Planning to start your own business is a wise investment. The current market indicates that the usage of mobile applications has certainly increased in the past few years. And understandably, the number of available mobile applications has also increased.

However, not every app that is released performs well in the market. You see, while people are looking for quick access to everything, they are not blindly seeking just an app; they want a hassle-free experience and something that properly caters to their requirements.

Not every application can do so, which is also the reason why you might see an app in the niche with 1 million+ downloads while another app in the same category might not even have a thousand downloads.

So, where does the difference lie? Well, there are so many factors that contribute to this difference; however, a core part of that is mobile app market research.

In this post, let us take a deeper dive into mobile app market research and answer the three major questions about it, which are:- What is meant by it? Why is it important, and how to do it effectively?

Without further ado, let’s get started!

What is Meant by Mobile App Market Research?

Knowing is power!

In literal terms, mobile app market research refers to breaking down the mobile app market statistics and available data to gain insights into the current market trends.

It is a process that allows an individual or an organization to identify key gaps and growth opportunities in an industry that can be leveraged to build a product or service.

When planning or starting a new business, the first thing you need to do is make yourself familiar with the market in which you are going to enter.

Sure, you may have a basic idea about the niche and the category of application you want to launch. However, understanding the field to the extent that you can invest money in it takes time.

Market research helps you achieve that conviction to get going with the execution of your idea. The entire process of molding your idea into a plan that can be easily implemented is what mobile app market research is all about.

Mobile App Market Research Types

  1. Primary Research: In this type of research, you are directly responsible for collecting insights.
  2. Secondary Research: This type of research allows you to find an audit of existing reports and data.

For a better understanding of the types of markets, check out the following table –

Primary Research Secondary Research
The first thing to do is conduct market research in depth. Start with basic information like dislikes, habits of the users, etc. In secondary research, I conduct sales and marketing strategy research.
Research the latest technology trends and how current market trends work with your business models. It helps strengthen the product’s core.
This will help you to find the target audiences, and you can find the wants and needs of certain users. You can plan an optimized social media strategy because it helps in developing a practical social media strategy.
Primary research will broaden your mind about the market and the need for your product in the market Do a strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat analysis.
With the help of primary research, you can easily decide on the features that you want to include in the mobile app Research the target audience, optimize social media accounts, know what is trending, and use both organic and paid strategies

Mobile App Market Research: Why is it Important?

Market research is considered the first step of the entire development process. This is because it not only initiates the process but also prepares the entire flow of your application.

While planning the application, you’d need to get your concepts clear, and you’ll need numbers and data to back your decisions.

With market research, you can validate your decision or take a second thought based on the new findings of your research.

Mobile App Market Research

Multiple things make market research a crucial part of the development process. It helps you –

  • Understanding the Competition

If you are entering a new market or planning to expand your existing product into a new niche, then you must understand the competition that you have to deal with.

The research you do helps you understand the core identity of your competitors, how they are performing in the market, what makes them the best, and what their plan is for the upcoming trends in the market.

  • Identify the Opportunities

Based on your research, you will be able to identify the key gaps in the market, which will convert into opportunities for your business. The gaps in the market that your product can focus on fulfilling.

Proper market research allows you to spot the opportunities in the market better, making it more and more effective for you in the long run.

  • Be More Aware of the Trends

During your course of research, you will be able to discover new trends that can be more helpful for your business.

You can find out the latest practices, features, and technologies that are being used in the market to identify the upcoming trends and act on them from your initial days. You can always lead from the front by creating new, fruitful trends.

  • Planning Your Application

Market research for your mobile app gives you enough insights that can help you plan the course of action ahead of its implementation.

You can identify your current situation and set of features, and then plan to build upgrades that will be rolled out later with newer features.

All these features can be planned during your research, giving you a head start on the application development.

  • More Insights on Your Users

When starting a business, you should keep the user type in mind whom you plan to target. In order to identify the right user for your application, you need to ensure that you are aware of the user attributes.

Studying market research and going through existing users of a similar solution to understand how they can be attracted to your platform without spending too much on user acquisition.

Mobile App Market Research

These are the core reasons that make mobile app market research important. You can even consider them as the core reasons why you should do mobile app market research in the first place.

How to Start a Mobile App Market Research Guide?

Understanding the importance of mobile app market research, you may be wondering if there’s a specific way to approach market research. Well, it is not set in stone that you must perform the market research in a certain way. However, there are things that you can include in your mobile app.

How to Start a Mobile App Market Research Guide

To make the most out of the time you spend on market research, you should follow the given steps –

Step 1: Start with the Basics

The first step is to start by scratching the surface and understanding what you are getting into. Use a quick Google search to find out the current top players, identify the key features that the app offers, and check the existing market stats. This is just the beginning of your research, as all of this information is available to you with a click of a button.

However, data plays a vital role in helping you relate to your targeted audience. Narrowing down your app’s target market helps you to focus on market research.

Step 2: Move to Advanced Research Tools

Some methods are relevant and help you in your research, like primary and secondary, which we have discussed above.

However, those methods require you to access some tools that can help you with more in-depth research.

Check out the tools below –

  • Survey

A survey is the best way to do market research. Now the question is how to conduct a survey. Start by giving a series of questions to a defined group of people to gain valuable information. This method is highly effective and easy to understand the minds of potential users. Moreover, when you receive feedback, use it to find out the poor and good critiques of the app. If you get negative feedback, don’t get demotivated by it. This is part of the process that will help you move further. Just make sure your survey length is around 10 minutes.

  • Social Media Listening

Another method is using social media listening. All around the world, people are using social media. There is so much free information on social media that you don’t even realize it. You can monitor social media apps and only focus on finding things that are relevant to your brand. This will help you gain insight into user behavior with products like yours, and you’ll identify the pain points related to those products.

  • Target Audience Insights

You also need to see the target audience that prefers certain mobile devices. If 80% of your target users use iPhones, then you don’t have to invest in Android apps. You can focus on Apple users and create iOS apps. iOS app development is easy when you have a team of expert developers.

  • Google Trends for What’s Popular

One last tool, the Google Trends tool, is free and simple to use. This tool is amazing for searching trends around the world. So if you are planning to launch your mobile app in other countries, there is nothing better than this tool. You can easily identify the latest trends, stats of users, and how you can get more traffic for your app.

All in all, these tools can help you perfectly analyse customer needs and identify the mistakes of your competitors. You can hire dedicated developers and build successful mobile apps.

Step 3: Collect relevant data

In current times, the world is moving at a fast pace. When you conduct research, the information should be fresh, trustworthy, and relevant. Now, to do mobile research, you can collect relevant data with the help of online tools like Statista, Data.ai, Google Trends, and many more.

Moreover, they provide app-related data. You can find all the data related to the app download, competitive growth analysis, and top apps by revenue. This will help you narrow down your research to the little information that is free, but most of it is accessible with a paid plan.

Step 4: Ask Relevant Questions

When researching the market, asking relevant questions is a key practice to follow. You can always

When you do a competitor analysis, focus on the product as well as the company. This will help you in determining your competitors, and as finding them is easy, they are already working in the same industry as your niche. So finding them is not a hard task.

In addition, when you gather information, just ask these questions:

  • What is their business model?
  • Does their app solve the user’s problems
  • Best and worst features of their app
  • What is their marketing strategy?
  • Identify the gaps in their business model
  • How much profit and revenue did they make last year?

Some tools, like Mediatoolkit or Apptopia, can help you collect data much more easily. In the end, it is better for you in the process of developing a mobile app.

Step 5: SWOT analysis

We have already discussed the SWOT analysis. It is the best method among all for doing market research. This will help you clear all the doubts related to the competition.

SWOT refers to “Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats”. Just focus on this term, widen your horizons, and do the analysis of several companies. Doesn’t matter if it is big or small.

Moreover, make use of the SWOT analysis method to ensure your success when you finish your market research with this method.

Based on the above steps, compile all your work in one place and compare it. Start implementing the information you have gathered to maximize its effectiveness during the development and launch of your application.

Mobile App Market Research Guide

We are sure that with the help of all the methods, you’ll find gaps between things you find out in the research. It’s better to find mistakes in the starting process rather than find them in the end.

Other than these steps, you can always go for A/B testing if you have that kind of data/product for your business. You can even choose to build an MVP and share it with a focus group to gain more hands-on insights from the users.

Need Help With Mobile App Market Research? Nimble AppGenie is Here to Help!

With the help of the above steps and all the information you have read so far, you might have understood the importance of performing a full-fledged market research. While it appears to be individually important, there are times when businesses and individuals are unable to perform it diligently.

Be it due to a lack of time or a lack of insights on how to conduct thorough research, skipping the process or doing it half-heartedly is not an option. If you are looking for ways to get things done faster, hiring an app development company can be a great decision.

We at Nimble AppGenie have an experienced team of developers and analysts who are capable of performing insightful research without you having to worry about the insights. Our experts use advanced tools and best practices for top mobile app market research solutions.

Reach out today to experience the change!

Conclusion

With mobile app market research done correctly, you can make your business powerful enough to make it the best available solution in the business. Perform the research properly and identify the opportunities for your application.

Hope the market research guide helps you understand its importance and paves the way for you to perform diligent research on your own. In case you have any questions, feel free to contact us. Thanks for reading, good luck!

FAQs

To conduct diligent market research for your mobile application, you need to start by identifying the target market and finding trusted resources. Make sure that you note down all the ups and downs in the market, break down all the available stats, and check your competitors for the best results.

There are several tools that you can utilize to research the mobile app market, including Generative AI (ChatGPT, Perplexity AI, Grok AI, etc.), Google Trends, Market Surveys, and more.

No, relying on AI completely is not fruitful, as there are different issues such as inconsistency, limited access, and, in some models, older data. You need professional assistance to finish the research diligently, as you might have gaps in your final research.

Well, while there are no specific types of mobile app market research, you can consider the modes of research to be distinct. Primary and Secondary research are usually the types in which this type of research is distinguished.