The concurrent theme is this week’s collection of mobile blog posts submitted by Mobilists all over the world is something which is currently very close to my heart, which is “Creating mobile apps with a purpose” - to offer value and engagement. Mobile Apps now coined to just “Apps” has been around for a considerable amount of time now and even though it is now perceived to be a land-grab at the moment, the one fundamental flaw by most App developers and business owners is the failure to treat it as a tangible product. If I, as a human being walk into a show with the intention of purchasing or acquiring something, there is a high probability that I would want that product to offer some purpose to my life, so in a nut-shell why is it so difficult (given that its almost popular 4+ years later that apps first surfaced), that Mobile product/business owners are still failing to cotton on to this concept.
Peggy Anne Salz from MobileGroove leads this discussion with her post where she highlights that the focus must shift from quantity of the App downloads to quality of the the actual engagement levels of the App and to drive and encourage the interactive of an App via the number one mobile medium on the planet, which is SMS. Read more about this on http://www.mobilegroove.com/achieving-app-impact-using-sms-to-encourage-ongoing-engagement-13758
Always a delight, the ever vocal, straight talking to the point (Father of Mobile) Tomi Ahonen (http://communitiesdominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/10/alookatthehandsetindustrymarketandinstalledbasein2012.html)adds to the discussion by bringing the reality of the most prevalent features found on the current 5.5 billion installed handsets on the planet which SMS dominating at 100% irrespective of whether a person uses a smart phone or not and the top global operating system is Android at 53% with Windows still on the bottom end of just 2% of the installed mobile user base. And on the note of Android devices, an interesting and useful presentation on the Android battery consumption may be of interest to android app developers by Kumar Rangarajan can be found at http://www.slideshare.net/littleeye/power-optimization-for-android-developers
A regular contributor Mr Antonie R J Wright sums up what we are all pretty much thinking these days in that the actual design on mobile hardware has stagnated over the past few years and has become boring. In order to still add a bit of that inital wow factor to actually using a device, one should go back to basics of getting that initial phone experience right and engage on what keeps the user coming back to his phone (as its not the design), but look at the home screen and whats on it: http://arjw.wordpress.com/2012/10/09/black-slabs-and-button-icons/
Think mobile apps and the first thing that almost every mobile app user is of course “Angry Birds”, so one must still not forget the power of mobile gaming as pointed out by Sandy Duncan of YoYo Games on: http://thefonecast.com/Opinion/TabId/87/ArtMID/545/ArticleID/6203/Mobile-gaming-past-present-and-future-an-interview-with-Sandy-Duncan-of-YoYo-Games.aspx
With the myth that developing for the Windows platform is the easiest, what is the actual reality of the easiest platform to develop for…these results by http://blog.codengo.com/2012/09/the-windows-effect-may-be-coming/ may surprise you as currently Windows is not at the number one spot but that’s not to say it wont be in the near future.
The dual screen experience is taking the mobile community by storm with increasing value and engagement, and more interesting facts provided by http://servletsuite.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/about-tv-communication-tools.html to provide more insights on the second screen purpose.
And on the rise of mobile shopping and retail, an interesting piece by OgilvyAction shows that the two are still on the teenage years trying to understand each other with consumers taking more and more of a preference to shopping on a mobile site rather than an app:
http://www.speedcommunications.com/blogs/speed/2012/09/18/mobile-and-retail-a-teenage-relationship/
So we know the platform we want, the audience we want to build an app for and we know it needs to offer value, how do we actually start? Read Brian Katz’ advice on building apps at http://www.ascrewsloose.com/2012/09/27/you-want-me-to-build-what/ where he describes its all about marrying the tech to the business requirements, processes and goals and to what the actual users want to achieve out of the app.
Finally, the featured blog post for this has to go to piJnz who gives us a lovely inforgraph on the hottest mobile topic of the moment, which is mobile coupons
Coupons on the rise – an infographic by the team at www.pijnz.com
Mobile marketing platform for agencies and publications
Other interesting reads include Mobile SEO Tips: http://www.pijnz.com/blog/mobileseotipspart1/ and a guide to offering mobile web sites: http://www.pijnz.com/business-resources/a-guide-to-offering-mobile-sites for clients and marketers wanting to incorporate a simple mobile solution as part of their digital strategy.
Taking all of the above into account, even though most statistics are provided by the Western world, never ever forget about the opportunities in Africa as pointed out by Optism on http://www.optism.com/blog/index.php/2012/10/mobile-campaign-africa-sponge/
Before closing, an upcoming event from Neil Roberson that is worth taking note of is www.socialmobilepayments.com/agenda
And that’s a wrap fellow mobilists, hope you enjoy and get tips for crafting APPsolutely AWESOME Apps :)
