There’s been some great discussion over the last few years about mobile first versus web first. Fred Wilson raised a lot of attention to this two years ago when he wrote a post entitled Mobile First Web Second. Then a couple of weeks ago Vibhu Norby wrote an excellent counter-article on why web should be first called Why We’re Pivoting from Mobile-first to Web-first.

I don’t believe this is the right way to think about the issue, though. I think we are using the wrong definition of ‘web.’

The web definition I’m focusing on is as a set of technologies used for storing and disseminating information. I use ‘web client’ as the front-end technology and customer-facing portion of the site.

Today’s best apps are web apps. Consider Instagram, Foursquare, and Google. Calling them web or mobile companies is a fallacy. None of them are web-client nor mobile companies, meaning their businesses aren’t built on the customer-facing portion of the service. All of them are web companies, meaning that their business models rely on the web back-end. This does not imply anything about how we interact with the service. Google search is primarily used in a web browser. But I’ll bet that Google Maps is primarily used on mobile devices. Foursquare and Instagram chose to start with mobile interaction models, but they are really companies whose primary business resides on the web. Neither service is even possible without the web.

Evernote provides a very interesting insight into this, I believe. Evernote has desktop, web and mobile clients for every conceivable platform. But Evernote’s business is not any of those consumer-facing products at all. Evernote’s value proposition is that they make it really easy to save your stuff and see your stuff. It’s a stuff bucket. This really becomes clear when you look at Trunk. There are hundreds of apps for getting stuff into and out of Evernote. In fact Evernote open sourced its desktop client. Anyone can see the source, create a copy and put out their own Evernote desktop client.

So… is it web-first or mobile-first? That depends on the business. But the business model better revolve around web technology itself. From there, we decide what’s the best way to interact with the service: mobile, desktop or web-client.

According to Canalys, 0.0001% of all app store developers (that’s 1 in 100,000) make 50% of the mobile app revenue. That is 25 companies — not 25% — 25 companies, all of which are in the business of entertainment. And Canalys expects their position to consolidate, meaning they’ll make even more of the app store revenues.

“This is expected to ensure that over the Christmas period in the US, the dominance of key game developers will only increase,” added Canalys VP and Principal Analyst, Chris Jones, in a statement.

I took a look the other day. Year-over-year, Black Friday to Black Friday, our powerOne sales are off 73%. There were three dips. The first is when DEWALT Mobile Pro shipped, which killed off most of our powerOne Construction sales. I’m okay with that as we cannibalized ourselves and still think there is plenty of upside on DEWALT. The second dip happened when HP released the 12c for iPad. But both of those dips were barely felt compared to the dip after iOS 6 launched. Whatever Apple did in the App Store, it killed our sales. We’ll see if powerOne for Android revitalizes them.

After I wrote my article last week on the future of apps being free, Patrick Thompson of Inkstone Mobile emailed me some thoughts on free versus paid. Patrick has written a number of ebook reading and audio book listening apps, with a mix of free and paid apps. His thoughts:

1. 2 app stores: Treat the paid and free categories as separate markets. It is an over-generalization, but assume people either shop in the free store or the paid store, that they don’t do a lot of comparison shopping between free and paid.
2. Try before buy: There are so many bad apps on the app store, some people are afraid of getting burned. By offering a free app, you lower the barrier to them trying your app. Hopefully they have a good experience, which makes it more likely they will buy from you. (Especially for more “expensive” apps.)
3. Disrupt yourself: There are surely free apps that compete with your paid app. You are better off getting that traffic than your competitors.
4. Visibility: It all comes down to visibility. The more people who see your apps the more you will sell. It is just a matter of the conversion rate. The way most people try to get visibility is via high app store ranking or advertising. But you can create your own visibility through your app portfolio. If they have a good experience with your apps they are more likely to buy other apps from you later.
5. Cross-promote: Use nag screens and push notifications (sparingly) to reach your app audience.
6. Monetize free: It is okay to monetize free apps. Users expect it. I find no honor in not monetizing your apps, just poor business management.
7. Advertise: Advertising in your free apps provides a bit of an irritant that helps push people to upgrade, plus it is a bit of extra income; for me it is enough to pay my mortgage. It increases and diversifies your app income.

Aaron Rubenson of Amazon gave a very interesting presentation on Monday at Mobile Portland. It is well worth a watch, especially if you are considering adding your app to the Amazon Appstore. There is some interesting data in here, including Amazon’s supposed market share [1] plus a lot of data on in app purchases.

One thing that jumped out at me was the amount of time spent focused on games. Clearly, Amazon is aiming Kindle devices at content consumption, not as a productivity tool. As I have said a hundred times before, RIM and Microsoft, in particular, are really remiss at not focusing on building their devices and OSes as productivity first, entertainment second devices. Neither can compete with Apple and Android straight-on at this point. They need a different approach. The presentation starts about the 15 minute mark and runs for about an hour. After that is Q/A.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the awesome facility. We staged this event at Ziba Design’s auditorium. We had catered food, a bar with wines and beers. It was an incredible event and look forward to more like it next year!

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[1] Supposed because Amazon doesn’t release their numbers so we have no real idea whether their market share numbers are inflated or not.