As the popularity of apps reaches new heights, nToklo, a social integration and recommendations engine, is warning operators that they must consider new ways of engaging customers to avoid missing out on a key revenue stream. Following the recent surge in volume of Android Apps, nToklo is urging operators to avoid pre-loaded software and move to new ways of app discoverability.

“Operators have traditionally taken to embedding software to ensure customers have the apps they need and thus subscribe to bigger and better data bundles,” says Javier Foncillas, a non-executive director at nToklo. “The growth of different app stores has compromised this approach and made it much more difficult for them to make money from selling games and advertising on their portal. With Android recording over 250,000 apps and Apple’s iOS currently around the 350,000 mark, operators need to look beyond the pre-loaded software market and offer something new to the app-hungry user. One place where consumers will tend to discover the best apps to download is through their friends.” 
As operators continue to seek for new ways to personalise the user experience, nToklo is suggesting operators take advantage of this desire to customise devices by integrating trusted recommendations from a user’s social communities into their own app store or portal, enabling social discoverability.

So when a consumer enters an app store, they would see what apps they’re social network connections have been buying or recommending. nToklo says its social recommendations engine would work as a white label platform that operators can integrate into existing stores or portals.