A woman takes photos of flowers in Beijing on March 17. Photo: IC

White-collar worker Zhang Yue recently discovered an interesting thing on messaging app WeChat: Many of her friends had posted movie-scene-like photos on the app. The photos had black margins and subtitles, just like a real movie scene.
This intrigued the 27-year-old. "Have they all shot a short film?" Zhang wondered. But she soon found out that her friends had been using a separate app called FotoPlace, which can convert photos to make them look like scenes from a movie.

"It is quite interesting," said Zhang, who now is also using the app.

FotoPlace, which is operated by a group of eight computer engineers, was initially designed to help people find the locations where famous movies were filmed. On February 4, an update allowing photos to be made to look like movie scenes was added, and the number of users has surged ever since.

The number of FotoPlace users before the update was less than 100,000. But the update has drawn huge attention for the app, and its users surpassed 1 million on March 15. The app was at No.1 in Apple's App Store free app list as of press time.

"To make photos look like movie scenes is a strong selling point, especially for young users," Wang Ziwei, an analyst at ChinaVenture Investment Consulting, told the Global Times on Friday.

The app secured angel investment from Lightspeed Venture Partners and Buttonwood Capital in August 2014 and currently it is preparing for its first round of financing, the Beijing News reported on Friday.

Flash in the pan?

FotoPlace might still be a hot item among smartphone users, but there are concerns that it could suffer the same fate as many other popular apps, such as MYOTee, which lost popularity last year even more rapidly than it gained it.

MYOTee, developed by Shenzhen Lianmeng Technology Co in 2013, creates cartoon avatars for its users. During the app's surge in popularity in the first half of 2014, it was trendy to use MYOTee cartoon figures as profile photos on social networking websites. The total number of MYOTee users topped 60 million in October 2014.

But as the app failed to continue to excite users with new features, people stopped using it, and they gradually changed their profile photos back to normal pictures.

"It is quite possible that FotoPlace will also suffer this fate if it can't create repeat demand from its users," Wang noted.

Other major graphics editing apps such as the one offered by Xiamen Meitu Technology Co can also make photos look like a movie scene. Analysts said that FotoPlace needs to come up with new features to keep users interested.

Efforts to reach FotoPlace were not successful by press time.

Got to be fast

Industry insiders said that most apps have a short life span, and usually do not last even until the second round of financing.

"Many of them [apps] are removed from the app store before they get well known," Li Dahe, research director at Beijing Weilaihongtu Education Technology Co, told the Global Times on Thursday.

Around two-thirds of the financing cases for apps in 2014 were angel investments or the first found of financing, according to a report from ChinaVenture released on March 16.

"But such cases [like MYOTee] are not necessarily without any merit," Li said. "The value of the developing team behind the app will be recognized by investors and it will be easier for them to get financing in the future."

Li noted that the whole point of the mobile Internet sector is to be fast - it usually takes less than three months to develop an app.

"If an app proves to be a failure, forget it and get started on a new one," said Li, whose company has developed a video social networking app and a language studying app.

Zhang Feng, chief operating officer at Shanghai Renrui Networking Technology Co, agreed that a creative developing team is crucial to secure investment.

"But I think the business value of a project, or its ability to make money in the long run, is equally important," he said.

Zhang noted that apps like FotoPlace should figure out how to keep users during the long run and try to offer services that can generate value for investors.

Large backers needed

The ChinaVenture report said that the "golden time" for China's app developers has passed now that the mobile Internet sector in China is maturing. As of the end of January, the total number of apps in the App Store had reached 1.21 million, and those in the Android Market topped 1.43 million, the report said.

"App developers should get more financing to face the competition, which is getting fiercer," the report said.

There were 308 cases of financing in the domestic mobile Internet industry in 2014 and total financing reached $2.27 billion, according to the ChinaVenture report. In addition to venture capital companies, major Internet firms like Baidu Inc, Tencent Holdings and Alibaba Group have shown increasing interest in investing in the mobile Internet sector, the report said.

Zhang, who is developing a job-hunting app, said that it is very important to have backing from big investors as the cost of getting users is rising.

"Developing the app is the easy part. What's difficult is promoting it afterward," Zhang said, noting that it costs around 70 yuan ($11.30) to 80 yuan to get a new user at present.

The company that comes up with a new idea is not necessarily the one who will win in the end. One notable case is the competition between taxi-hailing apps. Yaoyao was the first taxi-hailing app in the Chinese mainland market, but it lost the battle to latecomers Didi Dache and Kuaidi Dache, which are backed by Internet giants Tencent and Alibaba respectively.

Didi and Kuaidi, which merged into one in February, now account for over 90 percent of the taxi-hailing sector, according to media reports.