Rebooting the EU App Economy / Fraunhofer HHI, Berlin, Germany / 13th November 2013

1. Jump-Starting the European App Economy
Professor Joseph G. Davis
Senior Research Scientist, Getatapp Inc., Palo Alto, CA
School of Information Technologies,
Director, Knowledge Discovery and Management Research
Group, and
Theme leader for service computing, Centre for Distributed and
High Performance Computing
The University of Sydney

2. Smartphones and tablets as the computing
devices of choice
• Smartphones and tablets already the computing devices that a very large
number of people use most of the time,
• Desktops and laptops as devices for more intensive work, programming,
large documents, spreadsheets, and institutional work
Basser Seminar July 2013

3. App Economy
› Forecasts of the app economy (combined value of paid apps, app-enabled
purchases, in-app advertising
AppNation
:
US$150 billion by 2017
Developer Economics : US$143 billion by 2016
28% cumulative average growth per annum globally
This is likely to be an under-estimate since app advertising and the
enterprise app economy are just taking off.
App Economy matters! Significant employment creation potential
Basser Seminar July 2013

4. EU Barriers to growing the App Economy
› Lack of vibrancy of the App innovation and commercialisation
ecosystem,
› Impediments to encouraging new players to enter and existing
players to stabilise and grow,
› Inter-related problems of
- Poor mentoring networks
- Patchy venture capital availability
- Inadequate marketing and business development
support
- Market fragmentation, among others.
Basser Seminar July 2013

5. Proposed Solution
› Areas of opportunity to best assist app developers and startups to scale, enhancing the level of marketing and business
development skills:
Help foster the institutional infrastructure needed to support the
growth and richness of the innovation ecosystem through:
 A publicly funded training program for app developers and
entrepreneurs to be offered in three or four key cities
 Funding the establishment of three app innovation and
development hubs in selected EU cities
Basser Seminar July 2013

6. Use of financial inducements, competitions and
incubator schemes
› The regional development hubs will be more than traditional
business incubators; they will need to evolve into a physical
and virtual gathering places for app developers and
entrepreneurs and investors, venture capitalists, legal and
business development people, and researchers, creative
people, dreamers, and app consumers,
› Highly targeted business plan competitions for relatively
mature app business plans in each regions, coordinated by
the development hub – focus on substantive business
models!
Basser Seminar July 2013

7. Use of financial inducements, competitions and
incubator schemes
›Focus on app-related research and researchbased design programs. Need for new
conceptualisations of the open mobile web as
very large collection of mobile surfaces!
The proposals need to be seen as integrated,
synergistic, and mutually reinforcing with
possible super-modular outcomes that can
trigger a virtuous cycle of app-related
innovation and successful commercialisation.
Basser Seminar July 2013

8. Thank you!
Basser Seminar July 2013