At Cowan Liebowitz & Latman’s annual publishing seminar held earlier this month at the Harvard Club in New York City, Green Mountain Digital chairman David Roberts discussed how the startup founded in 2009 is taking advantage of the boom in apps. With 29 apps, most selling for $11.99, in the market through early March, Green Mountain has seen steady growth, Roberts said.
To generate that volume, from its launch Green Mountain has focused on making its distribution as wide as possible and its apps are available on all the major platforms. To compete in the crowded app space Green Mountain has focused on developing quality apps, usually partnering with well-known brands (such as the National Audubon Society and Orvis) in the nature, wildlife and outdoor space, Roberts said. Green Mountain, Roberts stressed, will remains “highly focused” on creating dynamic content for the nature/wildlife/outdoor vertical. “Developing a community of engaged users is major opportunity” for all types of niche publishers, Roberts said.
Roberts said the book industry is “just in the second inning of the digital transformation” and offered up six predictions for the app market in 2012:
1) Tablets will increasingly emerge as “hugely important” platform for media content consumption;
2) Microsoft Windows 8 based tablets will constitute a new and potentially powerful player in the tablet marketplace;
3) HTML5 will accelerate the creation of rich app-like experiences…thereby by passing existing distribution channels;
4) New tools and platforms will facilitate the growth of interactive, enhanced e-books as a lower costs structure than native apps;
5) The growth if “interested centered” communities will provide significant opportunities to engage niche markets through mobile;
6) Apple will cross 40 billion app downloads by the end of the year.
