“For us, it’s all about how users are enjoying our products and using them or not,” said Chris Yeh, Box’s senior vice president of platform (pictured). That’s why business- and enterprise-tier customers’ usage of applications determines just how much money developers can make in $rev. Box will provide up to 15 percent of a Box seat price to developers with applications inside of OneCloud, which now has more than 500 apps. Going forward, metrics in addition to usage will also factor in to developer compensation.

The business model differs from those in place at app stores from other Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) providers. Google Apps Marketplace asks app vendors to pay $100 up front, and that’s it. Developers putting their apps on Salesforce.com’s AppExchange have to share their revenues with Salesforce.

Box’s approach gets good marks from Alan Lepofsky, principal analyst at Constellation Research. “What I like about the compensation model … is that it goes beyond simple pay-per-download, and instead rewards partners based on a detailed analysis of which add-ons are actually being used,” he said via email.

The $rev program initially applies for 10 popular pilot apps, including CamScanner, CloudOn and SmartOffice. In six weeks or so, it will roll out to many more mobile apps inside OneCloud.

Box wants to make it easier for mobile developers to come up with apps for Box, with iOS and Android software-development kits (SDKs) that include code for key functions such as accessing files within Box and implementing single-sign-on support. As for Windows Phone, Box is in the process of extending OneCloud to the platform, Yeh said.

Windows Phone or not, the broader concept underlying $rev — tying developer payout to usage — does sound smart, because it compels developers to get solidly behind ongoing efforts to make Box the Dropbox of the enterprise. Box could use all the help it can get there, but if the program succeeds, competitors could institute me-too app stores with similar models.

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The latest crop of startups are trying to use new approaches and data to make the process of finding apps more intelligent and relevant for users. Companies like Xyologic, AppHero and AppAide are hoping to show there’s still plenty of room to innovate in this market though we’ll have to see if any of them can find traction.

Xyologic brings order to app searches

Xyologic, a Berlin-based startup, first got attention as an app analytics company, but last month opened up a consumer business with its beta app search engine. The search engine organizes apps into 700 categories, which is helpful in starting and refining searches. Xyologic also has 100 game genres that users can choose from.

The idea is that while some people might search for a developer by name, most people don’t know exactly what they’re searching for and don’t know how to phrase their searches to find what they want. So as they initiate their query, the additional categories help users narrow down their search to the categories that are appropriate.

Xyologic, which works on Android for now and is moving to iOS soon, also highlights apps that are good but often overlooked. The company has developed its own app scoring system that takes into account user ratings, comments and download figures.

AppHero builds recommendations based on your personality

AppHero for iOS takes a different approach from other recommendation services that often look at the apps a person or their friends have already downloaded. AppHero takes that into account but it focuses on what it can learn from a user’s Facebook activity, including liked pages, interests, updates and shared content. By analyzing this activity and matching it up to suggested apps, AppHero can attempt to surface apps based on a user’s personality.

AppHero was built by Toronto developer Jordan Satok, who also created App of the Day, which let a community of users recommend an app for each day. But Satok realized that blanket recommendations aren’t very helpful for a lot of people because they don’t speak to their particular interests.

AppHero offers first-time users a list of recommended apps. And then it continues to work in the background, pushing out new recommendations based on a user’s activity. If a person, for example, checks in from an airport, AppHero might recommend a good travel app. The service can get smarter over time by observing more Facebook activity and noting what apps a user downloads or decides they’re not interested in.

AppAide finds what people are actually using

AppAide, another iOS app, looks beyond what apps are being downloaded or which apps are popular with your friends. Instead, it tries to see what apps are actually in use. So when users download AppAide, they are contributing their usage stats to the larger AppAide community, which gets trending alerts when one app is being used a lot.

This helps address some of the problems with existing app stores, which can favor downloads. But downloads can be manipulated through big marketing campaigns or hype and that metric doesn’t always reflect what people are really doing.

AppAide is limited by its smaller audience, but it provides a pretty accurate picture of what’s popular now. And it shows some apps that are not well known. The service anonymizes user data and it doesn’t hurt battery performance, said Cody Barbierri, a former VentureBeat writer and the founder of Betabait, which makes AppAide. Down the road, AppAide is looking at offering its usage data to developers to help them see how their apps are being used.

These services will need to compete with existing tools like Appsfire, Quixey, Crosswalk and others along with newer app discovery services from Tapjoy, Fiksu and App-o-day. And they’ll also need to contend with Apple’s more robust app search and recommendations in iOS 6 thanks to its Chomp acquisition. It’s not going to be easy for these news discovery services to stand out, echoing the plight of the mobile apps they’re trying to highlight. But I think these new entrants show some of the different ways that you can optimize search and recommendations.

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App-o-Day, through its iOS app, website and Facebook and Twitter accounts, offers consumers a daily way to discover and download a paid iOS app for free. The app is selected by the staff of Iddiction, the company behind App-o-Day and only one app is featured a day. The idea is is to create a high quality, focused destination to help bring together app users and developers, kind of like a Groupon for apps.

But if this sounds somewhat familiar, it’s because there are plenty of other services offering similar help. Amazon offers a free app each day in its Appstore for Android. Tapjoy launched a portal to help discover new apps and Fiksu launched FreemyApps, which allows users to download sponsor apps and get paid apps for free. This is in addition to other established app discovery services like Freeappaday, AppsFire, AppBrain, Zwapp, Quixey and others.

Nabergoj tells me that App-o-Day will stand out because of its focus on the best apps and its ability to bring one new app deal to users each day. That should keep consumers coming, said Nabergoj, and should also be attractive to developers, who have trouble maintaining their place in the paid ranks of Apple App Store.

I agree that there’s a need to help paid app developers out. While many apps go freemium, developers who want to get paid for a download are increasingly challenged to drive downloads. And with more than half a million apps in the App Store, it’s a tough job for consumers to find new apps.

That’s apparently why Apple bought app discovery engine Chomp, because even with features like Genius and other ways to highlight apps, Apple seems to understand that discovery is still an issue for consumers and thus its developers. But the challenge for App-o-Day is to keep providing the apps that people actually want. Today’s free app is Baldify, more of a novelty app that I’m not sure people are clamoring for.

But as long as we keep developers keep riding the app boom, we’re going to keep seeing more of these services aimed at better discovery. There’s so much money being invested in apps, it’s hard to stay away. Juniper Research forecast app revenues could hit $32 billion by 2015. That’s likely what’s motivating Iddiction’s investors Comcast Ventures, Highland Capital Partners, IDG Ventures and Playdom founder Rich Thompson, who plunked down $3.5 million in November.

Will all of these discovery services survive? No. But it’s just like the app game for developers. Many are diving into the app bonanza but a small minority actually make big money. But with more and more developers and companies piling into app stores, there’s going to be more services touting their ability to make sense of it all.

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Localytics, which analyzed about 30 million users’ in-app purchases, finds that those who conduct an in-app transaction on their first session make an average of 2.8 total purchases. But all other users ultimately make 3.5 purchases throughout the course of their use with an app. Now, some of this is intuitive considering that Localytics previously reported that 26 percent of app users abandon an app after one try. Developers can better monetize a user who sticks around then one who leaves.

But the figures make the case that it’s better to focus on engagement first and build a good relationship with a user before trying to hit them up with an in-app purchase offer. Localytics said only 22 percent make a purchase on their first session while 33 percent do so between two and nine sessions. And 44 percent make their first purchase after 10 or more sessions.  And users take an average of 12 days between the time they download an app and make their first purchase, said Localytics. Getting some money early might seem appealing given how fickle users are and how much competition there is, but Localytics found that only 16 percent of users who made a purchase during their first app session will go on to engage with that app 10 or more times, compared to 26 percent of all app users.

The idea seems to be that it’s more important to establish loyalty first and get people hooked on an app before hitting them up to buy virtual currencies or paying for a premium service. The fact that users often take their time before making a purchase means developers should think about how engaging their app is over weeks and months, not days. Some may still just want a quick pay off, but building a relationship with users can ultimately be more lucrative.

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As the year winds down, here’s a look back at the biggest, most significant things that happened in the apps we use on our smartphones and tablets this year, as well as the most important themes to watch out for come 2012.

In 2011…

We spent more time in apps than browsing. For the first time ever, we used mobile apps more than opening up a browser window to access Web-based services. Flurry Analytics found that users had crossed over in mid-2011; we spent 81 minutes a day in apps versus 74 minutes in a browser. A year earlier, the tally had been an average of 64 minutes in a browser versus just 43 minutes in apps.

Flurry

The iOS App Store proved it is still the place for devs who want to make money. Android phone unit sales are outpacing iPhones, yet two-thirds of the most downloaded apps are free on the Android platform, indicating that users of the Google-powered devices are less interested in buying apps. The developers are the ones who feel this acutely: On average Android appmakers earned 24 cents for every dollar iOS developers make.

The app obsession went international.  As app downloads grew this year, the percentage of them coming from the U.S. shrunk from 55 percent in January to 47 percent by October. In the meantime, China’s percentage of app downloads skyrocketed 870 percent in 2011, Argentina’s shot up 527 percent and Saudi Arabia’s increased  388 percent, just to name a few, according to Flurry. Apple experienced this same trend with both its iOS app sales as well as its tablet and smartphone sales, as China quickly became its second-most important market in 2011.

Google promised, but did not deliver a solution to the Android update problem. A headache for both carriers and developers, Google publicly acknowledged the problem that not all Android devices were getting timely or consistent updates as Google frequently improved its mobile OS, and in May promised a forthcoming set of guidelines to alleviate it. Though several carriers and handset makers promised to work with Google on this, nothing of substance has materialized, and some are already calling the Android Update Alliance “dead.”

In 2012…

More HyLoMo everywhere. “HyLoMo” is a cutesy, shorter way of saying “hyper-local mobile,” a concept that’s already being infused into apps, but should take off in a big way next year. The basic concept: Much of our activity is reasonably local — we tend to shop, eat and travel in the areas near to where we live and work. Smartphones already know where we are, so apps and any service can now take advantage of the river of information that’s now available from a variety of sources about where we tend to go, what we tend to buy and what we want to do. “The amount of real-time data that’s available can change apps into being infinitely more useful,” says IMMR analyst Phil Hendrix, who’s researched this HyLoMo trend at GigaOM Pro (Subscription required). Whether that’s searching, making purchase decisions or looking for travel information, both consumers, businesses and advertisers should benefit.

Voice-control integration will explode. Apple isn’t the first phonemaker to use voice control or a natural language interface, but the iPhone 4S’s Siri, introduced in October, set off a wave of mainstream interest in the technology. And this coming year we’ll likely see much more about voice-based interfaces from its competitors — Google is reportedly working on its own version. Meanwhile, Nuance (whose technology is used in Siri) just bought rival Vlingo, in hopes of attracting more high-profile customers as “virtually every mobile and consumer electronics company on the planet [looks] for ways to integrate natural, conversational voice interactions into their mobile products, applications, and services,” Nuance CEO Mike Thompson said.

NFC grows, but not for payments. It feels like we’ve been betting on NFC for a long time. And in 2012, we’re betting on it again. There’s going to be even more activity, but it will probably not be as much about payments as the other behaviors around paying for things: marketing offers and loyalty rewards/points from vendors. You can already see this in how Google its setting up its Wallet and Offers products. Look for NFC to be weaved also into social networking and contact exchange apps next year.

More niche app stores will emerge. The other side of the coin of Apple and Google’s mobile app stores’ popularity is that it’s hard to find good apps. That means it’s more challenging for developers to get noticed. Apple’s tried to deal with this issue through curated lists. GigaOM Pro’s Colin Gibbs says (Subscription required) for Android this will mean more branded app stores, similar to Amazon’s. The Android market “is so cluttered” that more app stores within it will emerge, he said, “either as pure retail outlets for niche markets” or companies pushing their own content. Potential examples include Best Buy and Electronic Arts. And there’s also a great opportunity for corporate-focused app stores as well.

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According to one source, the Windows Store represents a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it’s necessary to transition Microsoft into the age of tablets and other devices for which programmers — often younger and not very fond of Microsoft — want to use lightweight languages and write new kinds of apps. The Windows Store — the outlet to the world of potential customers on devices other than PCs — encourages C#/XAML and HTML5/JavaScript “Metro-style” applications that have an iPhone-style user interface.

On the other hand, the new process might alienate the 5 million existing .NET developers. Their .NET skills will still work in Windows 8 — especially on the server side or for writing straight desktop applications — but their old applications won’t work, and they’ll have to learn the extensions for the new WinRT runtime. They’ll have to learn HTML5 or use XAML if they want to show up in the Windows Store, which is where all the action will be in a post-PC world.

If developers are going to learn something new, there’s an argument they might as well go with the proven iOS or Android platforms and not risk Microsoft either failing once again in mobile or deciding to kill yet another app strategy like it did with Zune and Silverlight. One could argue it’s also an ideal time to just learn PHP, Python or Ruby on the server side, too. For a good list of developer concerns, check out this TechRepublic article.

Former .NET programmer Karthik Hariharan told me via email, “If HTML5 fulfills the original promise of Java (write once, run anywhere with a consistent experience), then Microsoft is poised to be at the forefront of that new trend with the first viable commercial implementation of it. However, they will do this at the cost of their current developer base which is the large .NET community, who has, in general, responded negatively to the announcement.”

Hariharan added, “due to the consumer and enterprise shift to mobile devices, many former Windows developers have started writing Android and iOS apps. Much of their existing knowledge still applies here, but the apps they build on iOS and Android have larger audiences than those they could reach using Silverlight and .NET for Windows Phone 7.”

In a world of walled gardens, however, that run-anywhere vision rarely pans out. Platform providers like Microsoft, Apple and Google don’t win anything if apps can run anywhere like web sites do, which is why there’s always a hook. Aside from a profit-sharing model designed to lure developers, Microsoft’s hook is WinRT. Former .NET product manager Scott Barnes, now with Riagenic, said it’s designed to provide a native app experience on Windows devices (much like .NET was back in the day), but also limits the portability of even HTML5 apps.

One thing Microsoft definitely has in its favor, he thinks, is the ability to make Windows Store a cross-Microsoft experience that embraces everything from phones to PCs to the Xbox. Microsoft touted its vast consumer footprint during the Windows Store launch, and even said it will leverage Bing to push apps, so it appears to get that message.

Developers come before users, though, so Microsoft has to play its cards right. Ensuring .NET developers have a relatively pain-free transition to the world of Windows 8 and app stores might be critical, because new mobile developers haven’t been flocking to Windows (although Microsoft has paid some to come), and there’s no guarantee they’ll do so now despite Microsoft’s clear courtship.

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We had mobile apps before the iPhone, but the modern mobile app market really began with the App Store in 2008. Three years later, we’re swimming in apps and poised to hit a big milestone: 1 million apps available to users.

Mobilewalla, a mobile analytics firm, said iOS, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7 have collectively hit 991,524 apps available in their stores, with the big milestone set to be reached sometime next week. This is not a complete list, and leaves out Symbian apps and older Windows Mobile and Palm software. But it’s still a reminder of just how big this modern market is and how much it’s grown in just a few years. Developers have already built more than 1 million apps on iOS and Android alone, but a good chunk of apps have been pulled over time.

Apple continues to lead the pack with 59.6 percent of the market, with 591,428 apps and Android follows with 321,020 apps or 32.3 percent of the market, according to Mobilewalla. BlackBerry has 43,544 apps, good for 4.4 percent of the total, while Windows Phone 7 had 35,248 apps or 3.5 percent. Apple’s developers are adding about 1,000 new apps a day while Android developers are uploading about 1,400 a day, said Mobilewalla’s founder and executive chairman Anindya Datta.

He said the market for apps has doubled this year, which started out with 484,000 apps. There are 150,000 app developers and companies responsible for the apps on the market now, according to Datta. The top app categories across all platforms are Entertainment (16.68%), Games (13.36%), Lifestyle (8.02%) and Utilities (7.13%).

Again, we had an app market before the iPhone. But it reached more of a niche audience, nothing like the mainstream phenomenon we’re seeing now. Companies are now making huge money in mobile apps including Rovio, which reportedly turned down a $2.25 billion acquisition offer from Zynga. Gartner has said it expects mobile apps to bring in $15 billion in revenue this year, while Juniper Research believes app revenues can hit $32 billion by 2015. It’s a mobile app world and we just live in it.

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Users can view featured apps and browse by categories like business, call recording, desktop and whiteboard sharing. They can also search by language, keyword cost, platform, app and developers’ names. Skype members don’t actually buy or download the apps through Skype but instead are directed to developer websites or app stores where they can get the software.

Clicking on an app gets a clean description, screenshots, ratings and reviews, and it gives users several ways to share apps on social networks and on email. It’s a nice way for consumers to get acquainted with third-party Skype apps, and it gives developers a way to get some visibility. It also shows that the versatility and power of Skype is in the hands of other developers.

It’s another sign that companies are seeing the value of building up ecosystems around their platforms. And giving developers a way to showcase their wares is a great way to engender support. Last year, Evernote, for example, launched Trunk, a showcase for apps that use its API, part of a larger effort to become a productivity platform. Expect more app directories and stores from companies building their own app ecosystems.

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The company found that Android Market is paced by a number of very prolific app makers, and it also sees more updates per app than the App Store. According to Mobilewalla, which pulled data from May, Android developers that have created more than 100 apps contributed 53 percent of the total apps in Android Market. That’s more than twice the rate in the App Store, where developers with more than 100 apps represented 23 percent of all apps.

That suggests that while Android Market is growing fast, it’s being driven by a smaller set of developers that are pushing out a whole lot of apps, which could be contributing to Android’s reputation for having a lot of low quality apps, copy-cat programs and simple wallpaper apps, though Mobilewalla said wallpaper apps are a relatively small portion of all apps.

Mobilewalla Founder and Executive Chairman Anindya Datta said it suggests there are more “professional” developers in the Android ecosystem, though I’m not sure that’s the case. It could be that Android’s low barrier for uploading apps to the Market makes it easy for devs to flood the store with a lot of apps.

Mobilewalla also found that apps on Android saw an average of 0.8 updates per app compared to 0.3 updates per app on iOS. That suggests Android developers are changing their apps more than twice as often as iOS developers. Datta said the high number on Android doesn’t appear to be bug fixes because among the top apps on both platforms, the ratings are similarly high, suggesting changes aren’t driven by the need to fix errors.

“The only way we can explain that is Android developers are just doing more,” said Datta.

It may be that Android devs are more active on updates, but again, it likely comes down to the review process, and it could also be attributed to fragmentation issues. Android developers don’t have to submit each update for approval by Google, so it encourages fast iterations and continual improvements. That’s something Android developers have told me they like about the platform, because it encourages agile and constant development. Apple, on the other hand, scrutinizes app submissions and also reviews updates, which can slow down the process for developers. So it’s understandable that iOS developers may package their updates together more to limit the number of reviews by Apple.

Android fragmentation may also be an issue here. With so many devices to build for, Android developers need to test for a lot of different configurations. It’s not uncommon to hear about an app that doesn’t work on certain devices, which can necessitate an update if the developer wants to hit those users.

Mobilewalla also found that usage of apps on Android is concentrated on the top apps, while iOS users are more likely to try more apps. The company said that among the top 30 apps, Android Market apps had between 11,000 and 20,000 ratings compared to about 6,000 ratings for the top 30 apps in the Apple App Store. But when you consider the next 210 apps beyond the top 30, Android’s average ratings per app plummets to just a few hundred per app while Apple’s ratings counts remain between 2,000 and 6,000.

That suggests Android users aren’t finding their way to lower-ranked apps, which could be because of discovery problems or a lack of quality as you move down the ranks. It also means it’s tougher for developers on the Android platform if they’re not sitting at the top of the heap already.

Mobilewalla also notes that the types of apps that are popular in each store are quite different with the top categories on Apple being entertainment, lifestyle, finance and sports while the most popular categories on Android are productivity, social networking and utilities.

Overall, the data highlights how different the two stores are. They continue to grow at similar rates, but for developers deciding where to place their bets to make, it’s not as easy as just chasing the growth of Android’s activations. You have to consider that Android may be tougher for smaller devs. And it seems to encourage or require more tinkering on apps after they’ve launched. Android Market got off to a later start than App Store, but it’s growing fast (250,000 apps compared to 425,000 in the App Store). But as we continue to see, it’s not built in the image of the App Store and presents its own opportunities and challenges.

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