Our experience

The Application Developers Alliance, with more than 8,000 individual European members, supports and promotes the most dynamic and promising industry in the EU digital revolution, and the opportunity to create a true digital single market.

Apps range from well-known entertainment apps to productivity, enterprise and mHealth tools. Our startup members’ dynamism and our corporate members’ stability are among the strengths that have allowed the app sector to grow impressively.

Although its growth has been strong, the EU app economy has challenges: developers experience difficulties in accessing markets, complying with a patchwork of inconsistent rules and coping with substantial red tape. The App Developers Alliance is convinced that a true Digital Single Market will effectively help our membership and the whole digital industry tackle those challenges.

Our ideas

Making digital start-ups successful requires innovative business models, a wider market size and velocity, velocity, velocity. For those reasons, we believe that the Digital Single Market strategy and ensuing initiatives should be guided by the following key objectives:

1. Simplify the rules applying to digital innovators & adopt rules conductive to growth and innovation: Innovators, which are often smaller companies, need to understand the legislation in force. Consistency, simplicity and clarity are key, and will enable developers to comply with today’s regulation, keep innovating and providing even better service and products.

2. End fragmentation through a real digital single market – including harmonized and streamlined one-stop shop approaches – that will enable app products and services to have simplified access to larger markets. Larger markets with regulatory certainty justify more investment, more hiring, and incentivize innovation.

3. Set in place an investment-friendly environment that enhances access to resources and investors: a comprehensive regulation focussing on solid long-term objectives and an entrepreneurial risk-taking approach has the potential to attract and enhance investment. On the other hand, a neutral tax system and the availability of public funding will help innovators headquartering and growing their companies in Europe.

4. Develop the required skills and mind-set: Closing the ICT skills gap means training highly-qualified workers and a generation of users who enjoy conscious Internet interactions. European citizens need to be able to welcome innovation and have the right tools to exploit its potential sharply. EU initiatives should promote tech-centric basic and advanced education, encourage young people to take up ICT-related careers, and ensure the development of the set of digital skills required by the market.

5. Support entrepreneurial risk-takers, business disruptors and also failures. For Europe to promote our digital economy and reap the benefits of great entrepreneurial success, we must remove the social and legal stigma attached to such failure, in order to promote all entrepreneurs and appreciate that the lessons of failure are often the building blocks of future success.

   Future-proof legislation and regulation by ensuring that it is technology-neutral and platform-neutral, and making the focus promotion of competition, ensuring low switching costs, and reducing barriers to entry.

We highly welcome and support the efforts that the European Commission put into this project, and we are keen to be a constructive and reliable interlocutor and a point of reference for today and tomorrow’s debate.

Dowload our full contribution here, or visit the EVIDENCE TAB.