Introduction For Businesses To Development Of Mobile Apps (part 1) : Is It Worth It?

Both of us, you and me, are busy people. Thus, I will avoid unnecessary rhetorics and go directly to business.

What are the reasons for a business to get a mobile app done?

• Organization & Process Performance. Customized solutions to make your processes leaner and more effective. These are mostly internal apps you keep for your employees.

• Marketing. These are apps that you release to your customers or potential customers – the kind of apps you should be mostly interested about.
  • Boost the Awareness and Equity of your Brand
  • Customer Relations. Stay very close to your clients (in their pockets!) and their feedback – foster loyalty
  • Additional Marketing and Distributions Channel

• A combination of the two above

Is Mobile big enough to care about?

• Recent report by Berg Insight found that smartphone shipments grew by an incredible 74% in 2010 (300 million units) and are likely to surpass 1.2 billion units in 2015. The global user base of smartphones is likely to reach 2.8 billion

• This year (2011) IDC forecast smartphone shipments to grow by 50% to 450 million units

• Smartphones will also increasingly become a preferred payment method to millions of consumers, according to the recent In-Sat report “Mobile Payments: Is the Market Ready?”. Almost 400 million consumers are expected to use their smartphones as payment tools (e.g. by using their NFC features) by 2015

• According to a new research by Forrester Research the mobile apps market is to grow from a $1.7 billion to a huge $38 billion industry by 2015

• At least one billion people will be connected to the Internet using their mobile phones by 2015, as a sign of rapid growth of the mobile broadband market, according to analyst firm Ovum. This number is even higher if you consider all mobile devices connected to the Internet, not just the phones. Research and Market puts the total number at 2.6 billion Mobile Internet connections by 2015.

• Every second American will own a smartphone by Christmas 2011

What about costs? Isn’t it too expensive to cover all the mobile platforms out there?

Costs are directly proportional to the features, design and platform-support of your app. You don’t have to develop for all platforms from the start, you can start with one. Depending on the features of your app, you could consider using web-based apps, which would make your app either directly compatible with various platforms or really easy to port.

• Native Apps.
  • These are apps that need to be developed for each platform separately.
  • They are installed directly on a device.
  • There are parts that can be ported to other platforms directly. Nevertheless, the rule of thumb is that most of the code needs to be re-written and adjusted to the new platform.
  • Furthermore, the developer needs to maintain those projects separately.
  • These apps have direct access to cool device capabilities like OpenGL ES graphical rendering or accelerometer

• Web Apps.
  • These apps can be developed as cross-platform solutions. They are developed in cross-platform web technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript)
  • They are either installed on a device as a local solution or can reside partially on a central server where client devices connect to
  • They are easily ported or directly portable to different platforms. The centralized solutions have the advantage that a user can have instant access to any new implementations or features. Classic native apps need to go through certification + the user needs to update the installed version on her device.
  • The maintenance requires less resources
  • These apps are perfect for content delivery. They usually lack any closer access to more advanced device capabilities

• Hybrids.
  • There are new cross-platform technologies that intend to give web apps more access to the device capabilities.  A great example is WAC. Not many devices support these technology yet, although it is growing fast.
  • There are other ways to combine native apps with web app technologies and use the advantages of both.

A simple content delivery web app can cost less than $1,000-$2,000. Complex solutions can cost over $20,000+. One thing is clear, though, it is definitely worth to:

• Keep in mind the stunning growth of Mobile and keep thinking about possibilities to use it in our business (for internal or external purposes)
• Define a set of goals for for our Mobile strategy
• Define a set of ideas of what an app should be able to accomplish
• Get a professional to go through those ideas, add his feedback and value the necessary efforts

Intrigued? We will go through some general types of apps in the next part as well as a case study of a small business and its Mobile strategy.