5 tech trends to watch out in 2012

As 2011 draws to a close, here are some trends which will top the trending list in 2012:

1) Mobile payments and NFC
This year saw the success of Square's iPhone dongle and that seems to be just the start of mobile payments. 2012 will have NFC change the mobile payment landscape. My earlier post talked about this more.

By 2013, 1 in 5 cellphones are expected to be NFC enabled. This trend is by far going to be one of the biggest and impact our day-to-day life.


2) Siri and beyond
Siri feature in iPhone 4S might still seem like in an alpha stage but it is the advent of sophistication in the voice control field. While voice control has been around since many years, it was not until now that it seems intelligent and futuristic. There are also talks that Apple might use this to replace the remote control.


3) Spatial gestures
While voice will thrive in 2012, spatial gestures will also have early adoption. Microsoft Kinect has started this trend and its going to get more and more popular in the coming year.


4) More Tablets
2011 was the inflection point for tablets. With the Kindle Fire selling like hot cakes it is expected to give some serious competition to the iPad. The different in price points would make this play more serious.


5) HTML 5
2011 already saw the start of many apps in HTML5 and even hybrid in native wrappers. With the biggest advantage of multiple platform support, this is definitely going to be explored by many more companies who are considering mobile apps for their businesses.

NFC would be game changing

I saw the demonstration of NFC and image recognition in Grocery IQ iPhone and Android apps by the CTO of Coupons.com and it led me thinking to how this would change the future. The possibilities are immense and NFC has barely been launched.

NFC or Near Field Communication allows for simplified transactions, data exchange, and wireless connections between two devices in proximity to each other, usually by no more than a few centimeters. Many smartphones currently on the market contain embedded NFC chips that can send encrypted data to a reader located within a short distance, for instance, next to a retail cash register. The smartphone or tablet with an NFC chip can serve as a credit card, id card or key card.

Lets take a deep dive into some of its applications:

(1) Coupon codes: The Demo of this app got me thinking so I will start with this. The smartphone will store all your coupons and then you can just use NFC to transfer coupon codes to avail discounts. This not only saves time at the cash register but a lot more time from clipping, emailing or printing coupons.

(2) Payment Gateway: This is probably the biggest and most talked about application. With Google Wallets already in action on some Android phones and usable across many stores, many other companies are likely to follow soon. Both handset and point-of-sale manufacturers are investing in this.

(3) On-to-go virtual shopping: Many shopping experience has been transformed using QR codes already. Tesco has already implemented grocery shopping at a subway station in Korea. Watch the video here. Sears and Kmart among many others are using posters to encourage virtual shopping. In both the stores, you scan a QR code of displayed merchandize, add to your cart and pay. The goods get delivered to your home. With the launch of more NFC enabled phones this process will become even quicker.

(4) Identification and Tickets: It would be used by hotels to replace key cards. You can check in on your mobile, download a virtual key on your phone and use it to enter your room with a tap at the NFC-enabled door. It can also be used to replace boarding passes, concert or movie tickets or basically any place where you have a possibility of forgetting your physical ticket.

(5) Advertising and User engagement:
Kraft Foods has used this in a Halls Campaign in Chicago to promote new products and get user feedback. Read more on this link. Besides serving the intended purpose this is sure to generate a lot of buzz at this stage of the NFC lifecycle.

The possibilities are endless and we will see many more uses as more NFC devices are launched.

Top Smartphone OS in US: Android

According to a report released by Nielsen today, Android is still the number one smartphone OS in US in Q3 of 2011. As per the data, Android accounts for 43% of the smartphones OS in US. iOS is a distant second with 28%. Android has jumped from 39% in Q2 of 2011 based on the data released by Neilsen in July. iOS has maintained its 28% share since last quarter.

While Apple holds a second spot on the smartphone OS front, it is in the lead as the smartphone manufacturer. The obvious reason is the fragmented Android manufacturer market. RIM's Blackberry OS has fallen from 20% to 18% in Q3. Windows Mobile has also fallen from 9% to 7%. It is interesting how the share lost by RIM and Windows Mobile has been picked by Android with iOS reamining constant. However with the new hardware and OS version announcements, Q4 will definitely show some more changes.

Brands in App Stores

As per a report released today by the mobile analytics firm Distimo, a mobile 91% of the top 100 brands have a presence in atleast one mobile app store. This is huge increased compare to only 51% having a mobile app around 18 months back.

Most brands have free apps and look at the app stores to establish a presence of their brand rather than making money.

The average number of apps per brand is 24! Some of the most active brands are Disney (636 apps) and Sony (285). The 3rd on the list if BMW at 63.



It doesn't come as a surprise that Apple’s App Store is the number one pick. 86% of the top brands have a presence in Apple’s iPhone App Store, 66% are in the Apple iPad App Store, 59% have a presence in the Android Market and a low 26% are in BlackBerry’s App World.

Apple's Latest Stats!

Here is a consolidation of all sales numbers disclosed by Apple in yesterday's event. Some of the number are mind boggling!

iOS devices
(iPhones, iPads & iPod Touches):

• 250 mn devices sold (and NOT shipped) till date
• iPhone 4 makes more than half of total iPhones sold
  

App Store

• 18 bn downloads till date
• Current rate of 1 bn download per month (compare this with the 9 months is took to download the 1st billionth app in April 2009!!)
  
• 500,000 apps out of which 140,000 are made for the iPad
• $3bn has been distributed to 3rd party developers

iPods

• 300 mn iPods sold in 10 years (compare to quarter million cassette players sold by Sony in 30 years)
  
• 45 mn last year itself (July 2010-June 2011)
  
• 20 mn songs on iTunes
• 16 bn downloads

iPhone has 5% of mobile market share world wide - "An Enormous Opportunity" according to Tim Cook.

Siri for iPhone 4S: Your new PA

It was a big disappointment not to see the iPhone 5 launch today and the Wall Street also made this clear. However, the announcement of Siri for iPhone along with a few other features reduces this slightly. This is the name of the app Apple bought for $200 million a couple of years ago.

Siri launches with a long press of the home button, just like Voice Control, but after that the options are huge. Some questions for the demo today makes this interface much awaited in the new iPhone 4S. “Wake me up at 6 a.m." “What time is it in Paris?” “Set my alarm for…” “Find me a great Greek restaurant in Palo Alto.” “Do I have any meetings this Friday at noon?”

One Q & A gives away the deal on what Siri is exactly:
“Siri, who are you?” Siri responds: “I am your humble personal assistant.

Freemium : $$$ v/s Time

Last week Flurry released an interesting chart on the Freemium games .


As evident, the data suggests that max amount of money (49%) is spent by users in the 25-34 age group. They play only for 29% of the relative time. One possible reason is that this demographic prefers to buy upgrades and special powers to help them cross levels faster. In the same light, the 18-24 years age group spends the max amount of time (32%) but only 16% of the relative revenue comes from them. This is even lower than than the 28% revenue coming from the 35-54 year age group which spends only 14% of the relative time.

While 13-24 year olds constitute more than 50% of the time spent, they contribute only 21% to the revenue. This is an interesting observations for gaming companies. It helps them understand that they can make more money by catering to the in-app purchases of this higher age group (24-54 years).

Flurry had earlier published that consumers spend an average of $14 per transaction when making in-app purchases in freemium games. What items does this money go to? Another interesting chart shows the spending on durable v/s consumable good.


Durable goods are those which can be use to provide permanent benefit in the game play and consumable provide only one time benefit. Personalized are those which are only for a purely decorative purpose. Consumable goods constitute more than 50% of all in-app purchased in freemium games. A majority of this is a towards game currency which can be used in multiple ways within the game.

The data cannot be generalized completely and should be taken with a pinch of salt. Depending on the actual game needs the attractiveness of the durable and goods will change.

The two sets of analysis above are important when trying to decide what in-app purchases to offer and what age groups to cater to. With 65% of all revenue generated among the top 100 games now coming from freemium games these numbers become even more important to understand.

HTML5 v/s Native Apps

With more and more companies putting in thousands and thousands of $$$ on their mobile initiatives, the big question about the mobile road map is : HTML5 or Native Mobile apps?

In one of my earlier posts, I discussed some factors which will help a company decide whether to opt for a Mobile website or a Native app. The current question becomes more interesting because of the present state and buzz about HTML5.

What is HTML5?

HTML5 is the fifth version of the HTML language that provides the basic building blocks of web pages. It will support multimedia without plugins and has the ability to work on all computers and devices.



Advantages of HTML5

• Portability: HTML5 web apps can be accessed and used on any device via a web browser, much like a mobile website
• Cost effective: They can turn out to be significantly cheaper that developing native apps for various devices
• Offline access: Web apps also provide the capability for offline access and usage via application cache, meaning you don’t have to have a network connection to use them.
• HTML5 introduces new APIs to access mobile device functionality, in particular sensors such as accelerometer and GPS
  

Few HTML5 Limitations

• Security issues: Users could tamper with processing scripts, which might allow unauthorized access. Hackers can get access to perks, discounts, etc. for which they really aren’t eligible.
• Synchronization challenges: While the app is connected, it can save data to the cloud however if it goes offline, changes will not get saved. Synchronization can become a challenge when people access from different devices.
• User Experience: Mobile apps are a lot about the user experience. Its really crucial how well you can engage your user with such a small screen. Native apps till date offer a better user experience, ease of use and convenience.
• Standard Gestures: Some standard actions specific to a device will not be supported by HTML5. For eg: iPhone has the standard 'long hold' which is used for many actions. The HTML5 look and feel will be like the web feel.
  
• Marketing effort: This is specially crucial for smaller companies who attract many of their users from the various app stores.
• Monetization: The fact that apps like Angry Birds have made millions of $ is possible only because of an app store which lets people discover them and developer monetize them. This is not so easy on HTML5.

HTML5 believers say it could destroy the native app by 2014. However, there is a lot of work to be done on the HTML5 front to remove the 'clunky' behavior of the technology.

Some quick tips to help you decide:

• If your app is very complex and highly interactive, use native
• If you are targeting multiple platforms and your offering/ value is web-centric, use HTML5
• A native app can also have web view, so consider a 'hybrid app', if required
• Consider one or both options based on the company and user requirements and your budget and target.
  

Only time will say which will rule after the next few years. For now, the native app market is here to stay and flourish.

The 4 Pillars of Mobile Apps

With about 14 bn app downloads from the iPhone app store alone, one thing is obvious - the market for Mobile Apps is here to stay. Gartner estimates the total mobile app downloads since 2008 to reach 185 bn in 2014. It is becoming increasing important for marketeers and product managers to understand the basic things that make a mobile app successful.

Here are the 4 pillars which are crucial to create a successful mobile strategy for any company. I am not explaining any of these in detail since that will take several long posts. The objective of this post is to give you some Food For Thought - what to think about when you decide on your mobile app strategy??

1) User Experience and Design

The small screen real-estate makes this one of the most important thing for a mobile device.
This starts from a high level overview - understanding the main features for your target user, using metaphors for design and creating the main app flow and the side flows - to getting into very specific details like managing user data entry well - should it be a keyboard or keypad or scroll wheel/ picker? When will the app sue swipe v/s flick v/s pinch? What alerts, action sheets, tool bars will be used? Apple HCI Guidelines explain some of these very well. Here are some more details.

2) Application Performance

This is the software that runs the app. Most crashes of app happen due to mismanaged memory. It is important to ensure the iPhone memory is managed properly. What features work when the app is offline? What information needs to be cached - when the app is pulled from the background v/s when a new instance is charged? How important is data security? Do the API calls need to be asynchronous? There are many more such questions which need to be answered to help create a great performing app.


3) Monetization

The decision to make the app free or paid is a difficult one, yet very important to an app's acceptance in the market. With the new trends of Freemium apps, this becomes even more confusing.

Options - Free always!! (with or without ads) OR Freemium with in-app purchase for subscription or lite version OR Freemium with in-app purchase for virtual goods OR Paid

Some things to consider - how do you compare to competition? (If you are far better then you can charge a premium provided you have some marketing budget to get the word out there and to make the app viral). Is the app more for a branding experience and hence needs to be free? Is your user base big enough to make adding ads sensible? (tip: If its not, don't spoil the user experience for a few dollars everyday)

4) Analytics


Last but not the least, this is the feedback loop to track your app success. What are your engagement and retention metrics looking like? How many new users are you adding? How many sessions and what is the session length? How many repeat users do you have? What demographics does your app cater to? How do these metrics compare against those for competition? With companies like Flurry, this process has become less complex than what it seems. Read more on the need for analytics here.

Feel free to post any questions you have on this.

Deciding on the Revenue Model for your Mobile App

When deciding between a ‘free’ ad-supported business model and a 'paid' app business model consider these things:

1) Compare the revenue for both the models by doing the following anaylysis

• Crunch the number to estimate the revenue you think you can get per user on a free vs. paid model - estimate the number of impressions you’ll get per day (or week) per user for your ad model v/s how much you plan to sell your app for
  
• Consider the number of users you think you can realistically get with each.
• Ensure you estimate the reasonable growth rate. It will be a while before you can get a million users

2) If you’re leaning towards a free, ad-supported model, make sure it’s scalable for you to support marketing and business development

3) If you want to have a free, ad-supported model but the numbers in 2 above make it unaffordable, consider whether a 'freemium' model would work for you

4) If you feel your app is far better than other apps out there, don't be afraid to charge for it. However, be prepared to invest in marketing and add some major viral elements.

Basic things to remember when Designing or Developing for iPad

*Source: Morgan Stanley

Tablets penetration in the market is still small, however it is seeing a strong growth. The trends for the tablets market cannot be ignored and need to be kept in mind when designing or developing for them.

While many people thought this will replace the mobile devices, that is not necessarily true.

1. Trading Home Computer Time for iPad Time
- Its replacing the web surfing on your Laptop. According to a Neilsen survey 70% of tablet owners and 68% of smartphone owners said they use their devices while watching television.

2. Tablet is a Shared Device
- Family members share an iPad at home and hence usually use one login for various apps or accounts. This misrepresents user analytics and user cases.

3. Sharing of Tablets raises security concerns
- When you leave your iPad on your Coffee Table and have guestes over, who browse your iPad, this becomes super critical.

4. Expect exception App And Website Experience
- When browsing the Web, users expect to access the full version of websites, so ensure that your site is optimized to deliver a great experience on the iPad. At the same time, the apps need to leverage the bigger screen and specially the split screen view of the screen (over an iPhone)

Explaining the UX Value

UX means more than just the product interface; it encompasses the whole experience a person will have with a brand and their overall satisfaction with a product. A solid UX design process begins with with discovery and ends with development integration, relying heavily on stories and prototypes in between.

It is the role of the UX designer to demonstrate the value that UX work brings to a product. Here are a few steps which the UX designer can follow to help communicate the value more effectively to all the stakeholders in a company and hence improve the user experience for the customer:

1) Identify Key Business Objectives
To communicate the value proposition, you need to understand the project strategy. You should also get these validated with your other stakeholders like - team members, customers and end users. Understand the objectives and document them for future use.

Examples for an e-commerce mobile app:
1. Move users from website towards mobile app
2. Increase conversion rates from start to checkout
3. Increase overall customer satisfaction with product discoveries

2) Identify the UX attributes

List down the UX attributes which will influence the success of the key objectives. Its important to remember that not every key objective is influenced by UX design. Also remember not to overlook how UX may subtly impact the objectives.

The UX attributes that should be considered in a project include:
Usability: Who is the target audience and what is their expectation of usability? (Eg: Is it for preschool kids, high school kids or architects?)
Accessibility: On which devices with the app be used by the target audience?
Performance: How well does the application need to perform? How fast does it need to load and respond to input? Should this require additional sreens/ buttons / user input points?

Simple descriptions of how these attributes influence the key objectives are sufficient. Building on our earlier example:

1. Migrate users from website towards mobile app
a. Usability equivalent or better than website (Eg: Amazon mobile app has a better user experience that the Amazon mobile website)
b. Usability of app different mobile devices
c. Performance of app must feel quick and responsive to user input
2. Increase conversion rates from splash page to checkout
a. Find products quickly and easily
b. Trade off between number of clicks to purchase v/s amount of information on each screen
c. Simple and easy to use checkout pages (Eg. Entering or storing CC information)



3) Identify the current success of these UX attributes
For each of the UX attributes you've defined, assign a rating or assessment to the current state of each. Rate them from Poor to Excellent (on a scale from o to 10)

4) Identify the high priority items

UX can get tricky when trying to achieve multiple objectives. Hence identify the high priority items to ensure those features are not compromised

5) Identify the desired state of these UX attributes

Determine to what level each of the identified attributes needs to be improved. Some items need to be imrpovized slightly while some others may need to be excellent to fit the business objectives.

6) Identify the activities and design work that can be done to improve the state of the UX

A plan can be made for how to improve those higher priority attributes from the current state to the desired state.

When the value proposition of UX is directly associated with key business objectives, it is much easier to have quality discussions about time and budget for UX activities. Helping your stakeholders understand how UX directly and indirectly influences their key business objectives allows you to focus more time on critical work and might help you increase the budgets and time you are allocated for UX initiatives.

Comparing Mobile Analytics Solutions

In my previous post I explained the important of using Mobile Analytics in mobile apps. This post compares some of the popular solutions available in this category along with my suggestion for.

Google Analytics
Google Analytics enables you to track performance by downloading the SDK and use it to get traffic insight on iPhone, iPod Touch and Android application platforms.

Google Analytics SDK allows you to rule which view or what part of your application view will trigger a page view. Google suggests that you trigger at least one pageview, and do it at the point the app loads, if you want Google Analytics to track Unique Visitors.

Admob
Admob has made a simple to implement mobile analytics solution. You can track visitors, site usage, traffic source and mobile goals that you create in AdMob administration section. You can track the effectiveness of advertising campaigns from advertising partners that you work with, get detailed information regarding the referring sites and keywords which your visitor came from, analyze Pageview, bounce rate, downloads, etc.
Further, Admob ads can be integrated.

Flurry
Flurry provides real-time app usage statistics for developers who need a single mobile app analytics platform, that will allow them to get app usage insight, how the app performs on different handsets and allows them to watch advanced reports to increase retention and grow their user base for the app shelf-life

If you have a multi-platform mobile app, you can use Flurry on many types of devices, whether you deploy your app for Apple iPhone, Android device, Blackberry or JavaME and others coming soon. The offering is free.

AppCircle can be integrated for ads.

Webtrends mobile Analytcis
This is a robust and flexible product, which allows mobile website owners and apps developers to get in-depth data analytics of their app/website usage. It gives you the advantage to monitor, track and analyze real-time usage data and measure every metric that can possibly be measured for both apps and mobile websites.

There are also some other companies like Bango which provide advanced analytics however they are not free to use.

If you are on considering analytics for Mobile apps, I highly recommend Flurry. It is very user friendly and provides a sea of analytics which are more than what you need to made those crucial decisions. Besides this, it is absolutely Free!

The other main benefits of Flurry are:

• Mobile app usage insight
• Analyze app performance on different handsets
• Who uses the application?
• What are the most useful feature in your app?
• Check users’ loyalty
• Users by country , time and customer segment
  
• Average session usage session length

The Need for Mobile Analytics

The important of Metrics for feedback cannot be over-emphasized. Its like the basic feedback loop in circuits, appraisals for employees, Balanced scorecard in companies and more recently web and mobile analytic in the digital era.

The Growing Mobile App Market

Gartner estimates the mobile app downloads to touch 17.7 bn in 2011. As the mobile apps market grows tracking what users are doing on these 17.7 bn downloaded apps becomes of prime importance to advertisers, marketeers and big brands. The sale of Smart Phones and Tablets is also estimated to surpass the Desktop and Notebook PC sales in 2011 by Morgan Stanley. Hence there was no better time to start monitoring the mobile app usage in additional to analyzing behavior on the web.

Mobile Analytics

While various tools are available for mobile analytics. I have found Flurry to be highly useful. The platform lets you track the number of new users across time, geography and customer segments along with active users, session lengths and number, frequency of use and retention. Moreover they compare your data with genre averages to help you get a better sense of where you stand in the segment.

These metrics can be combined to derive more important results like analyze customer segments across demographics to help devise and improve both your product and marketing strategy.


This also helps the relevant placement of advertisements and putting the high yield ads in the more frequented mobile app screens.

Challenges

• Mobile app analytics has some basic challenges compared to the web analytics, due to the nature of the mobile platform. A considerable amount of mobile application usage happens when no network is available. As a result, analytics data has to be stored locally on the device and reported later.
• Apps are downloaded onto the phone as opposed to a website where the content is all dynamic. This requires the analytics to be finalized before app release, because you can't change the tracking points once it's downloaded, unlike the web where its all dynamic
• Data overload can also become an issue. You need to know what you want to track and how you want to use the data for interferences so that you do not get overwhelmed.
• One frequent argument against all the data collection is that it discloses sensitive user data. Hence you should always ensure that you take the user's permission before capturing such data.
  

Mobile Gaming - The Freemium Way

A recent study by Flurry indicates that on an average iOS and Android Freemium Games generate $14 revenue using their Freemium model.

The rise of the Freemium mobile games has given some tough competition to Nindento DS and Sony PSP. an avid Freemium game player becomes so engaged in the game, that the usual $0.99 iPhone app threashold no longer bars him from a $9.99 purchase or in some cases even a $50 purchase (which is how much many of the game CDs for the PSP and DS sell for).

The Freemium model which has earlier been used by many big Web companies, as highlighted in my earlier post, is here to stay and rule the mobile gaming industry. It should come as no surpise that game drive 75% of revenue generated among the top 100 grossing iOS apps, of wihch 65% were generated from freemium games. Again, the crux of this model remains udnerstanding the customer segment and their needs to correctly decide the offerings in in-app purchase and price them right to induce purchase.

The 'Freemium' model

The "Freemium" business model for apps - in which apps offer some services for free, incentivizing users to try an app before paying for additional features is becoming more and more common in the top grossing apps on the various mobile app stores. The primary source of income for many freemium apps is in-app downloads.

A recent study by Flurry found that mobile phone games which are free to download, are actually making more money than those that charge.

Many companies let you download apps for free, rather than asking $0.99 to download a game you have never tried. when you become an passionate player, they you into paying quite a bit more than $0.99 for in-game virtual goodies like farm crops or power boosters. In June 2011, among the top 100 games in the iTunes store, free games generated almost twice as much revenue as games that charged to download.

The Freemium Business Model

The word “freemium” may be less than four years old, but the business model it describes – offering basic service access for free and then charging for advanced features – has been around for decades and is utilized by some of the Web’s most successful companies.

The working: Everyone gets your product or service for free, forever. But those customers who really like it, and find most value in it, will have a strong temptation to upgrade to a “premium” service which has lots of additional goodies and come at a price. It is a strategy for pricing by customer segmentation. It also requires a lot of insight into your customers and how they use your product to know what you want to giv for free to entice your user yet ensure you have some core features available for the paid versions.

Examples

Pandora - Since its launch in 2005, the company known for giving away “free” music to users has expanded to 20 million unique visitors. In 2009, it brought in $50 million in revenue – all the while as a freemium business

Skype- The popular internet calling service is free for those millions of customers who use it just to call or videochat between two computers anywhere in the world. Skype only charges if you want to use it to call a landline phone.

Some more examples include Flickr, Dropbox, Evernote, Spotify and recently announced Apple's iCloud music service.

With a high conversion rate and its ability to create an incredibly loyal audience, freemium has become a cornerstone of many successful startups and is definitely worth considering before you decide you pricing and go-to market strategy. But beware, not all Freemium products actually break even.

Mobile site v/s Mobile app?

With the increase in mobile apps and mobile devices, a very relevant questions for most companies to answer is - should they have a mobile app or stay with just a mobile version of their website.

While the ideal will be to have both, the cost involved in creating an mobile app is a hindrance. Here are some factors you might want to consider to help you decide this:

1) How big is your user base?
If you have a large existing user base (Eg. Amazon), it is a no brainer to have a mobile app rather than just a mobile website

2) What is your Budget?
Creating a quality mobile app can be expensive. Mobile website are far less costly than a mobile app. A factor to consider during the decision making based on the money available.

3) Does it help to add a viral element into your offering?
If you want to integrate Facebook Connect or Twitter to make your product/ message viral, it might be a good idea to use the app route. This gives a much better user interface

4) How important is user experience?
The WOW factor which can be achieved in an app cannot be compared with what can be done in a mobile site.

5) What devices do you want to support?
If you think support on all devices is very very important then the mobile web route might be the best unless you want to invest in building an app for the main app stores, if not all. While a company like Amazon can afford to create mobile app for multiple platforms, can your company do the same?

6) Can you market your app?
While creating an app is cool, a lot is dependent on how will your customers/ users find out about the app. While SEO along with other marketing techiniques makes it simpler to make your sit ediscoverable, marketing an app is a completely different game.

7) Are you launching a new product?
For many new products, it might be a good idea to launch a beta version as an app and get detail feedback from user before you decide to go the web route or use multiple platforms.

8) What is the desired performance?
App performance can be heavily optimized using caching and other features. Also while most apps can continue working off line, mobile sites cannot achieve this.

How many devices has the iPhone replaced?

V/S








While I have a bias towards iPhone, I also want to refer this post to most of the smart phones available in the market today. I have tried using some of the latest smart phones, the iPhone has always attracted me back, hence forcing me to abandon the others. But with all due respect, this post refers to not just the iPhone but other smart phones also.

Radio - With apps like Pandora, a standalone Radio device is a thing of the past.

Portable DVD player / MP3 players - The size of local storage provided enable the iPod to replace these forever

Digital Cameras (low end) - The 3.0 megapixel and tap to select focus makes the iPhone a great replacement. The ability to instantly share on Facebook or email to friends makes it even better than a low end digital camera. The iOS 5 is going to make the experience even better.

Low-end camcoders - Build-in video recoder make the iPhone far more practical and easy to use. Sharing on youtube is very simple now.

Stand alone voice recorder - I don't think I need to say anything on this

Landline Phone - VoIP apps further make this a more interesting, low cost and easy replacement

GPS Devices - While the iPhone GPS is still not as good as a standalone Garmin, knowing that the Android has mastered it and there are apps which do it well, I won't be surprised if Apple lauches a fully functional native GPS/ Navigation app. But for now Maps along with other apps on the app store will suffice to replace many, if not all, of the GPS devices.

Compass - Hmm...don't think any of us will ever carry a compass ever again.

Gaming devices - Hail App store! there is a plethora, to say the least, of games of all kinds for users of all ages, interests and skill levels

Calculators - I don't think I will every carry a calculator again

I have kept this limited to the devices and not got into simpler replacements like old pen and paper (replaced by Notes, To-Dos), calendars, alarm clocks - to name a few. Arguably many of these were replaced by the earlier phones. I am very sure this list is not exhaustive but a good point to start thinking what will be next!

The iPad along with Netflix as already started displacing the TV and DVD player - but for these the size does matter!

5 Reasons to Wireframe an App before Design or Development

App wireframes are blueprints that define the apps layout and functionality. The importance of having them right cannot be overemphasized. The reasons I say this:

1) Easily laying out the content and functionality
Wireframes enable you and the stakeholders or client to focus on the core functionality and content of the app rather than spending hours refining the asthetics.

2) Depicting Navigation
The wireframes let you clearly depict flowcharts to show the sequence of flow between screens. You can use the link feature in Balsamiq or use Omnigraffle or Lucid charts. All of them will help you achieve your desired purpose of showcasing the flow of the app even before its developed.

3) Iterating
Its easy to iterate on wireframes if you use a tool like Balsamiq to create digital wireframes. Team members always have feedback which can be easily done to these wireframes. If you did not create wireframes but made direct designs, making changes to this later would be a very very cumbersome process.

4) Coherent Development
Wireframes allow you to consider the software architecture of the app even before you get into the creatives. API optimization, memory management, caching can all be thought out after this phase to ensure optimal app performance. Getting sign off on these from the relevant stakeholders, before development, can really help simplify the development process and reduce the number of iterations.

5) Getting Buy-in of Stake holders
Sometimes it just good to wireframe different concepts out so that you can help present a case to your stakeholders. A picture is worth a thousand words. This might seem cliche but is definitely worth following when presenting a new ground breaking idea, a new product concept or simply an improved version of an existing concept.

Though wireframing is super critical at the start of creating an app, it is important to keep some room for small changes so that the creativity of the graphic designer is not restricted. Especially if the agile development model is being used, the iterations on wireframes might need to be done after the first round of features are in development.

Tips for creating Icons for iPhone apps

The importance of icons can never be overstated. The smallest 57X57 icon is also like a logo for the app since that is what you see when you open iTunes or connect to the App Store.

1) Don't put words
The key to a good icon design is that it should not have any letters unless the letter is a part of the icon itself (eg Facebook logo). The words ususally also get lost in the small size of the icon, making them look more like a clutter than adding any value.

2) Create the Brand experience
The icon should showcase the app and represent as the logo for the app. Consider how well Angry birds does this.

3) Create a unique experience
Don't use the standard gloss appearance provided by Apple unless it adds to the design of your app. Instead get creative by using a new shape like the one here.

If you are a designer you will find this post to be useful to design icons.

5 basic (yet sometimes overlooked) things to consider when creating iPhone apps

1. Don't break the flow is you need the app to open a webpage or maps. Open the webpage in webview inside the app and allow the user to go to Safari with a small icon. Open a location in the maps inside the app. Allow him to exit if he wants to get directions, etc

2. Allow users to email links and relevant information to friends from within the app. Make your app viral

3. Keep phone number and email addresses clickable. The worst this is giving a Contact us page to the user with a number which is not clickable.

4. Clearly define how the app will work if there is no network. Many times IAs leave this on 'default' behavior which is definitely not a good idea.

5. Minimize data entry points. Allow a user to point and select i.e. click on an input rather than having to enter it via the keyboard.

Simple yet highly successful tips to Market your iPhone app

Great apps along with great marketing is what makes the app a real success. This has been time and again proven my the many apps which have been at the top on the App store. A recent example is Rovio creator of Angry Birds.

1. Create a good marketing push in the first few weeks on launch. Its easier to keep your ranking high on the app store that way
2. Create a viral you tube video. That is just the start. Rovio now has a whole channel with multiple videos having more than a million views.
3. Use social networks like Facebook and Twitter - create a Facebook fan page, use Twitter to get user feedback or push out latest releases
4. Use the 50 promo codes you get from Apple. Send it to bloggers, journalists, friends who will review or basically any one who can promote or talk about the app. Remember you get 50 of these for every new version
5. Collect the iTunes url of your app link and use it in your email signature and in the signature you use while blog commenting and forum posting
6. Write press releases covering critical points of your application and post it to press release sites or forward to local news papers and magazines
7. Submit the app to app review blogs
   
8. User retention is a must - at the end of the day your app needs to be engaging.
9. GREAT PRODUCT! GREAT PRODUCT! GREAT PRODUCT!
   

Designing the iPhone UI

App Alpha Writer has been featured on App store multiple times and other apps from the same brand have been featured on Apple commercials. I worked on Alpha Writer app.

Apple's iPhone and iPad has really revolutionized the mobile and laptop industry. Designing the UI for this slick interface has been a pleasure - it is a great mix of being logical and creative - intuitive yet different! This blog post is about the basic UI design principles based on Apple's Human Interface Guidelines for the iPhone.

This blog is by no means a comprehensive source for all the information, but a quick checklist for anyone who knows something it and whats to use it in their app.

The first few basic questions you need to ask is -

1. What are the main features – should they be on main menu screen or in tab bar?
2. What is the app style: (a)Productivity (Eg. Mail/ Photos) – Hierarchical, less frequent setting changes (low customization) (b) Utility (Eg. Weather) - flattened lists, frequent setting changes, more visuals, summary of information

   (c) Immersive (Eg. Games) – visually rich

3. Will the app be better in portrait or landscape?

Once these basics are take care of the general humal interface principles come into play:

1. Use metaphors (model according to real world) - People can identify with this easily
2. See and point (present options rather than get data entry) - People will make less errors and find this more convenient
3. Feedback (every user action should give feedback – audio/ visual) - So that they know that they are doing what they actually want to do
4. User control (get confirmation before destructive action ) - Very imp to highlight this

The next thing to consider is the actual design:

1. Put frequently used info on top
2. Make it obvious - use appropriate colors and size
3. Gestures to be included – Tap, Drag, Flick, Swipe (table view to reveal delete button), Double tap (zoom in and out), pinch and zoom, Touch and hold, Shake - understand each of their significance and use appropriately
4. Add realism
5. Use sounds
6. What kind of data entry points to use - keyboards/ numberpads/ scroll wheels

The iPad UI should highly leverage the fact that the screen is bigger than the iPhone and users don't like to leave one screen to go to the other. Specific things to consider for iPad:

1. Reduce full screen transitions
2. Use flattened navigation
3. Use popovers for modal and nonmodal tasks
4. Put tool bar content on the top

Next week I will discuss the specific elements like Elements, Content views, alerts, etc.

The first post...

I have been very closely involved in the creation of a startup - Y Media Labs, a mobile app development studio. Many of my posts are going to be learnings from the mobile and marketing arena in the Silicon Valley. I will also have some random posts sometimes – I totally believe ‘Change is a good thing’ and I am not going to keep this blog focused only on one thing – unlike thousands of blogs out there. Hence the name – Mobile, Marketing, Madness – while the first two words speak for themselves, the third one gives me a ‘right’ to just pour things out (don’t worry that will not happen very often!!)