the post on to your biz dev team and they’ll certainly get a kick out of it.
Without going too deep into a widely debated topic, we here at Übermind see room for both free and paid apps. Some apps are products in and of themselves, some are merely brand extensions. Take Best Camera for example. This high-powered iPhone photo editing and sharing app lets you do something (edit and share photos) that you could not easily do before. Best Camera is product (in spite of the fact it extends our friend Chase Jarvis’ brand).
Now, take a look at Dinner Spinner, an app we developed for Allrecipes.com, the world’s largest social network of food and entertaining enthusiasts. Dinner Spinner helps to extend Allrecipes’ brand in an already crowded space, thus, Dinner Spinner is free.
That’s all making sense to you, right?
Time for a coffee!
Tags: App Development, free apps vs. paid apps, Pacific Crest Conference