2010 was a big year for Facebook: its dominance asserted with the capitulation of one-time competitors such as MySpace, hitting the 500 million users milestone, movies, Man-of-the-Year CEO…With such highs, it’s hard to speculate what 2011 holds for Facebook – but you don’t need a crystal ball to see one area of intense focus will be in the mobile industry.
At the recent Inside Social Apps conference at UC San Francisco, Facebook Chief Technology Officer Bret Taylor the company is concentrating heavily on acquisitions. Location-based products and payment services would be areas of focus for Facebook, but it seemed that the main area to watch for 2011 was mobile.
“Mobile is the primary focus for our platform this year,” he said.
While the mobile industry presents challenges, there are greater rewards. 200 million people currently access Facebook on mobile devices. This user segment is twice as active as their desktop counterparts and is growing faster than any other. Mobile’s “inherent engineering challenge”, as Taylor put it, lies in the fact that any update has to suit the many different mobile platforms operating today.
Taylor did confirm, however, that Facebook were putting a huge amount of resources into HTML5.
“HTML5 is the future platform,” he said.
Having recently raised $1.5 billion with the help of Goldman Sachs, the Facebook coffers are full – and it looks like they are putting their money where their mouth is, with the recent acquisition of ad start-up Rel8tion, which will improve hyper-local ad targeting to its mobile subscribers. Hyper-local ads, popularized by Groupon’s local deals, could be integral to Facebook’s plan for generating income through its Facebook Deals geo-location service.
If you’re a mobile developer, you’re probably well-aware of the industry stats – hundreds of thousands of apps, millions of users, billions downloads, etc. That being the case, it can seem like an impossible task to get your app some recognition.
Enter the Mobile Premier Awards. Here’s The Next Web with the details:
Instead of relying on getting your app featured on an App Store or picked up by a reputable outlet to gain momentum, there are a number of ways to promote your app and get it noticed, one of these being AppCircus; a global platform showcasing the most creative and innovative apps that allows you to demonstrate your app in action during some of the most influential international events in the mobile/tech scene.
The next influential international event? Only Mobile World Congress. That’s right, AppCircus are currently looking for the very best app submissions with a view to announcing the top apps at The Mobile Premier Awards, due to be held in Barcelona on February 14.
There have already been a large number of submissions, the last count on January 14 topped 450 entries.
If you are involved in a startup or a developer who wants a top international jury (including our very own Patrick de Laive) to select your creation amongst 19 other finalists, have the opportunity to showcase your app in a 3-minute pitch live at the event in Barcelona in front of investors, operators, media companies and other influential mobile personalities – time is running out, as submissions for the awards are closing on February 18.
The nominated apps for the Mobile Premier Awards 2011 edition will include the various winners of the AppCircus series of events across 2010 but also the best apps from the AppCircus Categories.
The uTest Blog has just published Part I of a two-part interview with Matt Evans, QA Director at Mozilla. Prior to his role at Mozilla, Evans was a key player at Palm, where he managed the quality program for the WebOS Applications and Services of the Palm Pre smartphone. You should read the entire interview, but here are two questions he answered specific to mobile app testing. Enjoy!
uTest: You were the QA Director for Palm when they launched the Palm Pre Smartphone, as well as the WebOS apps and services. What’s been the biggest difference (if any) between launching a mobile product and a web product?
ME: The biggest difference between a web product and mobile device is the amount of testing and certification that must precede the launch of a mobile product. A smartphone such as the Pre is an incredibly complex and highly integrated piece of technology–much more so than a typical web application. First off, a smartphone contains a fully-functional OS, usually based on some variant of Linux running on very constrained hardware. It must perform all of its concurrent services utilizing limited memory and limited CPU horsepower. The smartphone must also respond correctly to the multitude of many current events, from those generated from the environment–like switching from wifi to a WAN internet connection–to handling data input from the user, as well as handling events from the onboard applications.
Launching a mobile product requires exhaustive certification of individual hardware components such as the CPU, modems, codecs, and displays. Even then, the finished product is really launched by the carrier and must go through their exhaustive certification tests as well. Testing an onboard mobile application is also a much harder testing task. There are so many conditions and constraints that are involved in testing a mobile application.
A typical mobile application is nearly functionally equivalent to any counterpart desktop client-side web application. Take, for example, a mobile email application. It must behave and interact with the server-side application in nearly the same way as a desktop web client. The established protocols were designed for a stable communications environment, but this is just not the case in a mobile environment. The internet connection may be lost and reconnected very rapidly. The connection may even be lost for long periods of time. The application may, at any moment, be swapped out of memory. The system may be shut down abruptly. Lots of system conditions happen in a smartphone that would rarely or never happen in the context of a desktop web client application. However, a mobile application must perform its main functional operations of retrieving and sending messages flawlessly with no loss of data and full operational integrity. Testing mobile applications under these environmental scenarios is a huge challenge. In short, testing a web application is no easy task, but mobile applications and products represent a much tougher and larger testing challenge.
Here’s the latest press release from Apple regarding the launch of the iOS 4.2 for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch:
CUPERTINO, California—November 22, 2010—Apple® today announced that iOS 4.2, the latest version of the world’s most advanced mobile operating system, is available today for download for iPad™, iPhone® and iPod touch®. iOS 4.2 brings over 100 new features from iOS 4.0, 4.1 and 4.2 to iPad including Multitasking, Folders, Unified Inbox, Game Center, AirPlay® and AirPrint.
“iOS 4.2 makes the iPad a completely new product, just in time for the holiday season,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Once again, the iPad with iOS 4.2 will define the target that other tablets will aspire to, but very few, if any, will ever be able to hit.”
iPad users can now run their favorite apps and switch between them instantly, while preserving iPad’s legendary battery life. Users can organize their apps with drag-and-drop simplicity using Folders, and Mail now features a Unified Inbox, fast inbox switching and a threaded message view.
Game Center allows iPad, iPhone and iPod touch users to challenge and play friends or be matched automatically with new opponents, showcase their scores and achievements, and discover new games their friends are playing.
There is an inexplicable amount of apps available at the moment and more and being developed as we speak. It’s not long before we’ll be hearing the statistics: “An app is developed every 3 seconds” or “while you have read this paragraph, 6 new apps have been launched in the mobile market”. And while it might be true that each time you sneeze a new app gets it wings – it does not mean the apps that are available are helping your brand.
According to a recent survey, about 38% of users said they were not happy with the apps available to them and a full 69% percent said that they had a negative perception of a brand if their app did not work well. That’s a pretty risky marketing strategy.
So why take the risk? Well, most brands want to show that they have their fingers on the pulse so instead of taking the time to test the app fully, developers give in to the pressure, supplied in healthy doses, by the “suits.” It’s also important to add that about 76% of mobile application users, according to the same study, agree that all brand name companies and organizations should have mobile apps to make shopping or interacting with them easier.
So we thought we’d send brands a few simple suggestions from the perspective of Joe Somebody on what we are looking for in an app. Here’s what we found:
Better read this article before you do. Here’s Andrew Seybold from FierceWireless.com:
Looking at the specifications for the iPhone 4, you will see that it provides service in the 850 and 1900 MHz band for U.S. coverage and in the 900, 1800, and 2100 MHz bands for the rest of the world. It does not support AWS-1 spectrum, so moving to T-Mobile means you will not have any 3G service. Further, when AT&T and Apple got together, AT&T made changes to its network to support some of the iPhone’s more advanced features. Again, moving it to another network means some of this functionality will be lost.
The other example is the new BlackBerry Torch that AT&T recently launched. Again, it provides both 2G and 3G support for both the 850 and 1900 MHz bands in the United States as well as the four European and world portions of the spectrum at 900, 1800, and 2100 MHz (UMTS), but it does not support the U.S. AWS-1 band so moving it to T-Mobile would mean giving up access to 3G services.
The bottom line is that the concept of unlocked phones seems reasonable, but in practice, even with an unlocked phone, your options are limited when moving to another network. If, as rumored, Verizon does begin to carry the iPhone in 2011, no one is sure whether it will be 2G and 3G compatible only or if it will support LTE as well. And if Verizon makes the same types of additions to its network that AT&T has made, the best way to enjoy the Verizon iPhone is the same as the best way to make full use of the AT&T iPhone, which is to stay on the network for which it was intended.
The bottom line is that you must do your homework if you are thinking about purchasing a phone with the intention of moving it to another network. Chances are that you will sacrifice some of the functionality of the phone if you move it to another network. It is difficult enough for the great design engineers to build everything into a device today. It will become more complex in the future and we will see more, not fewer devices that are network-centric.
No, probably not. But it looks like we are getting a confirmation, without getting an official confirmation, that the next name in the desert line of Android OS is Gingerbread (thanks to our friends over at AndroidCentral for picking this up).
The real question is will Gingerbread be Android 2.3, 2.5, or 3.0? With the rumors already floating around of the Gingerbread predecessor being Honeycomb. And the folks behind the desert, have been rumored to be planning to build Honeycomb to the tablet style device, I’m leaning towards Gingerbread being version 2.3.
Check out the Google unwrapping video at HQ and let us know your thoughts in the comments!
Mobile payment platforms have been a frequent topic of discussion here at mobileapptesting.com, since they obviously have huge implications for mobile app testers. You can find previous entries on this topic here, here, here and here.
But for all of the hype and promise, users still seem distrustful of this technology when it comes to conventional purchases. Virtual currencies on the other hand, are another story entirely. Ditto for brand recognition.
But do app users really prefer credit cards and web payments to all other options? The data can be difficult to parse, because users may allow brand familiarity to influence their decision to use a particular kind of payment. For example, a user might want to pay with cash or a gift card, but end up paying with their Visa because their comfort level in dealing with that brand is much higher.
Judging only by branded options, users prefer credit cards, promotional offers, online payments, cash payments, gift cards, and mobile payments, in that order.
However, we also asked our survey respondents, in a later question, to choose their favorite payment options — without mentioning a brand. The results are revealing:
As 2010 starts winding down, the mobile app revolution continues to wholly define this year in tech. Every day more mobile innovations are being updated and perfected to match our – the mobile consumers – needs. One such emerging trend is mobile barcode scanning.
According to ReadWriteMobile, a new study by barcode tech company ScanBuy claims that barcode scanning is up 700% in 2010!
Android was the most popular smartphone platform by far with 45% of barcode users, followed by Blackberry (27%), iPhone (15%), Symbian (9%), Java (3%) and Windows Mobile (1%). Other Key Findings Include:
Health and beauty products were the most popular items among 1D (UPC) scans with 21% of users, followed by groceries (14.4%), books (12.6%) and kitchen items (9.2%).
Over 45 countries have scanned barcodes.
Linking to a website is the most popular action delivered by a 2D barcode scan with 85% of scans.
1D (UPC) and 2D (QR) codes are being scanned equally.
In response to this huge news, I thought I’d have some fun with URL shortening service bit.ly‘s new QR-generation tool that launched a few days ago (FYI: goo.gl launched a few weeks ago too). Go ahead! Scan away and see where it takes you! (Hint: I am the PR Maven ;).)
While barcode scanning isn’t new technology by any stretch, the 2010 mobile boom is driving its increasing popularity. Even Calvin Klein recently replaced its massive billboards in New York and LA with QR codes (pictured above) – not to mention the giant QR codes in Times Square! I wonder what new and exciting mobile app testing doors this will open…
Matt Solar, a frequent and loyal reader of mobileapptesting.com, sent us this story about the latest in mobile technology: paper stencils. Hear him out:
Having designed sketch ups for advertising I know how helpful a template can be. UIstencils.com (self-dubbed, “The Original Interface Stencils”) is doing this for mobile developers – providing clean looking stencils to help with mock up designs for mobile applications.
The iPhone note pads are a bit simplistic (one button) but the stencils, which are made out of stainless steel and featuring the most common buttons the stencils, certainly would make a nice addition to your work space.
They currently offer versions for iPhone, iPad, Android, and website developers.
2010 was a big year for Facebook: its dominance asserted with the capitulation of one-time competitors such as MySpace, hitting the 500 million users milestone, movies, Man-of-the-Year CEO…With such highs, it’s hard to speculate what 2011 holds for Facebook – but you don’t need a crystal ball to see one area of intense focus will be in the mobile industry.
As 2010 starts winding down, the mobile app revolution continues to wholly define this year in tech. Every day more mobile innovations are being updated and perfected to match our – the mobile consumers – needs. One such emerging trend is mobile barcode scanning.
