External Forces/Drivers

In order to diversify its apps into different selling categories, whether Company X would be able to adjust its business model and consequently expand its customer segments would be a critical external driver. Implementing SWOT analysis, we discovered that besides development fees and licensing fees, one of 91APP’s important revenue streams is sharing merchandises’ transaction fees with their clients (App developers). As long as the 91APP’s clients sell their service or product each time, they would be able to split the profit. This gives 91APP strong incentives and aggression in broadening its app selling categories as many as possible, as they may then receive more customers and consistent transaction fees. Eventually, this business model led 91APP developed a “whole sale app mall” platform. Even though Company X may not receive transaction fees like 91APP, but the more customer segments and customers they have cultivated, the more consistent their revenue streams would be, and the more sustainable their app developers’ apps would survive in the market.

Given the endeavor to diversify across app selling categories, it is also crucial that Company X takes a lead in the less popular app categories and the game category.

Lee and Raghu (2014) evidenced that investing in less-popular app categories is an

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important app-level attribute that app’s sustainability depend on. Last, “game category”

generates the most download in both Google Play and App Store. It is the largest app category (OECD, 2013).

Focusing on “App High Ranks (High rating)”

In order to have high app ranks & ratings, Company X would need the ability to perform “Copycat strategy” when it needs to. In a research, Lim and Bentley (2012) investigated common mobile app developers’ strategies, evaluating them by downloads received, app diversity, and adoption rate. Lim and Bentley (2012) used AppEco to conduct this experiment. AppEco is the first Artificial Life model of model application ecosystems. Among all the experimented strategies, the Copycat strategy performed the most successful. The Copycat strategy received the highest average downloads, total downloads and average downloads per app. In this paper, Copycat strategy refers to developers copying apps in the Top Apps Chart. The developers are less creative but aim to achieve as many downloads as possible.

Focusing on “Continuous Quality Updates”

In order to provide with continuous quality updates, Company X would need the ability to perform “Optimiser strategy” in the long-run and maintain its talent pools.

Under the research conducted by Lim and Bentley (2012), they revealed the fact that

“Copycat strategy” enabled individual developers to be most successful in the short run (mentioned previously). However, it is the “Optimiser strategy” that enabled developers to become more successful as they develop more apps. In this paper,

“Optimiser strategy” refers to the developers making adjustments on already-developed best apps each time. The developers would learn from and improve on the existing best apps. In other words, they would continuously update their apps’

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qualities. In their experiment, they evidenced that developers who performed

“Optimiser strategy” based on download feedback increasingly met the needs of the users. In addition, among all the strategies, “Optimiser strategy” offers the highest number of features desired by the users. In order to implement the “Optimiser strategy”

and provide with clients continuous quality updates, right talents recruiting would be a critical external driver (Huntley, 2011). More importantly, right talents staying in Company X is critical, too. As mentioned in SWOT analysis, Company X’s team is small: The sudden absence or departure of their talents would harm Company X significantly.

Focusing on “Demand for 3^rd Party App Developers”

Since the demand for 3^rd party app developers mainly depends on how intense the competition is and how high the failure rate among mobile app companies is, and that Company X is a Taiwan-based company, an important external driver for Company X is the extent of Taiwan’s app development market’s competition and failure rate among mobile app companies.

Axes of Uncertainty

After determining the external forces’/drivers’ analysis illustrated above, this thesis aims to evaluate their attributes by the following two indicators:

1. Impact Level: This refers to the impact that the external force poses on the decision area. If the external force’s impact level is high, then the external force has critical influences on the decision area.

2. Uncertainty Level: This refers to how unpredictable the external force would be after being influenced by the overall external environment. If the

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uncertainty level is high, the future outcome of the external force would be hardly predictable.

After discussing with Company X’s CEO who has deep sophistication within its industry, the external forces/drivers with the highest impact and uncertainty level are summarized in Figure 4.3,

Impact Level

High

 Expand Customer Segments

 Less Popular Categories

 Competition &

Failure Rate Medium

Low

Low Medium High

Uncertainty Level

Figure 4.3 Target Company’s Impact-Uncertainty Matrix

The axes of uncertainty are chosen among the external forces/drivers with the highest impact level and uncertainty level. According to Figure 4.3, we would choose the three external forces/drivers at the upper right to serve as the three dimensions of the axes of uncertainty. With the chosen forces/drivers, we would have 2³=8 basic scenario logics serving as the scenario writing’s core framework.