Have you been hearing the phrase “mobile is eating the world” lately? Well… it kind of is.

As covered by Brian Hall of ReadWrite Mobile, ITU says that nearly all of the population has a mobile device:

“According to the ITU’s “facts and figures” publication, mobile penetration rates (pdf) are now about equal to the global population – including an 89% penetration rate in “developing countries,” which currently have the highest mobile growth rates.

In other words, nearly everyone on the planet has a mobile phone – or will have one soon enough.

The ITU report also notes that “mobile broadband” subscriptions have grown from 278 million in 2007 – when the iPhone was first introduced – to 2.1 billion in 2013 – an annual growth rate of 40%.

While larger still in the developed world, since 2010, mobile broadband adoption has grown fastest in developing countries – with rates hitting 82% in Africa and 55% in the Arab states.”

This is great news for developers, but it also means releasing apps internationally will become increasingly important. With a growing number of countries adopting mobile, there is huge potential for an international app presence. Testing for localization issues and knowing how your app performs in different parts of the world will be very important for developers. Every country’s language, culture and standards are different – so it’s nearly impossible to know if your app translates correctly inside the lab. You could spoof an IP address, but you still likely won’t have access to the contextual knowledge to verify content accuracy.

Despite the challenges, one thing is for sure; the opportunity for developers through mobile has grown considerably – and it will continue.

Looking for resources on Localization Testing? Download this free whitepaper.

We’ve come a long way from the days of AOL instant messenger (although it’s still a great service). The two big differences between now and then are:

1. There are a number of alternative messaging tools out there – hundreds even
2. The messaging services are now widely available via mobile apps, sometimes exclusively

TechCrunch provided a great summary of some of they key players entering the mobile messaging space. Aside the high-level view, the article identifies some of the key strengths and weaknesses of the respective apps – something that developers and testers should take note of.

Here is a quick excerpt:

Little by little, these mobile messaging apps are eating away at the mindshare of grand web-based social networks, even as they recreate their own social content platforms online to extend and bolster their mobile offerings. Facebook was slow to recognise the threat but has since countered with its own Messenger app, and additional offerings like SnapChat-rival Poke. How seriously Facebook is taking the mobile messaging app threat now is evident in its most recent mobile effort:  Facebook Home – an Android launcher that seeks to elbow its way past rival apps by foregrounding Facebook’s own chat channel atop other apps.

But Home may already be too little, too late. With limited availability, the launcher can’t yet reach very far – it’s had only around one million downloads to-date — and will likely never make it onto iOS. There’s no word on active users of Home but the launcher has failed to impress those who are downloading it, with only a two-star rating on Google Play so far. Facebook’s strategy of trying to stop the runaway mobile messaging train by standing on the train tracks looks like a pretty forlorn hope. A better bet is for it to drive usage of its own mobile messaging apps – but that’s where the geographical variation of messaging platforms poses a huge challenge.

Different messaging apps are doing well in different geographies. There’s huge and growing mobile messaging variation, as more and more companies wise up to the opportunity and launch their own messaging attacks. A recent example is the Bharti/Softbank telco joint venure messaging app, Hike, that has grabbed more than five million users since launching in December. Another contender is U.S. startup just.me, which launched its messaging play last month in 155 countries and 32 languages. Add to that Google looks to be readying a new unified messaging play of its own, codenamed Babel.

Read the Rest >>>

Trulia has a pretty cool real estate website. You can search for homes for sale or rent and read up on what’s nearby, the crime rate in the area and other information people looking to move might find interesting. But Trulia comes in even more handy when you’re just driving around. Wondering if there are any nearby homes on the market as you drive down a particularly pretty street? Curious about how much that home with the for sale sign in the yard is going for? Pull up the Trulia app.

Trulia saw their user base shifting from web to mobile – so they shifted right along with them and created mobile apps. When you need to make sure your app works just about anywhere in the country, under all sorts of circumstances (I’ve used Trulia while driving through parts of Maine) how do you test it? Here’s what Trulia was up against and what they decided to do, according to a report from analyst firm IDC:

To test these applications across an extensive geography and broad spectrum of devices, operating systems, and carriers, Trulia chose to go beyond the confines of its testing lab and adopt a “crowdsourcing” model to achieve in-the-wild testing. This model leverages a community of testers with different backgrounds, skills, and testing specialties to put applications through their paces under real-world conditions.

Can you guess who they went with?

After evaluating various crowdsourcing companies, Trulia chose uTest to test its mobile applications.

According to the IDC Spotlight: Trulia ROI, Trulia saw some very specific, very impressive results when working with uTest:

• ROI of 280%
• Seeing payback in 7.2 months
• Reducing testing costs by 95%
• Increased customer base by 10%-15%

Read the full IDC Spotlight: Trulia ROI >>>

What’s the ROI of your mobile app testing?

Could chat apps kill off the infamous ‘text message’? Recent studies point to yes.

According to David Myer, of Gigaom, people are now sending more messages on mobile chat apps than they are through SMS messages:

“Informa says 2012 saw nearly 19 billion messages sent over these apps each day around the world, versus 17.6 billion SMS messages. The analyst house reckons the contrast will be even starker in 2014, with 21 billion text messages projected, against almost 50 billion app-based messages. As you will note, this suggests that SMS volumes will continue to increase, at least in the short term.”

So what does this mean? For one, these are scary stats for mobile carriers and they could mean a big change in the way many carriers operate. Nokia has already made the first move towards a chat app smartphone integration, by reportedly adding a new mobile chat app button, “WhatsApp”, their newest model. If this trend continues other mobile carriers are sure to follow in Nokia’s footsteps.

But this also means both good news and increased pressure for developers of mobile chat apps. If consumers are increasingly relying on chat apps to communicate, app developers need to be prepared. Can the chat app handle the load of a growing user base? Do their apps work everywhere, every time? In-the-wild testing will need to play a huge role in order for chat app adoption to continue to grow.

Will chat apps continue to overtake texting? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

If you build it they will come…unless it’s mobile web only. We can now add LinkedIn to the long list of companies that find HTML5 promising, but who cannot forgo native apps in its favor. Why is this the case? Simple: Users still spend more time in native apps.

VentureBeat sat down with Kiran Prasad, LinkedIn’s Sr. Director of Mobile Engineering, who explained the company’s decision to once again focus on native apps over HTML5:

We have definitely shifted from HTML5 to native. The primary reason for that is, we’re seeing that more and more people are spending  more time in the app, and the app is running out of memory. It’s not performance issues, like speed or rendering, but it’s still a big problem.

The second reason we’ve gone native is trying to get some of the animations —  the spinners and the way they work — getting that smoothness, we felt like we needed native to really do that well.

The way we built our system, we used template JSONs. We always have to support  HTML5 because so much of our traffic comes from email. When we were [serving] a  smaller group [of users], we were hoping we could duplicate all that mobile web work to make our clients faster in terms of code deploys. It worked really well when mobile only made up 8 to 10 percent of traffic. … I’m not sure I could have predicted it, but we recognize now that HTML5 is not allowing us to do the best  for our users.

Read the Rest >>>

The App Quality Alliance (AQuA) – a global group made up of manufacturers, carriers and other parties involved with mobile apps – put together a handy list of the “Top 10 App Errors Good QA Helps You to Avoid.” Here are my five favorite:

1. User interface inconsistency – The UI must be consistent throughout the app, including the consistency of soft key references.

4. Language inconsistency and spelling errors – Text displayed in a localised version of the app needs to be consistent throughout, and must be free of spelling errors in all languages.

5. Privacy policy omission – A privacy policy must always be clear within the app.

9. Network connectivity: Lack of notification – When the app uses network capabilities it must be able to handle situations where network connectivity is not possible, delayed or lost through the display of relevant and timely information to the user.

10. Screen orientation distortion - The display must not be distorted when changing between landscape and portrait display mode.

See the full list from AQuA >>>

It’s true, all 10 errors highlighted on AQuA’s list can be avoided with some good QA work, but it’s important to remember that no one type of testing will catch all these issues.

Many of the issues – like interface and ease of navigation problems – would show up during usability testing. Others are squarely functional issues (I’m looking at you #7). And a few of the issues on the list will likely only be flushed out with dedicated security testing or localization testing.

Read over AQuA’s list and making sure none of these glaring errors are slipping through the cracks of your testing.

What’s the app economy look at the start of 2013? According to a Q1 report from analyst firm Canalys, downloads are up, markets are growing in new locations and Google and Apple are still on top. The report looked at the app stores for Google, Apple, Windows Phone and Blackberry in more than 50 countries. Overall, 13.4 billion apps were downloaded in the past three months, an 11% increase over the end of 2012.

If you’re an app developer or tester, where should you be focusing your mobile efforts? Here’s a breakdown:

• Some of the strongest growth was seen in emerging markets, such as South Africa, Brazil and Indonesia
• App downloads in North America and Western Europe increased -  6% and 10% respectively
• Google Play saw the most downloads – accounting for 51% of downloads from the four major stores

Though Google and Apple still dominate the app market, Tim Shepherd, Canalys Senior Analyst, believes Windows Phone and Blackberry are still in the game. They need a fair bit fo work to steal away market share, though, Tim cautioned in the report.

BlackBerry 10 now has more than 100,000 apps available through its storefront, showing good growth from the 70,000 it boasted at launch, and the new devices on the platform have given BlackBerry a much greater chance to compete for consumer attention. Its app story is going from strength to strength, but there is no room for complacency. Microsoft, with the help of partners such as Nokia, is also making good progress attracting some important titles to the Windows Phone platform, but it too needs to do more to make building apps for its platform a priority for developers and also do a better job of marketing and communicating the already established strength of its app story.

So if you want to be in the midst of the mobile testing needs, focus your time in Android and iOS testing. Don’t forsake Windows Phone or Blackberry though, if those OSes continue to grow testers are going to be in high demand, especially since they’ll be less common.

If you’re a tester in emerging markets like South Africa, Brazil or Indonesia, invest in your mobile collection and brush up on your testing skills, the mobile app ecosystems in those areas are taking off, which means testers will be busy.

Jennifer Lent is the site editor for TechTarget’s SearchSoftwareQuality.com. She is a treasure trove of mobile application dev and testing news. If you have some time to kill and want to learn more about the rise of mobile and how it’s changing companies and their development approaches (particularly in enterprise) go through her archives.

In the meantime, here’s a look at four major changes mobile has forced upon the traditions of software development, as highlighted in Jennifer’s article “‘New Normal’ Emerging as Software Teams Go Mobile.” (I think you, dear readers, will particularly enjoy the third point.)

Mobile demands shorter delivery cycles

Delivery cycles for Web projects range from nine months to 12 months, according to Michael Gilfix, director of enterprise mobile at IBM. “Mobile projects run three to six months,” he said. Independent software consultant Howard Deiner said two months is more like it.

More software updates for mobile projects

“In mobile, you release continually,” [IBM's Gilfix] said. A key reason for continual releases is the constant changes in mobile handsets — not just new devices, but also new versions of the iOS and Android mobile operating systems. “Release managers have to wrap their heads around that,” he said.

1:1 dev-to-tester ratio rules

One tester for every developer on the project is largely the result of the complexities of mobile testing. Quality assurance (QA) pros must take into account the multiple devices, mobile operating systems and versions of those operating systems — as well as connectivity conditions that vary widely, depending on the mobile user’s location, [Ojas Rege, vice president of strategy at MobileIron] noted.

Mobile apps help software teams get serious about security

“Software teams working on Web apps never embraced security wholeheartedly,” [Theresa Lanowitz, Voke Inc. analyst] said. “For 10 years we’ve been having this discussion about who is responsible for application security, and we have not made a lot of headway.” But now, mobile apps are driving the need for security testing. Maybe, finally, we’ll embrace security in the enterprise, and that would be good for the security of all apps, she said.

Read the full article at TechTarget >>>

It’s clear that Jennifer, and everyone she interviewed for this article, understands and appreciates how different, complicated and ever changing mobile app testing is. Sure, the basics are the same as all software testing, but there’s a lot more to consider when it comes to mobile. Companies need to change their approach to development and QA if they want to keep up.

The hammer did not make the top seven list.

VentureBeat recently posted a guest blog by Xanadu founder and product strategist Mariya Yao titled, “7 tools to make your mobile app suck less.”

We found it to be a great article – not only because it mentions using uTest, but because we agree these are some of the critical components to making apps that delight your customers.

Here the tips from Yao :

1. Get a professional evaluation – Yao specifically listed “services like uTest.”
2. Check if people get your value proposition – Why should people care about your app? Clue can help.
3. Track the right metrics – This is exactly why uTest acquired Apphance and built Applause.
4. Record real users as they try your app – We love this bullet and like to think we know a thing or two about in-the-wild testing.
5. Use heat-maps to track user actions and paths – Yao listed Heatma.ps as a tool for this.
6. Split-test different design assumptions – Yao highlighted Swrve, LeanPlum and Arise.io as valuable tools.
7. Discuss your design feedback with your team – Yao recommended Notable.

Question for our readers – what other tips or tools should be included in this list?

Citibank started offering text-message banking services in 2006 and quickly transitioned to a mobile website and app a year later. It now offers mobile apps for multiple operating systems that cover smartphones and tablets. With such a long standing dedication to mobile, Citi has gained some insight into how people feel about mobile banking (and mobile finance apps in general). Digiday recently spoke to Tracey Weber, Head of Internet and Mobile at Citi, about some of the challenges the bank faces when it comes to mobile – some of them might surprise you.

What’s the biggest challenge?
Consumer expectations. People are using retail apps and social networking apps that have a superb user experience, and that puts pressure on us. It sets a high bar in terms of the experience we have to provide. We spend a lot of time on that. And expectations are constantly changing and evolving. Capabilities are important as well, for customer-retention purposes. But most of all, customers want the mobile experience to be clear, fast and easy, and that’s a challenge.

Are people are ready to trust mobile with their financial information?
They are. We certainly saw with the Internet that it takes time for some people to get started with digital forms of banking. But because of the Internet, people aren’t as uneasy about mobile as we saw with the Internet. Yes, security is still a concern for some people. And it’s not just about the application or site being hacked. It’s the fact that you’re in public doing stuff, liking standing in line, and you don’t want people seeing you’re financial information. The key is providing capabilities that are really convenient. That usually gets people over the security hurdle.

How do you think about mobile relative to other digital channels?
We have been really thoughtful about evolving how people use different digital devices. Mobile is very on the go, and so we have quick access to tools that a person on the go would need. Tablets, on the other hand, are very lean back, so we provide more capabilities in our tablet apps. On the Web, we provide all of the capabilities. It’s important to keep in mind the different mindsets of consumers based on the device they are using. We are not trying to give mobile users every single capability.

Read the full interview at Digiday >>>

Unfortunately, Citi’s app users seem to think the bank needs to step up its game – both the iOS and Android versions have low Applause Scores.