App creators looking for a new market to grow into should be looking at launching apps in Russia, according to the official Android Developers blog. That’s all down to the current state of the market in the country. A study published earlier this year has shown that Russia’s market for mobile applications is prime territory, with 45 percent of the population being comprised of under 35-year-olds and more mobile data subscriptions than population. Interestingly enough, there are around 233.6 million mobile subscriptions in the country, despite having a population of only around 146 million people. Moreover, the mobile market environment in Russia is predominately Android devices – around 84 percent of the smartphone market share – and demand for those rose by 11 percent year-over-year from 2016. In fact, several manufacturers have initial device launches planned for the country, here other regions may have been chosen instead in previous years. Perhaps more enticingly, as many as half of that population identify as mobile gamers, with favorite genres that run the gamut, and app downloads per person are exceptionally high in the country.
That doesn’t mean developers should just run headlong into developing or porting an app for the Russian market, however. To be successful, apps should be optimized and localized for individual markets and there are a few things to bear in mind with respect to that. First, languages definitely need to be localized. Russian is a Slavic language, in addition to generally being written in Cyrillic text, which means it differs immensely from Latin or Germanic languages such as Spanish or English and in too many ways to list adequately in any single article. With that under consideration, it is recommended that native speakers should be used wherever possible to get translations done right. Beyond that, the entire app should be localized so that local users are familiar with and can connect to the application in everything from date and time formatting to situations where the app directly addresses the user. Quality should be on par with the original application in its original language. Text localization should also be applied to text resources themselves – with developers avoiding the shortening of words or breaking sentences and punctuation into new lines of text. As always, different font styles should be tested to ensure they display appropriately in non-English locations and consistency in any text displayed is a must.
Beyond textual localization, any audio aspects of the game or app should be localized – using native speakers wherever possible. Developers should pay particular attention to splash screens, as well, which are often missed in app localization. Play store assets, store listing, and pricing all follow suit with regards to localization too. For example, the Developers blog provides the price point example of 49,99 rubles ($0.8) and says that pricing should be lower than in Western markets. Finally, the writers at the source want to remind developers that they can nominate their app or game for the recently launched “Now In Russian” Google Play Store collection. The collection was launched on July 24 and Google plans to update the selection by the end of the year as it continues to make headway in the country. Developers can find out more about that and the tips for localization by hitting the source link below.