14 DAY TRIAL // Philipp Kandal is the co-founder and CTO of Skobbler, a mapping tool that’s become quite popular over the years, with millions of users choosing it to find their way across the world.
His skill and experience landed him a speaker role at the latest Droidcon for Easter Europe where he talked about how developers can make their apps more appealing to users. His charm, mixed together with the interesting information he was sharing, quickly turned Kandal's presentation into one of the event’s highlights.
Philipp Kandal took the time to answer some questions for Softpedia, ranging from secrets to a successful app, piracy and Google.
Softpedia: You gave a series of interesting advices during the presentation you had at the Eastern Europe Droidcon. Did you know all those trade secrets before you started developing apps or did you learn everything along the way?
Philipp Kandal: No, at the time when we started, the Appstore was brand new and it was indeed much more easier to be prominent there. At that time, if you had a great app you could be sure that people would find it.
When we started there were less than 50.000 apps in the store. So I think indeed we are in mobile applications on a very interesting point now that is similar to the web in the late 90s, so I think in the next 5-10 years the best on mobile is yet to come.
Softpedia: Would you have wanted to have someone give you such advice when you first started out or do you think you treasure everything more now that you had to go through all these steps on your own?
Philipp Kandal: At skobbler we always had great mentors and advisors who helped us along the way. I think that's key for any successful entrepreneur – that they accelerate their learning by talking with people who had those experience already.
It's much faster and cheaper to learn from mistakes that others make, then ones that you have to make yourself.
Softpedia: During the presentation you talked a bit about piracy and it’s something that I would like to discuss. Have your apps been subject to such practices?
Philipp Kandal: Yes, our apps have been pirated quite a lot (especially in some geographies like Russia). Overall I think people are willing to pay (reasonable) prices for great apps, so at this moment, although we are losing some money, it's great to know that the majority of our customers are honest and paying for quality apps.
Softpedia: The entertainment industry has declared war on piracy. Do you think developers should do the same? How harmful are such practices to a developer? What are the risks?
Philipp Kandal: I don't think that developers should do the same, I think quite the opposite. If developers make it easy to get and pay for your app and you truly deliver value to the users they will pay.
What I think both the developers and the entertainment industry should do is make it easier for people to pay for apps and content (e.g. in Germany not everybody has a credit card, which often means our users have problems paying for our Apps on Google Play).
So if you can solve it that your users can pay for your apps as easily as possible, that helps a lot. As a specific example: In Germany lots of users have Amazon accounts, but no credit card, so by putting our App also on the Amazon Appstore they can pay also without a credit card. We win more money, and the users aren't forced to pirate our apps if they want to use them.
Softpedia: Skobbler apps are fairly successful, especially considering the reach and popularity of tools such as Google Maps. How do you manage to compete with the likes of Google?
Philipp Kandal: We mostly compete by filling needs that people have that are not fulfilled by Google and by relying on OpenData instead of generating everything on our own. The funny stuff is that Google Maps is following the Encyclopedia Britannica model (closed data, which is generated and curated by professional editors, and some selected approved user contributions are taken into account) whereas OpenStreetMap which we rely on is updated like Wikipedia by the users. I think the open model will win in the long-run, but it's going to be a tough and long competition.
Softpedia: Not too long ago, Google acquired Waze. Do you think it will become more difficult for mapping apps to go against them once the integration becomes complete?
Philipp Kandal: I think the market is huge and many people will need alternatives to Google Maps, since monopolies are never a healthy thing. So I am very optimistic what the future brings for us and the entire industry.
Mapping is just in the very early days and thinking about augmented reality navigation, self-driving cars and in-door navigation there is still a lot of territory to explore.