Study underway to measure the impact of the app economy
With almost a million apps now available worldwide, a new project has begun to measure the app economy in Europe and help guide stakeholders towards success.
The ‘Eurapp’ project was launched by the European Commission, and is being run by the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (Deri) at NUI Galway in conjunction with technology industry analyst firm GigaOM Research.
The project kicks off with a working workshop in Brussels on 14 June – ‘Shape the Future App Economy of Europe’ – featuring leaders from the app industry.
Eurapp is part of the Startup Europe initiative of the European Commission’s Digital Agenda, which aims to help technology entrepreneurs start, maintain and grow their businesses in Europe.
The project will carry out interviews and surveys with various players in the app economy to determine its characteristics. It will also use a series of workshops and innovation challenges to crowdsource proposals for how growth can be stimulated in the future.
“Recent studies on the app economy in the US estimate that it was responsible for the creation of nearly 500,000 jobs. In Europe, we don’t have the same kind of data just yet, but the region is a strong player in the global app economy, with companies like Rovio, SoundCloud and SwiftKey leading the way,” said NUI Galway’s Dr John Breslin, who is leading the Eurapp project at Deri.
The workshop in June will have invited speakers from the apps industry, including Samsung, SwiftKey and Betapond. The format will be a series of lightning talks featuring experts in the space, followed by mapping sessions to probe attendees’ collective thinking and examine some of the issues to be tackled in growing the app economy in Europe.