Is Kindergarten Math Successful?

Looking back at products that were successful, it is easy to say they were good, useful products. Look at this graph showing the growth of Android. It is clearly exponential growth. There is an inflection point at which it went from being linear i.e. slow and steady growth and took off.

Many successful products in technology show this type of exponential growth. But, when you are in the early stages of the product, looking at your linear graph, you may just be sitting at the early part of the exponential growth - that's linear. Or, linear - slow and steady growth is all that you may achieve. There is no way to tell in advance how your product or service will do in the market.

For Kindergarten Math, is the growth of active installs is starting to turn up?

Does the recent growth of daily installs looks somewhat exponential?
Not yet, I think. But, I'll be waiting, watching and looking for inflection point(s).

Usage and earnings are just one way of defining success. Another is the joy creating something I am proud of. In that sense, Kindergarten Math is already successful.

Will Kindergarten Math be available on the iPhone soon?

A few people have asked me if Kindergarten Math is available for the iPhone. Not yet. Question is should I work on porting Kindergarten Math to iPhone now? I don't have a lot of resources - time or money. So, I have to chose whether I use those resources to build another android app for kids. Or, do I convert Kindergarten Math app to iPhone.

Android vs iPhone Development
Kindergarten math is a highly interactive application. It uses the full power of a 2 dimensional touch surface to create a realistic experience for the kids. To be quick to respond, it is written in native java for the android. I coded it using a 4 year old linux machine. It did not require me to buy new hardware. For testing the app, I borrowed my husband's 6 months old android phone. On days that I wanted to work on my app, he carried my old Nokia phone instead of his Android.

iPhone has a different native system. To create the same app for the iPhone, it must be rewritten using iPhone's native language - Objective C. Objective C is specific to Apple. It has it's own proprietary tooling, debuggers and ecosystem. I will need to invest time and money to learn it. Any iPhone apps need to be written using the Mac. And, they need to be tested on an iPhone. Just the hardware to get started writing an iPhone app is at least $2000. It is not a problem for someone who is already an iPhone fan. But, I have never owned an iAnything.

Android vs iPhone Market
Android is ~50% of the smart-phone market. iPhone is about half of the android market, give or take a few percent points. iPhone app sales, however, are higher than Android app sales. iPhone owners buy more apps than Android owners.

In tablets, iPad has 60% of the market share, and android has 40%. The trend, however,  is in android's favor. Question is, will android take over iPad this year... just as it did iPhone last year?

My choice
The real question is...
     Do I want to reach the largest audience - Android?
     Or, do I want to make the most money - iPhone?

I would rather reach a larger audience, and have more kids learn math and logic. So, I'll build the next Kids App on Android.

I wish I did not have to make the choice. I wish I could publish my app on both Android and iPhone. I wish Apple would run an Android VM on it's phones similar to how Blackberry is starting to do. But, I have little hope of that happening. So, I pick Android.

Android App Sales Taxes in Washington State

Infinut is based in Washington State. Turns out Washington state is one of the few states to tax sales of digital goods - and that includes Kindergarten Math.

10 days after posting Kindergarten Math for sale, I got a call of Washington department of revenue. I had made all of $10 or so at this point. It was a bit pre-mature. But, since then, I have been researching the Washington state tax rules. Here's what I have found so far.

Retail sales within the state of Washington by a Washington state company are taxable for B&O tax (~0.5%) and Retail tax (6.5%). I had 2 sales in Washington in Dec - $1.98 which I must report on the company's state tax quarterly return. Google market provides information about the state where the sale happened, so I can figure out which ones are in Washington. It also allows me to set tax percentage for the state, so, buyers are charged Retail tax if they live in Washington.

Amazon market does not provide detailed information about the sales. Also, they make it clear that what they are paying us is royalties. Royalties are taxed via B&O tax (~0.5%) in Washington state, so, I will report all amazon sales of Kindergarten Math as such.

I am still not sure if the city also charges retail tax on digital goods. It will be time to call the Department of Revenue at tax filing time to verify that I got it right the first time.

Amazon Android Market - Pop and Flop?

Since I wrote this post, I have discovered a bug in my code that prevented sound instructions from playing for 99% of the users. The update with the fix just went live on Amazon Market - 2/16. Since then, the conversion has gone up considerably. I have posted the numbers here. The below is no longer correct since the upgrade.

Kindergarten math lite on Amazon's android market started off with a pop. It reached 400 downloads a day during the holiday weekend. But, since then, it's all been downhill. The ranking for Kindergarten math within amazon's market has not changed much during that time. So, I have to assume, the same story is true for the rest of the kids apps on amazon market.

for the last few weeks, it's about 100 downloads a day for the free app, and about 1 order a day for the paid app. That gives a conversion ratio of about 1%. The conversion ratio on the Google android market is closer to  3%.

I wonder if the conversion ratio is affected by the buggy Test Drive the App on your computer capability that amazon provides. It does not play sound correctly. Or, have Kindle Fire sales dropped?

Full vs. Lite App

Nothing in life is free. Developers also need to earn.

There are two revenue models for content on the web, and for apps. Predominant one is advertising supported revenue. Second revenue model popular for apps is to have a free lite version that demonstrates the app, but is restricted in the number of times or types of things or the amount of time it allows the user to use the app. For a Kids educational app, advertising is not suitable. It is distracting as well as inappropriate. So, we decided in favor of having a lite app, and a low cost full version.

Kindergarten Math Lite is the free version with 25 exercises. Kindergarten Math is the full version with 250 exercises. The conversion ratio is the percentage of people that buy the full version vs. ones that use the lite version. Typically conversion rates in the android market are 1-5%. Kindergarten math lite has about 10,000 downloads. Kindergarten Math has roughly 300 downloads. So, the conversion ratio is about 3% for the Google android market.

One very interesting difference is in the conversion rate for phones vs. tablets -
For android 2.x (phone operating system), Kindergarten Math has ~125 active installations, and Kindergarten Math Lite has ~5000 active installations. So, conversion ratio is about 2.5%.
For android 3.x (tablet operating system), Kindergarten Math has ~70 active installations, and Kindergarten Math Lite has ~500 active installations. So, the conversion ratio is about 14%.

That is quite a difference. Does this mean I should start writing games optimized for tablets? I am not sure. It is not sufficient data to say. But, this year is supposedly the year of the android tablet. I am curious how the ratios and totals will look at the end of the year.

Sprinting past ten thousand mark

Kindergarten Math Lite crossed ten thousand downloads on the Google android market today. There is additional four thousand downloads on the Amazon android market of Kindergarten Math Lite. It took about 2 months since release to get here.

Getting here was more about building the app that kids like, not about marketing it. People who liked it have been kind enough to post good reviews. So far, this is a market where apps sell themselves. Once there are larger number of publishers and apps per topic, I expect it would require more marketing to get thousands of downloads.

There is about 220 downloads a day on average for Kindergarten Math Lite on the Google android market plus another 100 a day on the Amazon android market. At this rate, if it sustains, it will take about 6 months to get to the next point of fifty thousand downloads on the Google android market. That should be sometime in July. It will be interesting to see what happens between now and then.

The ratio of actives to downloads is about 62%. Percentage of actives was higher in the beginning, and has been slowly going down. People who are done with it are un-installing it slowly. The chart showing total active installations is below.

Along with crossing the 10,000 download mark, the ranking of Kindergarten Math Lite jumped about 10 places higher on the google android market for the search for Kids Math today too!

First month of Paid Kids App on Android Market

I released Kindergarten Math on the android market on Dec 14th, a month after the release of the free (lite) app with the same name but lesser content. I changed the free app to direct to Kindergarten Math for customers who complete the free app... about a week later.

The first week was slow. Without the thousands of users of Kindergarten Math Lite, getting any indication of the presence of the new full version, there wasn't much sales. Sales picked up when the free app was used to direct to the paid app.

For the first month from Dec 14 to Jan 14, sales were roughly 250 copies - that comes to about $170 after market fees. It is my first $100+ that I have made from directly selling software to consumers. I know it's not much to brag about, but, I couldn't be prouder of it.

Sales are mostly US customers, about 90% at this point. France and Australia are next in sales. Followed by Canada, UK, Thailand, Indonesia. I am happily surprised by the broad appeal and the international market that Android phones and tablets provide for me... just sitting in my house, writing away software for kids I love.

Sales are almost twice as high on weekends and holidays than on weekdays. More time with kids, results in more sales, I think. The peaks in the graph below are weekends, and the valleys are weekdays.

Android's many markets

When I built Kindergarten Math, I thought there was only one market - the android market run by google. Within the last few months, I have been finding more. I must have made it to some marketing list for App developers. I am starting to get invites to post Kindergarten Math to them recently. Here are the ones I have looked at so far.

Google's Android Market
Is the only one I knew about when I started. It is low cost for a publisher- only $25/year and a publisher can publish as many apps as they want. They take a percentage for processing the order, same as all the other markets. About 1 in 20 orders on the google market fails because of some download error. And then customers are not able to re-try for 7 days. Google market has it's serious flaws as far as commerce side is concerned.

However, it's openness is admirable. Also, having put in so much into Android and making it free and freely available, google deserves to make money from it's market.

Amazon's Android Market
Amazon a serious contender as an android market, mostly because of amazon proven retail strategy. But, Android is a whole new beast. It wants freedom. If it wanted to live in a walled garden, wouldnt' it just be an Apple instead. Amazon's desire to control both it's suppliers and it's customers may not work here. We will have to see. Amazon had to backtrack and allow access to Google's Android Market on Kindle Fire.

Amazon was offering $50 back per developer for publishing to it's market back in Nov, 2011. It is also free to publish your app for the first year. Second year, it's supposed to go up to $99/year. It is all evolving too fast to predict what will happen next.

HeyZap
HeyZap contacted me only a couple of weeks after posting Kindergarten Math lite. They are a games store with a social bent. I haven't tried it ...mostly because I am not a gamer or too social. It has some concept of checking-in when you are playing a game. We can broadcast to our friends what game we like by playing it. Game developers get some free viral advertising with it. But, social check-in is not suitable for little kids. So, not for Kindergarten Math.

Android Tapp
Recently launched their market. They used to do free reviews of apps. Now they want to get a share of selling them too. I think they only do paid apps. I am unsure of market share, and if there is a point posting Kindergarten math on it.

I think I submitted LocalByUs app to it to get a review at Android Tapp. But, it wasn't reviewed. I dont' blame them.

Barnes and Noble Nook Market
Barnes and Noble is trying to be Amazon. They are trying to outdo them in control. As a developer, I can't even read their documentation unless I register first.

The Nook does not allow access to the Google's Android Market. I think B&N hope that Nook sales will drive people to their market. From my point of view, their market is driving off Nook sales. We thought about buying a Nook, but, decided against it, primarily because it is so customized and restricted. Still, it does seem to have a lot of books available on it.

I am still debating whether to post Kindergarten Math to it or not. I am not sure if it's worth the effort. But, who knows. Maybe I'll just give it a try.

Cius Market
Is Cisco's venture. They want to own the Enterprise App market. I am not sure why they invited me to put Kindergarten Math on it. Desperation? Cisco getting into it is a bit odd. I would've just thought it would make sense for them to build Enterprise Apps, not a market.

Seems like a lot of people want a piece of the android market. It makes it hard for a developer to figure out where to post the app. It may look fragmented for now. But, most likely only a few... I'd predict a maximum of 3 general purpose markets will survive. Some competition is good for publishers too.

Most of the markets come with their own Developer Kits to integrate with. Amazon has one, Nook another, Heyzap, cius, ...all have their dev kits. It is hard for a developer to integrate with all of them.

It is not developers like me who will decide the success or failure of the markets. It is customers like me that will.

Finding my team, building what I know, doing what I love

Steve Jobs said he looked in the mirror every day and asked himself -
    If I were to die today, would I want to be doing what I am doing today?
If the answer was No too many times in a row, he knew it was time for change.

Almost a year ago, after a year of struggling at Expedia, I finally decided it was time for a change. I could have found a job working for a different large software company, but, I am convinced it is not for me. I still love creating software, just not the politics that comes with corporate america.

So, with the support of my husband, I have been trying to launch my own projects for the last year

1. GardenNut.com - was a website for exchanging or selling plants from home.
2. LocalByUs.com - was a website for sharing what's happening hyper-locally.
3. LocalByUs app - was the supporting app for reading or writing posts.

Each of the above projects have now failed and I have shut them down. GardenNut.com and LocalByUs.com cost $200/mo to keep the servers running, and yielded about $5/mo in ad revenue. The local by us app had all of 21 downloads, only 6 of them active after 3 months of being on the market. The graph belows shows it clearly.

My fourth project is building educational apps for kids. The idea was my husband's. He was looking for fun and educational app for our 5 year old, and he couldn't find much that was suitable. Many of the apps required internet connection and access to your private information. He wanted to build one that was honest, but, working full-time supporting us, he couldn't find the time.

In the meantime, I attended an android app hackathon. My main purpose in being there was to promote LocalByUs app that I had created. The hackathon required us to create something during the 8 hours of the hackathon. I decided to use my husband's idea and create a simple maze for the kids to play. That maze later became the numbers maze in Kindergarten Math.

My daughter loved the maze I had created. She asked me to create some more. And I did. Along with counting, sequence, addition and subtraction exercises for her to play. In the meantime, I got a software development contract offer that, not having earned for a few months, I could not refuse. I published Kindergarten Math Free before starting work.

Unlike the projects I did before, I built Kindergarten Math for my kids. I wanted to share my love of math and logic with my daughters. In creating Kindergarten Math, I found the team I work best with - my family. I used to worry that my kids were not developing the fundamentals that help them enjoy math and logic. Now, I know I can keep building apps that they enjoy and learn from.