Does getting paid just to unlock your smartphone’s lock screen sound too good to be true? Not if you ask AppDisco, the maker of LatteScreen, a mobile app that places advertisements on your phone's lock screen and rewards you for swiping through for more information but also for simply unlocking your phone. Regardless of whether they “click-through” or not, users get monetized to have LatteScreen installed on their Android phone and can later redeem their earnings for goods bought at local stores, donate the money to a charity of their choice or simply cash out, all up to the users’ discretion.
Going global:
AppDisco recently accompanied beSUCCESS to Singapore as one of ten Korean startups that won the chance through the ‘K-APP Global Hub Program’ to go to Singapore for an intensive week of seminars, business matching and networking. “We went to Singapore to test our service for a global audience and do market research”, Soohwan Jeong, CEO of AppDisco says. “We received a lot of positive reviews and feedback from clients and various sales agencies and as we have no direct competitor in the region, our service has great potential.” He went on to say that they would “ideally like Singapore to become our hub of operations for Southeast Asia.” They will be sure to announce future regional offices in Q4 2013 or Q1 2014.
On AppDisco’s success, to date, Jeong said: “Getting where we are now did not happen overnight. We spent countless hours analyzing market data to come up with the most plausible solutions. Because of that great effort, we are now operating our services successfully and have reached top 10 in many app stores, including in Taiwan, Spain, and Vietnam. We are also expanding our services to the US now”.
Targeting the mobile Ad industry specifically looks like a sound business decision for AppDisco, as the industry is growing at an astronomical rate, predicted to increase from the $139Bn (2012), to an estimated $400Bn in the US alone, within five years, according to the MMA Mobile Marketing Economic Impact Study.
More about AppDisco:
AppDisco is a leading reward-based mobile advertising company, based in Korea that is expanding their user base each day. They previously gained success with another Ad. app called AdLatte which acquired 1M users in its first two months back in 2011. Having already accumulated over 8 million downloads in Korea and Japan, AppDisco boasts almost $1.8M in monthly turnover, employs 140 staff and has offices in 13 countries, mainly in Asia. AppDisco is now concentrating on leveraging their success in Korea to achieve 200% growth globally in the next 12 months.
More about this article series:
The KAPP article series will cover each of the 20 startups that took part in the KAPP Global Hub Program, which took Korean startups to two global startup hubs, and followed with a series of targeted workshops to ensure that the relationships and experience gained during the overseas trips was fully leveraged. 10 startups went to Singapore to discover the South East Asian markets, build partner relationships and gain investment for global growth. The other 10 companies went to Israel to engage with, and learn from, experts in one of the World's most prolific high-tech centers.