This blog post title sounds like a book. 😁.

Back in 20-some-teen, I built a windows phone app called Police Post. It started off as a reasonable idea - provide an offline version of the list of police stations in Trinidad and Tobago, with their locations and contact numbers.

I had some quirky app names back then… they eventually became quirky chatbot names, but more on that some other time.

I later jumped the shark by overlaying the map of police stations with information about murders that happened in the same region as a police station.

Even writing that makes me cringe a little. Back then, I was convinced, “This is a good great idea for the app”. Now, I’m like, “Why…..?”

I remembered Police Post while I was preparing to deliver a presentation at the Trinidad and Tobago Intellectual Property Office’s seminar on “How to make a living from mobile apps”. My focus was on the state of the mobile app development in TT.

I found while preparing for the talk that there was a lot to be said about how active trinbagonians are with their mobile devices, but not necessarily with local apps.

So, a stat like this would be familiar to a lot of people who care to do the research. There are lot of phones and a good bit of social media usage on those devices.

And, using the top free apps in the Google Play Store as a proxy, it only confirmed that we really like social (and Google Translate).

Rank	Name	Category
1	TTPS - Trinidad & Tobago Police Service	Social
2	WhatsApp Messenger	Communication
3	T&TEC Mobile	Communication
4	Free Phone Cleaner - Cache clean & Security	Tools
5	Messenger – Text and Video Chat for Free	Communication
6	Instagram	Social
7	Snapchat	Social
8	Facebook	Social
9	Wish - Shopping Made Fun	Shopping
10	D'Music	Music & Audio
11	TikTok - Make Your Day	Social
12	CallApp: Caller ID, Call Blocker & Call Recorder	Communication
13	King James Bible (KJV) - Free Bible Verses + Audio	Books & Reference
14	Google Play Games	Entertainment
15	Tubi - Free Movies & TV Shows	Entertainment
16	Netflix	Entertainment
17	Traffic Cam TT	Travel & Local
18	Facebook Lite	Social
19	Messenger Lite: Free Calls & Messages	Communication
20	Safe Cleaner Plus	Tools
21	Google Translate	Tools

Since I was concerned about making apps, as opposed to just using apps, I produced a list of the top apps by usage that were made by trinbagonians:

Rank	Name	Company	Category
1	TTPS - Trinidad & Tobago Police Service	TTPS	Social
3	T&TEC Mobile	Milsoft Utility Solutions	Communication
10	D'Music	Digicel_Group	Music & Audio
17	Traffic Cam TT	Trini Interactive	Travel & Local
41	TT RideShare	TT RideShare	Travel & Local
45	RBC Caribbean	RBC Financial (Caribbean) Limited	Finance
46	Pin.tt	Larixon Classifieds	Shopping
53	My Digicel	Digicel_Group	Tools
74	Scotiabank Caribbean – Banking	Scotiabank	Finance
76	bmobile Top-up	Powered by eTopUpOnline.com	Shopping
96	Caribbean Airlines	Caribbean Airlines Limited	Travel & Local
98	RepublicMobile	RepublicBankLimited	Finance

A more diverse list, pretty corporate, but seemingly high on the “getting things done” measure.

Both lists were a snapshot of top apps on November 10, 2019. The TTPS app was released the week before, and people were responding. TTPS seemed to have had a good push behind the app, so that’s good.

This may be why I remembered Police Post. Another reason that brought it into focus may have been because of these sentiments I got from Julie David, a Senior Policy Analyst at NIHERST.

Julie and her team have been working on a sectoral mapping of the software industry in TT, so I thought her insights might be useful.

They certainly were as they gave me a snapshot of the state of affairs that I recognized. Here are a few of those challenges:

1. Small companies
2. Lack of strong cohesion between business models & development
3. Lack of design & UX quality

When I built Police Post, it was a small app, meeting a specific need that made no assumptions about having a business case. So Julie’s feedback to me was on point. Around that time, one of my key goals was simply demonstrating capacity.

I was making the statement, yes, we can build apps, focused, useful ones. Now, I’m here to say, yes, we can build business on top of platforms that include mobile apps.

My presentation concluded with looking at stats on global Internet trends. Mary Meeker’s report on those trends was an excellent resource for this and I hope that we all would use it to inform our next steps.