Today was a good day. I got to talk to Vincent Hoogsteder of DISTIMO (@DISTIMO). They’re a company that I posted about two months ago and after reading there most recent report on the status of “all things application store†I thought it would be good to get them on the phone and talk about what they do and how they came to be.
Just in case you don’t want to read my original post: DISTIMO supplies competitive analysis across the Apple, Android and BlackBerry application stores. They generate a free monthly reports, custom reports (which are not free) and now provide a monitoring dashboard for application (free for) developers (sign-up here). Below is a screen shot.
The monitoring tool has the following real-time capabilities:
- Monitor downloads of applications -Â view daily downloads in multiple app stores, drill-down through app stores and countries
- Monitor revenue of their own applications – view daily revenues in multiple app stores, drill-down through app stores and countries
- Monitor popularity of their own applications – view daily popularity in multiple app stores (in all application categories), drill-down through app stores and countries
- Compare popularity of their applications with competing applications, view daily popularity of competing applications in multiple app stores (in all application categories), drill-down through app stores and countries.
Vincent and his team were developers in the mobile space when it was just starting up in Europe. They were employees of eBuddy and over time they found it very painful to keep their applications up to date across multiple carriers. This is before the iPhone application store and once that happened they decided to provide competitive intelligence for app developers.
I asked Vincent when they would start to track Ovi, the Nokia app store and currently they are tracking it and reporting will be available. They also would like to add Vodafone 360 and the Windows Marketplace.
The goal is to offer competitive analysis between all app stores. At first glance this is a clean-cut deal. But based on the potential future outlined in this post by Edo Segal, it will get more interesting as the lines between application and web are blurred.
One of the things that I believe makes DISTIMO extremely valuable is their monitoring tool. Unfortunately I have not seen it but have been told it’s a dashboard that allows a business to determine how they’re doing at a glance. This will prove an indispensable tool for those growing the applications business.
It is easy to imagine that over time the monitoring tool will become robust enough to deliver the same information provided in a custom report. Until that time, Vincent and his team are ready to create custom reports.
As a marketer, analytics provides an essential knowledge base for decision-making. DISTIMO looks to provide a premier service that enables businesses to target their market across multiple mobile devices. This type aggregation is essential and to date, DISTIMO leads the pack.
