Any Smartphone Apps Developpers Here?

[French jurist]

Basically, I have an idea of an app which could work out.

- In the service category
- Potential users per year: 100 millions (actual users would be way less of course, even 1/2% would be fine)
- Does not exist yet (but maybe someone already had a similar idea. It's a good & simple idea so that's likely)

I'm tempted to make it real (even can fund it, no problem), but I have no XP in that field except I was programming/hacking on my Apple //e back in 1984 (lol... wow).

About the idea itself, on the Legal field. Any way to protect it? Intellectual property rights vary a lot between countries (the US copyright applies in a much broader way than the French "droit d'auteur" for instance). Or is it needed to be the first to create the app & get such a dominant position on the market that you're "untouchable"?

Also, for the set-up, better be alone & hire external people (I can be good in some fields while I suck in others, obvious) or make a partner team (like a coder, a PR/marketing person + me)?

About monetizing it (app would be free of course): only ads/banners? Other ways to monetize such a service app? If you reach a daily worldwide traffic of 400.000 unique users (no idea...), how much you get for each banner displayed? and each click on those?

Thanks for your comments

 

[Somewhereinba]

Basically, I have an idea of an app which could work out.

- In the service category
- Potential users per year: 100 millions (actual users would be way less of course, even 1/2% would be fine)
- Does not exist yet (but maybe someone already had a similar idea. It's a good & simple idea so that's likely)

I'm tempted to make it real (even can fund it, no problem), but I have no XP in that field except I was programming/hacking on my Apple //e back in 1984 (lol... wow).

About the idea itself, on the Legal field. Any way to protect it? Intellectual property rights vary a lot between countries (the US copyright applies in a much broader way than the French "droit d'auteur" for instance). Or is it needed to be the first to create the app & get such a dominant position on the market that you're "untouchable"?

Also, for the set-up, better be alone & hire external people (I can be good in some fields while I suck in others, obvious) or make a partner team (like a coder, a PR/marketing person + me)?

About monetizing it (app would be free of course): only ads/banners? Other ways to monetize such a service app? If you reach a daily worldwide traffic of 400.000 unique users (no idea...), how much you get for each banner displayed? and each click on those?

Thanks for your comments

I have a friend who makes apps, send me a PM if you want his contact info.

 

[thorsten]

Legal stuff: I'd guess its hard to protect the idea if its a simple one as you stated. In many areas, web-based apps/services follow a winner takes it all mentality, as you often require a critical mass (e.g. user profiles for facebook, customers/vendors for ebay, ...), so growing quickly often gives you a significant advantage.

Setup: Team >>> External people. You won't just have a sketch and a coder programs it and that's it. It's always a process with a lot of changes on the way and you want to be able to make those quickly and have the knowledge about your software/service in-house.

Monetizing: Depends extremely on the idea. Most common ones are ads/banners, usage fees, subscriptions or combined models (free version with limited features and premium version). Regarding rates you might check google ads for example.