If you think of yourself as a "mobile app developer", you've already lost. You're a commodity, just like the other 4 million app developers.

Instead, you need to think of yourself in terms of the industry your app services, not the technology used to accomplish it. You're a transportation network that's coordinated through your mobile phone. You're a personal shopper that you call through your phone. You're a way to share moments with your close friends.

If you do this, your growth strategy becomes "Make yourself valuable enough that people see their friends or competitors using you and want in on a piece of the action." It's completely independent of what Apple & Google decide to feature in the app store. It's harder because you can't just write some code and put it out there, but also a lot more under control of the entrepreneur.

And there are still plenty of opportunities where the widespread deployment of mobile phones gives you an opportunity to do things 10x more efficiently than how they're done now.