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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Mobile app testers – get ready to jump back into website testing! Kayak, the travel site, recently redesigned its website to mimic the feel of its mobile app. From All Things D:

Travel comparison site Kayak.com has redesigned its Web site so it looks like its mobile app — not the other way around.

“We run the iPhone and iPad teams separately from the Web team, and the Web team had fallen behind,” said Paul English, co-founder and CTO.

The goal with the site’s design has always been to provide a simple layout, so that users can easily sift through thousands of flights, hotels and car rentals to find what they are looking for quickly.

But up until now, the focus wasn’t really on being beautiful, English said. The new look tries to incorporate a clean and attractive design. …

The larger significance is that mobile is influencing the Web, and not the other way around.

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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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This combines two of our favorite things here at MobileAppTesting.com – mobile apps AND security testing (or rather, proof of the lack thereof). From TechCrunch:

Lookout, a company that offers security services for a number of smartphone platforms, is debuting a new Android app that lets you see mobile threats as they are detected around the world. Launched from Lookout Labs, the new app basically visualizes what’s happening in the mobile landscape and also shares details on top weekly threats & distribution of malware vs. spyware. …

Lookout collects data from its Mobile Threat Network, a cloud-based network which constantly analyzes global threat data to identify and quickly block new threats with over-the-air app updates. The network includes more than one million apps and 15 million user devices worldwide.

With the Lookout Mobile Threat Tracker, you can now see the thousands of threats that Lookout identifies and catches every day via the network. Within the Mobile Threat Tracker you can quickly see the top three trending threats. For example, if you tap on the name in the app, you can learn more about each threat. …

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If you’re a mobile app tester you really should consider expanding your hardware collection to include a tablet (if you haven’t already). In just a few short weeks tablet sales exploded – to the tune of a 9% ownership increase. From PCWorld:

The holidays were certainly prosperous for the tablet industry.

The number of U.S. tablet owners just about doubled from 10 percent to 19 percent between the middle of December and the start of January, according to a Pew Internet report out today.

Coming from a period from flat growth since the summer, tablets enjoyed a surge during the holiday season as lower-cost devices such as the Amazon Kindle Fire and Barnes and Noble’s Nook tablet reached shoppers just in the nick of time. …

Drilling down to the buyers themselves, tablets proved especially popular among households earning more than $75,000 and those with at least a college degree. A full 26 percent of those with incomes higher than $75,000 and 31 percent of those with higher levels of education now own a tablet. People under 50 were also a huge market for tablets.

Read the rest at PCWorld >>>

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Less than a month ago I wrote about the Microsoft Windows Phone Marketplace reaching the 50,000 apps mark. Fast forward only 25 days and the Marketplace has already grown by another 10,000 apps! From IntoMobile:

The number of apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace has just surpassed 60,000 according to the folks at All About Symbian. To put that number into some context, the 50,000 app barrier was passed just 25 days ago. An average of 400 apps are being added on a daily basis, though we don’t exactly know which type of apps are getting the most traction.

Unfortunately, quite a few reports say that while the explosive app growth seems impressive, the numbers don’t reflect the quality. More from IntoMobile:

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….by the time 2015 comes around. This according to research firm IHS iSuppli, who’s forecasting that the Windows Phone OS to overtake Apple’s iOS within the next couple of years. Seems far-fetched to me (and I’m a huge WP7 fanboy) but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. Here are a few details courtesy of The Daily Mail:

So far, Windows Phone has remained niche, despite fan and reviewer enthusiasm for the operating system.

Last year, Windows Phone accounted for just two per cent of the smartphone market.

By 2015, that figure will be 16.7 per cent, says iSuppli.

The analysts say that Nokia’s recent adoption of Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system will be key to the operating system’s dominance.

Analyst Wayne Lam says that the new Lumia 900 phone, a high-end smartphone recently unveiled by Nokia, will be the start of Windows Phone’s revival – and will help Nokia regain the market share it has lost to Android devices and iPhones.

Read the rest >>>

You’ve heard of eComm, now get ready for mHealth – mobile health. Apps geared toward helping people monitor and manage their health are expected to grow from $230 million in revenue in 2010 to $392 million by 2015, according to research by Frost & Sullivan. InformationWeek has the scoop:

Among those projected to download and use mobile health apps more frequently over the next few years are older Americans and their caregivers and patients with chronic conditions. The study notes that as the healthcare industry seeks to reduce costs, mobile health apps will become more prevalent. The aim of these tools is to better monitor patients’ health and prevent costly events such as hospital readmissions.

Furthermore, in a consumer-driven patient-centered healthcare model, patients are encouraged to play a greater role in tracking their health through mobile health apps that monitor vital information such as medication adherence, blood pressure, and glucose readings.

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This is one way to ensure your app is easy to use and intuitive…

… but you should probably make sure your tester is de-clawed first.

Google has been making some changes to aid Android app developers lately. First came Google’s insistence that the Holo theme be included on every Android phone that comes bundled with Android Market and now it’s pushing to streamline app development. Will the intended benefits of these efforts carry over to Android app testing? Will it make your life easier if a default theme is already on your Android 4.0 phone or if there are fewer development quirks to wade through with every app you test?

In case you have no idea what I’m talking about, here’s a recap of Holo from ReadWriteMobile:

Google is making incremental improvements to the Android platform to ease the burden of fragmentation on developers and original equipment manufacturers. While still allowing manufacturers to create custom skins, Google is doing its best to standardize the rest of the of the Android development environment with version 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

Themes are a big part of standardizing the Android experience. Android has instituted a requirement in ICS that that the “Holo” family of themes be implemented into devices unmodified. This will mean that widgets, apps buttons and menu screens will be much easier for developers to integrate.

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