It's innovation vs plagiarism

(ECNS) -- There's an app for everything these days. People rely on pocket-sized smartphones to shop, play, read, date, learn, take photos, find directions, and much more.

The app economy as a whole will hit $25 billion this year, and the market in China has been particularly remarkable, with some 80 million new subscribers joining every year for the past decade, according to official statistics.

However, the app market is not an easily profitable industry, and a massive number of developers have plunged into it, many of which have no qualms about replicating stolen ideas, reports Xinmin Weekly.

App-driven business

Apple's App Store was launched on July 11, 2008. Five years later there were more than 900,000 apps for sale, and more than 50 million downloads have been surpassed. In those years, individual software makers, small startups and large corporations alike have been able to build thriving businesses off the platform.

Apple says it has paid out more than $10 billion to third party app developers, helping to feed the frenzy. And as a vital market for the company, China has shown the fastest revenue growth in recent years, with the country's iOS developer community experiencing rapid expansion.

From 2011 to 2013, the total number of Chinese iOS developers increased 9.3 times to nearly one million, according to UMeng, a Beijing-based startup focused on providing app developers with detailed app-usage data. However, the amount of Apple-shared profits with its developers only quadrupled, from $2.5 billion to $10 billion, during the same period.

Zhang Lei, CEO of Morui Tech, a Chinese startup that launched the photo-sharing app Vida, told reporters that many Chinese developers made profits on App Store before 2011. Now it is difficult, however, due to the influx of large firms and venture capital, he added.

Nearly 87 percent of Chinese mobile application developers are losing money, or can barely make ends meet, according to a report by iResearch.

Insiders say that an app can make money only if it gets at least tens of thousands of downloads, yet it is well known that customers prefer free apps.

As of May last year, China had the second highest number of iOS app downloads in the world, right behind the US, but ranked eighth in total revenue generated from iOS downloads. That's because iPhone-users in China sometimes "jailbreak" their iPhones, allowing them to install paid apps for free.

Lack of originality

"Feng kuang cai tu"(Crazy drawing), a simulation of the German game "Icomania" became a hit on App Store among Chinese mobile users in mid-June, but the excitement was short-lived.

Jiang Qiping, secretary-general of the China Informatization Research Center under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, says apps similar to Icomania are already abundant on the market.

The "Icomania" incident is a microcosm of the whole app industry in China, says Xinmin Weekly, as many industries face problems with plagiarism. This has left app marketplaces across multiple mobile platforms with a diverse selection of games that have been ripped off or otherwise copied.

Many developers whose game ideas have been stolen are too small to pursue the issue through the courts, and must remain victims of China's weak protection of intellectual property rights.

A senior app developer surnamed Yang told Xinmin Weekly that cloning is an enemy of the industry, and that many promising corporations have been beaten by shameless plagiarists.

Instead of focusing on innovation, many app firms pay "marketing" companies large amounts of money to achieve higher rankings for mobile software on Apple's app distribution platform, insiders say.

As much as 25,000 yuan ($4,081) can be paid to help a company rank an app among the top 5 at App Store (China), and 19,900 yuan to break into the top 10.

"Higher rankings can increase downloads of an app, but it is nonsense if its quality fails expectations,'' said Li Zhihong, founder of MagicBone Ltd, a Shanghai-based mobile game developer.