Mobile apps have become very popular in these times of technological advancement. In just a few years, mobile apps continue at a rapid rate, on the production and adoption sides. Good thing for consumers, since they have a lot of options to choose from. However, the trend is becoming a headache for vendors as they struggle to stand-out in an overcrowded market.

In a recent study by Deloitte, mobile apps experienced a rapid growth rate. There are already about 350,000 apps available in the Apple App store and iTunes. Close rival Android Market has about 250,000 apps. Now that Nokia and Microsoft are teaming up, the competition gets more complicated.

According to Deloitte, it’s actually the branded apps that struggled to gain traction in the mobile apps market. They were often outperformed by apps that are relatively unheard off. Consumers feel that most of these apps are just for advertising purposes and does not offer significant value. Deloitte says that only less than 1% of apps from big healthcare and consumer brands have been downloaded more than one million times and only 20% had been downloaded enough to be considered for the study.

Deloitte suggested strategies that could help brands in developing a successful app. The first important factor is to provide desirable and useful functionality to consumers. It is not always enough to create an app as an extension of a website or for advertising purposes. It is time to pass on a game app and focus on a utility app.

The second factor is manipulating the ratings. With such a massive number of apps, consumers opt to use the “search” button in discovering apps. It would be important for an app to appear at the top of the list. This could be done by influencing users to give a positive feedback of their app or treating their app as a webpage. They could use the concepts that are commonly used in search engine optimization (SEO).

Deloitte says that the cost of developing an application for two platforms is 160% of the cost of developing for one platform. Choosing a platform is another important factor. Each platform has different levels of engagement and demographics. Brands should know what their app represents and what type of users are to be targeted.

While app markets have their own pitfalls (both the App Store and the Android Market could use some help in the search and discovery market), it’s also important for brands to recognize how, when, where and why end users engage with their content.  Mobile apps aren’t entirely different from social media, they just occur on a more individualized level.  There’s several benefits to this direct consumer access, and brands need to understand how they can leverage mobile’s unique factions in order to effectively target consumers.