Monday 11 May 2020

Covid-19 impact on mobile applications - a quick case study

Amidst everything that's been going on over the last few months, checking on how my apps have been doing has been low down my priorities. For me creating apps is a hobby, something to keep my skills sharp - it's not my primary business and it's not something I rely upon. Looking at the impact it's had has both been interesting to examine, but also made me concerned for many out there who's income source has undoubtedly been hit incredibly hard by this pandemic. The following details the impact of the virus on my application.

The App
The app in question allows people to countdown to their holidays/vacation. It's a seasonal android application with installs typically growing slowly January through March, then growing quickly through to the end of August, before falling slowly until the end of the year. That makes sense, usually in the new year people plan holidays, as we enter summer people tend to have more holidays and go on more holidays, so I expect the app to get more attention at those times. 



What do the analytics show in the lockdown period of Covid-19?
I'm sure you can imagine. The travel and leisure industry has been put on hold indefinitely right now as a whole. Airlines are laying off huge amounts of staff, hotels are closed, people are restricted from travelling distances depending on where they live. Put simply, nobody is going on holiday or taking vacation time. People aren't booking holidays, they are trying to recoup the money they paid on travel that has been cancelled. 

Whilst there are regional differences, lockdown in the UK and the US seemed to happen in mid-March or at latest early April. The following chart of active users of my app show the drop off around those dates:


The chart makes for some grim reading. When typically active users would grow I've seen a steady drop March through May. I expect this trend to continue. In normal times, I would have expected the active user base to have at least doubled during this period, instead it sits around 50% of where I would have projected. 

What about revenue from the app? Ads are shown in the app which provides a small amount of revenue. The following graph shows the drop in that revenue:


You can see here that revenue falls drastically in mid-March - coinciding with lockdowns across the world. 

I have a relatively new iOS version of the app. The charts for it's new installs follow the exact same trajectory:



What can I conclude from this?
I can safely conclude that people are not planning many holidays right now! The data is as you would predict, but it's good to see it as hard facts. What's more interesting is I have a similar app for counting down to birthdays and the data shows a similar (but not as severe) trend. Are people not as interested in tracking birthdays if they know they can't meet up to celebrate them? 

What next?
My concern with the dip is that it will start a downwards spiral hard to come out of. Imagine the world is back to normal as we enter January 2021, the app will have less active users and reviews, so will in turn be lower down in the app store listing. Maybe it will never pick up again. Alternatively, all similar apps could be in the same position, so they will all be relative in terms of the drop. 

Conclusion
As I set at the outset - for me this is a hobby - a way to see how the industry works. However, it's clear that depending on the app the Covid-19 pandemic could have a major impact on some app developers income. Outside apps, the impact to businesses - from airlines to hotels, restaurants to shops or tour guides must be massive. How these businesses recover from this is unclear - what percentage will recover? The impact of Covid-19 will last long into the future. 


Friday 27 December 2019

IntelliJ: Unfortunately you can't have non-Gradle Java modules and Android-Gradle modules in one project

I hit this build problem today after switching between Android development and spring boot microservice development.

Unfortunately you can't have non-Gradle Java modules and Android-Gradle modules in one project

The solution was simple - in IntelliJ:


  1. File -> Invalidate Caches / Restart
  2. Choose Invalidate and Restart 
  3. Rebuild after IntelliJ restarts. 

Saturday 13 May 2017

Android Studio - How to change app icon (ic_launcher)

Changing your applications icon (ic_launcher) is a common occurrence when developing your android application. Here's quick steps on how to do this quickly in Android Studio.


  1. In the Android view right click on the "app" folder.
  2. Select New -> Image Asset
  3. In the window shown, choose Asset Type as image and select the icon you want.
  4. Press next and then Finish.

It's as easy as that! Hopefully saves you a little time rather than manually updating all the ic_launcher files manually for the various resolutions.

Saturday 17 October 2015

Android: Programmatically get list of installed apps on an Android device

Getting details of all the installed apps on an Android device is incredibly simple – here’s a utility method which I hope will prove useful.
private List<ApplicationInfo> getListOfApps() {
        // http://developer.android.com/reference/android/content/pm/PackageManager.html
        // Class for retrieving various kinds of information related to the application
        // packages that are currently installed on the device.
        PackageManager packageManager = getPackageManager();
       
        // Get a list of the installed applications
        List<ApplicationInfo> listOfApps = packageManager.getInstalledApplications(PackageManager.GET_META_DATA);
       
        return listOfApps;   
    }

Wednesday 10 June 2015

iTunes Connect - taking the pain out of app store submission with launchkit screenshot builder

You've put a lot of hard work into building your app for iPhone or iPad and then you get the frustration of having to create your store listing. Creating a good store listing can make a huge difference to how your app performs so it's vital you add as much information as you can and screenshots are probably the number one thing users will want to see. Then it hits you, you need to create screenshots for 4.7, 5.5, 4 and 3.5 inch screens! ARGH!

However, it's not as bad as you think thanks to launchkit screenshot builder. This great on-line tool allows you to upload a set of screenshots (in one size), and choose text to accompany them and will then generate and email you the images you need to upload directly to iTunes Connect.

Example from launchkit's site.
It's as easy as that - a huge time saver!

Thursday 28 May 2015

App Support

For any support queries please contact rdmacken@gmail.com with as much detail as possible to help resolve the issue.

Sunday 17 May 2015

IOS Development: Keyboard shortcut to switch project windows in XCode

Being new to IOS development you may get frustrated with this one as well - how do I quickly change project windows in XCode?

The shortcut is the Command and tilde key:

CMD + ~ 

This is saving me a ton of time - I was previously having to go to Window -> [selected project].

Any other handy keyboard shortcuts for beginners?

Covid-19 impact on mobile applications - a quick case study

Amidst everything that's been going on over the last few months, checking on how my apps have been doing has been low down my priorities...