Mobile App Testing

Before we get too far into 2012 lets take a look at the trends going into this year. Here are some key facts about the 2011 mobile market, from InformationWeek:

It’s Apple, Samsung Versus Everyone Else: Globally, Apple sold 37 million iPhones in the fourth quarter of 2011 and 93 million for the entire year. Samsung sold 36.5 million smartphones during the fourth quarter and 97.4 million for the entire year. Nokia ranks a distant third, with 19 million smartphones sold in the fourth quarter and 77.3 million sold for the year.

Android And iOS Will Lead For Foreseeable Future: Together, Android and iOS own approximately 76.3% of the U.S. smartphone market. Android has 46.3% of the market, while iOS has about 30%. RIM’s BlackBerry platform is third with about 15%. The remaining 10% is owned by Windows Mobile, PalmOS, webOS, and Windows Phone.

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If that headline confuses you, you’re not alone. In a blog post a few days back, Yahoo Mobile announced that it was abandoning several of its more well-known mobile apps in the name of their “mobile first” mindset. More on that in a second. But first, here’s a list of the apps – mostly for Android and iOS – that will no longer be supported:

• Yahoo! Meme (iPad and iPhone)
• Yahoo! Mim (iPad)
• Yahoo! Answers (Android)
• Yahoo! AppSpot (Android and iPhone)
• Yahoo! Deals (iPhone)
• Yahoo! Finance (BlackBerry)
• Yahoo! Movies (Android)
• Yahoo! News (Android)
• Yahoo! Shopping (iPhone)
• Yahoo! Sketch-a-Search (iPad and iPhone)

And here’s their explanation:

We’re moving forward with a “mobile first” mindset. You can expect to see more new Yahoo! mobile products in 2012, especially in areas ripe for innovation that build on Yahoo!’s strengths, such as companion experiences for TV like IntoNow, new ways to experience personalized media like Livestand, and some of our most popular and useful mobile apps like Yahoo! Mail, Messenger, Sportacular and Flickr, which are already being used by millions of people around the world. And we’ll be building these experiences with disruptive technology that’s going to change the mobile game well beyond Yahoo!.

Read the rest >>>

As testers do you own both an Apple and an Android phone? If not, how did you pick? Was it personal preference? How about platform marketshare? Or did you take developer-platform preference and app marketplaces into consideration?

I’m putting my money on personal preference, but in the event that your decision was driven by platforms, developers and marketshare here’s two interesting pieces of news:

1. While Apple has historically been the preferred developer platform (because it’s more lucrative), research firm Ovum is predicting Android to take that title by the end of the year.

2. Android and Apple marketshare are neck and neck as of the end of Q4 2011.

Here’s some more information on Point 1 from PCWorld:

Google’s Android will become the preeminent platform for developers over the next 12 months, edging ahead of Apple’s iOS, according to a study by research firm Ovum. Nearly all developers, however, will support both platforms.

Ovum’s call comes as Android continues to suck up market share, with more companies using the platform to crank out a wave of mobile devices. While iOS has seen its market share growth slow in the recent years, it has always been seen as a more lucrative location for developers to make money. As a result, most apps came to iOS first, and the other platforms second.

That, however, could all change in the coming months, Ovum said. Android’s prevalence is getting hard to ignore, and developers have incorporated new business models such as advertising and in-app purchases to spur revenue.

Read the full article >>>

And now a bit on Point 2 from Digital Trends:

Apple’s iPhone owned more of the US market than all Android-based devices combined during the fourth quarter of 2011, according to a new study from market research firm Kantar.

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The average smartphone user has 65 apps on their phone (according to a Flurry estimate). (Even I – who hates clutter, even on my phone – have 40 some-odd apps!) But what if you’re a mobile app tester instead of a casual user? You could easily have five times that average on your phone, especially if you’re like Sarah Perez at TechCrunch, who doesn’t like deleting apps. Even the ones she doesn’t use anymore.

The average smartphone user has 64 mobile apps installed on their mobile device. I’m ahead of the curve. I have around 400. It’s pushing nearly 7 GB of storage. Granted, many of these apps were installed for testing purposes only – they aren’t used daily by any means. But my real problem is that I’m not inclined to remove apps I don’t use. They just sit there on the phone, abandoned, languishing on the back screens. I could delete them, but I don’t. You know…just in case.

But she may have found a solution for her over-crowded phone problem – albeit a work-in-progress type of solution:

The promise of iCloud, as I see it, is that these apps can disappear from the iPhone’s homescreen, but never have to fully disappear from reach. They can be recalled through a simple search. …

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According to a study released by Xylogic, iPhone users tend to download games (over apps) while Android users favor apps (over games). Here are a few key points from ReadWriteWeb:

The iPhone is the domain of the game. Android is the land of the app. 2011 showed some very distinct trends in user activity on the two major mobile platforms. A study done by Xylogic shows that of the top 25 app publishers for iOS, only one does not produce games. On the flip side, of the top 25 for Android, only about half are game publishers. …

Of the top 150 downloads in the Android Market in 2011, 85 were apps against 65 games. Apps were downloaded 91.5 million times against 33.42 million for games. On iOS, 100 games were in the top 150 against 50 games [sic]. Games were downloaded 71.57 million times versus 25.64 for apps. …

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Smartphones and tablets were hot ticket items this holiday season – both on wish lists and under the tree. And it looks like one of the main things those happy recipients were doing with their new electronics was … more shopping? According to a report by IMB, sales transactions completed on digital devices on Christmas Day increased by more than 150% over last year! Check it out on TechCrunch:

It looks like consumers in the U.S. were shopping online alongside opening presents this year. According to IBM’s Coremetrics retail data, online sales on Christmas Day grew by 16.4 percent from last year. …

Sales completed from mobile devices grew, reaching 14.4 percent versus 5.3 percent on Christmas Day 2010, representing an increase of 172.9 percent. In terms of specific mobile devices, the iPad led all mobile device traffic to retailers at 7 percent, followed by the iPhone at 6.4 percent and Android at 5 percent.

What are you buying on Christmas Day? Everything you wanted by didn’t get? The report doesn’t mention if those sales numbers include purchases made within app stores/markets, which I assume would see pretty hefty traffic on a day like Christmas. TechCrunch uses the term “retailers” but there’s no further definition. Either way, that’s a drastic increase in only one year!

Read the whole TechCrunch article >>>

Toy maker WowWee is giving  the “hands on” concept of iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch games a whole new dimension. From TechCrunch:

WowWee, not content with creating singing Elvis heads, is branching out into AppGear Appcessories – apps that require AR-based accessories, allowing you to interact with real environments using an iPhone or iPod Touch. These games, arriving in stores in April, include a zombie game where you’re the zombies fighting off upset homeowners (What a twist!) and an air battle game that actually uses tiny foam planes attached to the front of your phone to simulate flying in three-dimensional space.

The games will cost $9.99 and include various collectable parts. For example, the zombie game, Zombie Burbz, includes four collectable figurines. Of of the figurines has a set of conductive pads on the bottom and, using the iPad’s multi-touch screen, you control the action by moving the figurine across the virtual board. …

One game, for, example, allows you to build a ray gun in real life and mix and match parts, resulting in odd weapons that do different things inside the game. It’s an interesting way to connect collectables with games.

Read the whole article >>>

We’ll have to keep an eye out next year and see if appcessories become the next big thing in mobile apps!

This morning, Mike blogged about a story on TechCruch about the Windows Phone 7.5 security flaw that will allow hackers to remotely lock down the SMS Hub. But it turns out Microsoft is not alone. This morning reports about SMS security flaws in both iPhones and Androids also hit the digital news realm. Here’s a breakdown of all three issues:

Sophos’ Naked Security blog details the iPhone issue (and patch):

Apple has released an update to its iPhone operating system to protect against a vulnerability that could potentially allow criminals to hijack users’ phones with malicious intent.

The flaw, which relies upon hackers sending booby-trapped SMS messages to the intended victim, was demonstrated at the BlackHat conference in Las Vegas earlier this week. …

The good news is that it’s not believed that any hackers have yet exploited the vulnerability in a malicious attack. But clearly Apple realised that there was a genuine danger of cybercriminals using the exploit for their own ends.

Read more…

There have been a plethora of studies looking at mobile shopping trends this holiday season (especially now that Cyber Monday is almost as well know as Black Friday). Most of the reports say vaguely the same thing – shopping on mobile devices has increased dramatically this year, especially when it comes to shopping on tablet devices. Were online retailers ready for this new trend? A study by Compuware doesn’t think so. From TechCrunch:

Despite the increases in tablet traffic, many retailers are not prepared to accommodate these new mobile shoppers. Compuware also prepared a chart showing the top retailers’ sites, and whether or not they offered an iPad-optimized website. Surprisingly, none of them do, not even Apple.com. What’s worse, Apple is also among the retailers who don’t offer a native iPad application. (The iPhone Apple Store app runs on the iPad, of course, but it’s not a universal app). For shame!

Apple is not alone though. Around half of the 30 top retailers Compuware looked didn’t have an iPad application, either.

That is one big, blank column! It’s pretty clear that retailers have adapted to the reality of mobile shopping when it comes to smartphones, but they’re a bit behind in optimizing for tablets. I wonder if any of these retailers have rushed to get a tablet optimized web (or native for those that didn’t have one) app out after the Black Friday – Cyber Monday rush. If they did, I hope they took the time to do some decent functional, usability and load testing before going live. Having a buggy, poor-performing app might just be worse than not having an app at all.

ReadWriteWeb just released its list of “Top 10 Mobile Products of 2011.” It looks like they didn’t take the task lightly and made sure all the major players in each category got considered. Here’s what they had to say about the process:

Looking back on 2011, it may be remembered as The Year Of Mobile. Sure, iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone and all the other platforms existed in previous years but historians will look back at 2011 and say that it was the year that the way an entire populace interacts with information fundamentally changed. Mobile is not just for the early adopters anymore. Smartphones are everywhere.

What made waves in the mobile realm this year? … To make the mobile list, a product had to be built to fundamentally work inside mobile platforms, hence the platforms themselves (iOS, Android flavors etc.) do not make the list. …

Our 2011 list includes location services, security, social networking, payments, HTML5, NFC among other topics. The next year will be fascinating to watch these platforms grow into things that normal people would have never dreamed of creating. In December 2012 this list will have more HTML5 components and NFC will be in the hands of many more people.

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