Success of a mobile platform is based on the number of users
using it and number of apps available for the users natively. Usually, it is a
chicken and egg problem since it is difficult to get users without exhaustive
list of apps for the users and developers won’t be interested in developing
apps till there is a considerable number of users using it. However, with
Reliance Jio, user base won’t be a problem because of their almost free Jio
phones which will easily attract millions of users.
Jio feature phones is expected to use KaiOS which is a linux
flavor forked out of Firefox OS. The apps are rumored to be HTML5 apps. So most
of the web apps that doesn’t use mobile features such as accelerometer, Bluetooth,
location, etc., can easily be made available to Jio users. Those web apps that
use mobile features in other platforms such as Android/iOS should be easily
portable provided the KaiOS SDK has those features available for developers to access.
For application developers to develop apps or port their
apps to Jio phones, among other things such as the vastness of the mobile
features accessible by their KaiOS SDK, what matters the most is the revenue
generation opportunities for their applications. Indians, in general, spend
less money on paid apps or In-App purchases compared to users in western
countries. Given that the Jio phones will be available only in India, the revenue
will be even more limited since Jio users will be among the least interested in
spending money for apps. So revenue from paid apps or IAP may not be
encouraging for the developers in spite of large user base. The other options
for generating revenue for developers is either using advertisements or provide
apps on Jio phone which indirectly increases downloads on Android/iOS phones,
for example Chatting apps.
The biggest advantage for application developers is that the
Jio phone will bring huge number of users who were not earlier using any
smartphones. Since Jio phones are almost free and Jio network is available even
in remote parts of the country while other networks are not, users will be
mostly non-English speakers which means that the applications has to support
multiple languages in order to reach majority of the users.
Overall, one can expect mostly free apps on Jio device, with
advertisements in the app and with regional language support & translations.
Lots of HTML5 games or standalone apps available in web now should be available
on app store as soon as the developers get the KaiOS SDK and access to Jio app
store.
With 200 million 4G features phones in production and with
free unlimited data, it is right time for application developers to unleash
their creativity for India-centric applications.
