I get 2 types of mails to my support email.
1. Happy customers thanking for one of the Cab Meter apps, and asking for a feature they would love to see. (Unhappy customers don’t seem to contact me. They leave a review on the app store. I wish it was the other way around).
2. Entrepreneurs who want to extend or customize Cab Meter for their own business.
Last week, I added a third and most amusing type.
This guy from UK creates a taxi directory site, and mails me if he could use my API. I mailed him back that my tariffs are not on an API, but I can help him creating one, and asked if he was monetising the site.
The reply, was a complete description of his monetisation strategy, then – this.
Let me get this right. So you want to use my API. And, you want me to offer you something not to produce a competing product? Why didn’t anyone else think of that idea?
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App store is an extremely vibrant market. There are usually 3 taxi apps in the top 100 paid apps at any given point. Then there is the taxi company apps, 13 cabs, silver taxis and others.
No new app has affected sales of Cab Meter – Australia for more than a couple of days. If you focus on making a good product that doesn’t confuse the users, you have a good chance of reaching your customers.
You are better off focussing on your feature set and creating a compelling app, rather than focussing on removing competition.
