MobileBizBuzz

June 30, 2010

To Develop, Or Not Too Develop…That Is The Question

Filed under: Mobile App Dev,Mobile Apps — Tags: , , , — Mike @ 8:53 am

It’s generally recognized that part of Apple’s success with the iPhone is due to their focus on applications. The App Store was the first of a kind, and is still a leader in mobile phone applications with over 225,000 apps available.  Android has been coming on strong, but is still a distant second place with over 50,000 apps. No other smartphone platform even comes close to this type of application availability, including Microsoft and BlackBerry.

I’m sure most of the people who read this blog are not developers…that’s not our intended audience. But I think it’s instructive to understand what developers are thinking.  Recently a company called Appcelerator published a survey of developers and their view of the various platforms.  I’d recommend you at least read the overview.  They also have a pdf to download if you want more detail. As you read it, just remember that Appcelerator makes a cross platform development tool called Titanium. So they have a specific point of view that influences the questions they ask. They also have a specific type of developer that uses their tool. Regardless, the information is interesting.

The chart to the left is one of the most interesting segments of the survey. What it shows is a very focused interest in Apple and Android. Everything else is waning.  Pretty interesting stuff given BlackBerry is still the leading smartphone seller by far. However, they have lagged and continue to lag in the application development game. They also have not done much with novel handset delivery.

For those in the industry, we should pay attention to what the huge development community is doing. While developer acceptance has helped to boost Apple, lack of developer acceptance played at least some role in the demise of Palm.  Developers are not the only barometer of trends in the mobile industry, but they are one of the key metrics we should all be paying attention to.

June 11, 2010

The Times They Are a-Changin’

Filed under: Mobile Apps,Mobile Devices,Mobile in SMB — Tags: , , , , , , — Mike @ 10:12 am

Roughly two months after the launch of the first iPad, we now know that Apple has sold about 2 million of the devices.  That in and of itself is something noteworthy in the mobile industry, but this morning I’d like to dig a little deeper. My premise for this post is that tablets in general are going to experience rapid growth as a tool for businesses.

Turn the clock back to April 9th, and you’ll find that I made my first post about the Apple iPad and it’s potential usefulness for business. At that point in time the iPad was really the first of a kind device. So what’s happened since then that bears revisiting the topic only two months later? Well, since you asked:

  • As a company we have since completed and delivered our first business app for the iPad.
  • The App Store now boasts thousands of apps designed specifically for the iPad.
  • HP has purchased Palm, and stated they will deliver a WebOS based tablet by October.
  • Dell announced the Streak; a new Android based tablet shipping in the UK in June, and in the US later this summer.

All of these things point to the fact that tablets in general, and the iPad specifically, are gaining rapid traction in the market. But I saw another interesting statistic recently that shows the iPad, and I think other tablets, are going to catch fire in the business environment. Citrix recently conducted a survey that showed 84% of companies surveyed intend to support personal iPads purchased and used for work purposes by employees. The survey also said that 50% of businesses surveyed plan to purchase iPads for their employees. One caveat on this is the survey itself is not scientific, so it does need to be taken with a grain of salt.

If the only data I saw was this survey, I would not give it a lot of attention. However, what we are seeing in the market is backing this up. As I said, we just completed our first iPad app, which is for business use. I know a few other companies in the industry who are developing business apps for the platform as well. I also know several companies in a variety of businesses who are using them as sales and marketing tools already. Add to that the attention tablets are getting from HP, Dell, and others who have traditionally focused on the business market, and I can definitely see a rapidly growing movement toward the use of tablets for business apps.

Tablets aren’t new, so what’s fueling this. I for one think it has a lot to do with the form factor being married with a new user interface approach and new operating systems. These new tablets don’t run Windows. They run gesture based smartphone operating systems. The new hardware, combined with the new user interface and creative applications are going to make all the difference in the world to how rapidly this platform is expanded into the business market.

We are seeing real value in using these new tablets in the business world, and I’m betting you will begin seeing and experiencing it yourself over the next year to eighteen months.

May 12, 2010

Something Sneaky This Way Comes

Filed under: Industry News,Mobile App Dev,Mobile Devices — Tags: , , , — Mike @ 9:18 am

Release the Kraken! Scratch that. Just a minute here…um, uh…OK, let’s try this again. Look out for Android! I know, I know…that’s not nearly as dramatic as commanding the release of the mythical Kraken, but it’s certainly something those of us in the industry should heed.

If I were to ask almost anybody on the street what the most popular smartphone is today, I bet that 9 out of 10 people would say the iPhone. And why not? There are several reasons to think that:

  1. Apple has smartphone market share that is second only to RIM (BlackBerry).
  2. Apple invented the whole App Store concept as we all now know it, and it boasts over 200,000 applications.
  3. Apple ships a lot of phones. According to  Canalys, over 25 million iPhones were shipped in 2009 alone.

Now let’s change the question a bit. What if I were to ask what the most popular operating system is for a smartphone? Admittedly, the average person does not think about smartphones in this way, but the average application developer does. The answer to this question would not be too surprising for the most part. According to data just released by NPD Group, RIM still leads in this game with 36% of all smartphones sold in the US in the first quarter of 2010 running the BlackBerry OS. It probably also wouldn’t surprise anybody to know that Apple came in at 21% in the same study. Very impressive for a company that has essentially a couple of different flavors of the same smartphone. And remember, in the US Apple only runs on one carrier…AT&T.

There was a bit of a surprise in this most recent data though, and that was Android. Android is the open OS backed by Google. Like BlackBerrys, Android devices run on all the carriers and come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Unlike BlackBerrys, Android devices are made by several manufacturers including the likes of Motorola and HTC. Here’s the surprising part…in the first quarter of 2010, 28% of all smartphones sold in the US were Android devices.  That’s right, there are now more Android devices being sold in the US than there are iPhones being sold in the US.  And guess what else. Android Marketplace (the Android App Store), now has over 50,000 applications listed on it.

Not only does Android have this type of momentum, but it has other things going for it:

  1. Many of the newest and slickest devices are Android devices. For instance, this summer Sprint and HTC will introduce the first WiMAX phone and it will be an Android device.
  2. AT&T just started offering Android devices in the last month or so. That means Android devices have lots of room to grow with AT&T subscribers.
  3. With Android 2.1, Android devices are starting to surpass some of the capabilities of the iPhone.

This doesn’t mean we should all sell our Apple stock. Far from it. So far Apple continues to innovate and make some interesting decisions in the market. Couple that with well designed devices, and a powerful brand, and Apple will continue to be a leader in the smartphone market. At least for the time being. But don’t count out Android. Android isn’t making as much noise as Apple, but they are quietly making their presence know in a big way in the market.

March 17, 2010

If You Like Speed…Get Ready

Filed under: Mobile Devices — Tags: , , , , , — Mike @ 9:36 am

htcsupersonica9292image1-thumbThe Wall Street Journal has an article today discussing an anticipated announcement by Sprint at CTIA next week. CTIA is the primary association for all things wireless.  According to WSJ, Sprint will be announcing a new WiMax smartphone.  The article is worth a quick read. With a little searching on the Web, you can even find some images of the device. There are two interesting things about this upcoming announcement.

The first is, if you have never experienced WiMax, you are not going to believe what you are in for. I got to see it in action as CTIA last Spring and was blown away by the speed.  It has the potential to do for mobile devices what DSL and Cable Modems did for the home when we moved from dial-up.

Second, I think it is very interesting to note that they first phone that will be WiMax capable in the US will be and Android phone. I’m sure part of that is because HTC is the company who will build it, and they provide a lot of devices for cobranding in the wireless world.  But just a couple of years ago HTC was churning out Windows Mobile Devices, and now they have a huge focus on Android as does much of the wireless market.

Regardless, we are all in for a game changer when WiMax and other 4G technologies arrive.

September 15, 2009

It’s Getting Crowded in Here

Filed under: Mobile App Dev,Mobile Apps,Mobile Devices — Tags: — Mike @ 9:00 am

imagesThe last couple of weeks have been interesting in the world of smart phones.  Motorola/T-Mobile, HTC/Sprint, and LG have all announced the upcoming release of new Android smart phones.  If you don’t know much about Android, that’s not surprising. It is a smart phone operating system announced with a lot of fanfare quite a while back. It is backed by Google, and supported by several large wireless industry players.  The idea is to provide a platform that will run on a lot of different phones, from different manufacturers, and different carriers, making it easier for developers to write software that will support a wide variety of users.

The problem to date has been that you could get any Android phone you wanted as long as it was the G1 from T-Mobile. Yep that’s right.  For all the hoopla, there has been only one Android phone on the market since Android was introduced.  Even with that huge limitation, the Android Market (their version of an App Store) now has about 10,000 applications on it.  The availability of more phones should provide additional momentum to encourage more developers to jump on the Android bandwagon.

The market trends with mobile applications are truly staggering.  Consider for a moment that just a little over one year ago there was not a single app store out there.  Sure, there were some smart phone catalogs, but they were mainly used by techies, and there was no way an average person could easily get access to software for their phone.  Enter Apple, and the App Store.  Since its introduction last summer there has been a proliferation of applications for smart devices. In addition to the 70,000+ for iPhones, and the 10,000+ for Android, there are a projected 20,000+ for Windows Mobile, a few thousand on BlackBerry App World, and a rapidly growing number of applications for the new Palm Pre and Pixi.

What does this all mean for us users?  It means that we are being presented with a rapidly growing number of software choices for our phones.  And more choices means more functionality.  More functionality means more usefulness.  More usefulness means more use.  The way we use our smart phones is growing rapidly, as is the amount of time we spend on them.  They are becoming our main vehicle of communications and “computing” at a rate that makes the evolution of PC and software look like it occured over eons.

We are rapidly being presented with many choices of software which make our phones more useful devices.  And that’s a good thing not only for consumers, but also for businesses.

January 26, 2009

Online App Stores are Booming – What it means to Business

Filed under: Mobile App Dev,Mobile Apps,Mobile Devices,Mobile in SMB — Tags: , , , , , , — Chris @ 5:37 pm

For those of us that eat and sleep mobile (that’s our job, right?), it’s been interesting to follow how the big industry players are rushing to create online mobile application “stores”. Riding on the coattails of the successful iPhone App Store, Microsoft, Google, RIM and others are all jumping into the ring to compete head-to-head with Apple.

These industry behemoths are launching their online stores so end users/customers can find, buy and download applications and other content for their mobile devices. Plus, it provides a marketing outlet for the growing developer community to showcase and sell their wares. That’s great news for our industry as it shows strong interest and continued growth in mobility. Loosening carrier restrictions and opening platforms means just about anyone can develop, upload and sell a mobile solution to this growing market. Of course, if you’ve been paying attention you know that you’re not likely to find many strategic business applications on these sites.

iBeer ApplicationIt’s one thing to hack out some code utilizing the iPhone’s accelerometer to mimic a pint of beer and upload it to the App Store, but developing and successfully marketing a strategic business application (one that provides clear value and a quick return on investment) requires a different kind of business model. For many small and medium sized developers a great product is enough to build a list of local clients. But extending their product’s reach to the regional or national stage can be overwhelming due to prohibitive marketing and advertising costs, product support and training issues, sales channel complexities, mounting fees, distribution issues and more. Unfortunately, these big online stores don’t help with those issues because they simply aren’t designed to offer any more than just the application.

Since many business application developers struggle to effectively market their apps, potential customers have difficulty finding their products. The major search engines are too broad to be effective and most online sites are consumer-focused or too narrow. So where does Joe the Electrician (just couldn’t bring myself to say ‘plumber’!) go to find a bundled solution for inventory management, vehicle tracking and m-commerce for his business? Well, it’s not the iTunes App Store. Microsoft’s upcoming “Skymarket” store has potential, but only if the software is written for Windows Mobile  (it was going to be for version but maybe now for version 6.5 – which isn’t even out yet??). What about RIM’s new BlackBerry store (once it opens, of course)? Possibly, but Joe may need something more rugged than a shiny new BlackBerry Storm.

It’s obvious that this book is still being written – in fact, I think we’re only looking at chapter 1. And of course, as the next chapters come together, you’ll read about it here.

December 12, 2008

Google: Where Are the Business Applications?

Filed under: Mobile App Dev,Mobile Apps,Mobile Devices,Mobile in SMB — Tags: , , , , , , , — Clint @ 9:15 am

Accelerating innovation and disruption in the market has been a constant byproduct of Google’s quest to own as many web surfing customers as possible. With the advent of the browser on the cell phone, people are accessing web-based content with increasing frequency on their handheld. So, it was just a matter of time for Google to enter the mobility market.

AndroidAndroid, which is supported by Google, was recently launched, amid the usual hype, and now the industry pundits are starting to weigh in. In summary, ‘Android needs time to evolve,’ as the developers, the wireless network operators and their hardware partners are not swarming to the platform that is supposed to challenge iPhone. The launch started with T-Mobile, not the largest wireless operator, and one handset dubbed the G1 which is manufactured by HTC. Many of the applications that were initially launched were low quality (calculators, weather, budget planning…even a flashlight).

Businesses are on the lookout for mobile applications that create efficiencies in their operations. Our research and testing on the Android platform indicates that it will not have much to offer in the very near term. But, as Motorola and other hardware companies have started to incorporate Android into their product lines, we will see more options for our customers.
Excerpt from Anyware’s Enabling Mobility Newsletter Vol. 1 Issue 8.

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