Seizing opportunities: AppScatter discusses its unique app store distribution platform

With Google’s recent move to allow gambling apps into a number of European Google Play stores, the industry consensus is that this could well prove a “game-changer”. Mobile-forward operators such as LeoVegas, for example, are plotting huge mobile app engagement campaigns to drive customer deposits in coming quarters.

However, Apple and Google only represent 45% of global app downloads worldwide. In light of this, start-up appScatter has developed a mobile strategy platform for operators to distribute their legacy apps across 50 of the world’s most prominent online stores that make up much of the other 55%. The system tests the compatibility of these apps across the spectrum of stores it is linked to, informing operators of exactly what they need to adjust to suit the criteria.

The firm has partnered with governance and compliance IT service Abilott to specifically target online gambling companies and ensure the apps are compliant in the varying geographical stores.

Jason Hill, appScatter sales director

AppScatter sales director Jason Hill, along with Abilott MD Ian Beauchamp and operarations and technical director Steve George, outline the distinctive differences between app stores and how the platform will act as a distributor for the hugely saturated Chinese market, which has long been a veritable grey area for gambling operators.

EGR Technology: Where did the appScatter concept come from?

Jason Hill (JH): The business idea for appScatter came from founder Phillip Marcella who had a company back in 1997, which was an online conferencing firm. In 2002, Phillip built his first app, before Apple and Google, and back then it was the old Casio handheld devices that those apps ran on, written in Windows CE.

He then went on to build apps for companies such as Sky, Bupa and Trainline. What he found while he was building these apps was customers would ask for sales and download analytics, so he built an internal tool enabling him to give the customers log-ins so they could gather the information themselves.

EGR Technology: How mature was the app development market at this point?

JH: When Apple and Google came onto the scene, apps just exploded. At the time there were 30 other stores outside of Google and Apple. Phillip found that if an app had 10,000 downloads on Google Play, it would get up to 20,000 downloads from the other stores combined.

We had this internal tool where you could manage the apps and the opportunity with these alternative stores. Phillip then started working on the automation of those stores. In 2013, it was agreed that appScatter was a viable business plan and in 2014 the first line of code was written. In January of this year we launched the product, which supports 50 app stores globally, but we monitor 300.

Users can distribute their apps via the appScatter platform, and are able to check for its compatibility across all the stores the platform partners with. It can then be launched across the stores it’s compatible with. It takes away all the time and hassle.

EGR Technology: Why do so many app stores exist and which do you support?

JH: App stores are broken into four areas; the first is operating systems. Apple, Android, BlackBerry and Windows all have an app store, then you’ve got device manufacturers, so Samsung, HTC and LG all have app stores as well. But what’s interesting with this is that in Asia Pacific countries they are refusing to pay the Google licence and by doing so they keep the cost of the handset down. The phones only come with the Samsung store or the HTC store. There’s a massive market there. Those device manufacturers also make smart TVs and they all have an app store and we distribute to those as well. Then you have your independent stores, and we class Amazon as one of those.

EGR Technology: What about some of the less well-known app stores?

JH: Opera started in 2002 as a browser and they have been buying smaller app stores, and under their umbrella company they have circa 20 sub stores including discovery stores, which allow apps to be more easily found and not get lost among the 2.4 million apps on the iOS store. The fourth area is mobile carriers like Vodafone and T-Mobile.

Another independent is Tencent in China, they’ve got over 800 million active users and about six million apps. They are probably larger than Apple in some respects. There are around 20 stores in China that are of similar elk.
What’s interesting is MTN in Africa is probably one of the largest stores there, and they have a different banking system to us. It’s all done by carrier billing. If you go to the MTN store and download an app the cost is just added to your monthly bill.

EGR Technology: How does the platform work from a customer-facing side?

JH: Within the search functionality you can see the release history of the app and if they’ve made updates since then. We’ve also got an app store directory, which is the only one in the world. It’s an educational tool that will be available to non-paying customers. We only start to charge a client when they want to distribute an app. On their dashboard they can see the description of each store, what the registration process is, what the submission process is and what description they require.

Every store is different. The Apple store allows you to put 4,000 characters in, and Google is 3,000. Some stores you have to add additional keywords while some will pick them out of the description. When we check for compatibility the system will tell you what to do to be compatible with each store. We also collect rankings from all the stores we feature. In the search feature you can track the daily downloads of all other apps on appScatter, and you can further filter it by store, territory and device or by operating system, content type and transaction type.

What is good for developers is that if they build an app and want to release it, we can go and find a similar game and say which stores it was launched on and in which countries, using these keywords and images and this is how it is ranked. From that competitors can start to forecast what downloads they’re going to get. For real-money gaming apps the system allows them to really target the areas they want to go into.

EGR Technology: Why is Google’s move to allow real-money gambling apps such a game-changer for the industry?

Steve George of Abilott

Steve George (SG): One of the biggest features for an Android app is the quality, perceived security and real reliance of it. With an iOS app it’s more difficult to decompile it and recompile it. With an Android app you can take the native code and see if it’s been developed using a generic tool. One of the key steps for hackers is that they will decompile your app and recompile it so that the front-end is identical and they will purposely put a memory leak bug within that part of the app. By allowing Google Play to distribute the app you’re qualifying that this is the real app from the real company. A lot of people that I know who do substantial gambling only use iPhones for that reason. With Google Play you will always know that the app is real.

EGR Technology: What is the criteria that real-money gambling apps have to meet to be featured on these app stores?

JH: Firstly it depends whether the app store allows real-money gaming. Some stores distribute globally but they won’t feature gambling apps because they are distributed in countries that don’t allow real-money gaming. Also some stores are only for children. As long as the store allows you to distribute by territory then operators are free to feature on them.

EGR Technology: How does the partnership with Abilott ensure gambling apps are properly regulated through the platform?

SG: Where you have a testing facility, which is independently testing the apps to ensure they are fit for purpose, you have technical standards that you have to meet. Abilott is putting together a comparison to meet these technical standards. If you meet the standards of the UK Gambling Commission, you by default pass certain elements within Italy. Where you need to include those elements to be featured in these stores, we want to build into the app store platform via a plug-in enabling the same thing to be able to feature in the Italian store, or the Spanish store. We have our own real-money gaming tool that plugs into the dynamic side of regulation and keeps companies online and compliant across the mobile estate.

The platform enables them to display that they have met the criteria for compliance. The regulator can check out the app and immediately see which countries and stores it’s distributed in to ensure it complies.

EGR Technology: Why has Google only lifted its ban for certain jurisdictions?

JH: They’ve been under a lot of pressure from the government. In order to do it nationally in the US there would have to be a federal law passed. Google and Apple make their money by taking 30% of the app revenue, but it’s very difficult to do that with a real-money gaming app and that’s one of the reasons why they restricted it.

EGR Technology: How have you been marketing the product?

Ian Beauchamp (IB): We have started reaching out to a few of our existing customers like Betfair, Gamesys and Jackpotjoy. For us we felt the game-changer was Google Play because we need gaming companies to start playing against each other. If you have a company which thinks they’re particularly big in a jurisdiction but their downloads are half of what somebody else’s might be, you’re immediately giving them the data they need.

Ian Beauchamp of Abilott

We need to generate that competition among the gambling companies to show that the analytics you can achieve with appScatter are greater than what you can achieve on your own. It’s an interesting market to be in for distribution. The way the regulators enforce how they distribute their apps can also change, so there are advantages to being on appScatter in the event of any vulnerability or exploitation happening.

JH: Another great market for real-money gaming apps is China. At the moment it’s very hard to have an app in China because of the way they don’t allow cash to leave the country. We’ve found partners that we’re just tying up with now in Shenzhen, who are based at the same business park as Tencent, and we’re acquiring 49% of that business and that will become appScatter China. We’ll then be able to distribute apps into the Chinese market and localise them for real-money gaming companies. Also we will be allowed to distribute the Chinese apps. We’ll act as a gateway for western apps to go over there and eastern apps to come over here. We’ll be the first tech company doing that.