Archive for the ‘Apple’ Category
The Web as we know it have been born and matured on computers, but as it turns out now, computers no longer have dominance in it. According to a recent report by analyst Mary Meeker, mobile devices running iOS and Android now account for 45 percent of browsing, compared to just 35 percent for Windows machines. Moreover, Android and iOS have essentially achieved their share in just five years and their share is getting tremendously larger.
According to some forecasts their worldwide number of mobile devices users should overtake the worldwide number of PC users next year. If forecasts come true, this shift will not only continue, but accelerate. Based on data from Morgan Stanley, Meeker estimates roughly 2.9 billion people around the world will be using smartphones and tablets by 2015.
What does it mean now that more people are accessing the Web through tablets and smartphones rather than laptops and desktops? And is it really a big deal? Anyway, Internet is intended to be accessed from anywhere and thus from any device. Well, it is quite a change at least in terms most people consider the Web and how it gradually adapts to be used on mobile devices.
Apps-like sites
As mobile devices take over, the use of today’s desktop browsers like Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, and Safari will decline. Mobile browsers are already very capable and will increasingly adopt HTML5 and leading-edge Web technologies. As mobile devices naturally have less screen area, the sites need to function more like mobile apps and less like collections of links. So the sites are likely to look like apps.
Apps may rule
Native apps for smartphones and tablets almost always surpass websites designed for mobile devices because they can tap into devices’ native capabilities for a more responsive and seamless experience. This is most likely to change in the nearest future – most experts agree HTML5 is eventually the way of the future. This is already the status quo in social gaming: for example Angry Birds and Words with Friends. Some services won’t be available at all to traditional PCs — they won’t be worth developers’ time.
Less information at once
Web sites and publishers will no longer be able to display everything new for users and hoping something will catch the user’s eye. Smaller screens and lower information density means sites will need to adjust to user preferences and profiles to customize the information they present. Increasingly, the Internet will become unusable unless sites believe they know who you are. Some services will handle these tasks themselves, but the most likely contenders for supplying digital identity credentials are Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, Twitter, and mobile carriers.
Sharing by default
In a mobile-focused Internet, anonymity becomes rare. Virtually every mobile device can be definitively associated with a single person (or small group of people). Defaults to share information and experiences with social circles and followers will be increasingly common, along with increasing reliance on disclosure of personal information (like location, status, and activities, and social connections) to drive key functionality. As the Internet re-orients around mobile, opting out of sharing will increasingly mean opting out of the Internet.
Emphasis on destination
Internet-based sites and services will increasingly function as a combination of content and functionality reluctant to link out to other sites or drive traffic (and potential advertising revenue) elsewhere. These have long been factors in many sites’ designs but mobile devices amplify these considerations by making traditional Web navigation awkward and difficult. Still URLs are not going to die – people will still send links to their friends and Web search will remain most users primary means of finding information online.
Going light weight
As people rely on mobile, cloud, and broadband services, the necessity to do things like commute, store large volumes of records or media, or patronize physical businesses will decline. Businesses won’t need to save years of invoices, statements, and paperwork in file boxes and storage facilities – cloud storage comes as their rescue. Banks will become purely virtual institutions consumers deal with online via their phones. Distance learning and collaborative tools will let students take their coursework with them anywhere — and eliminate the need to worry about reselling enormous textbooks.
Going mobile is an obvious trend today. Experts envisage that nearly every service, business, and person who wants to use the Internet will be thinking mobile first and PC second, if they think about PCs at all. Do you agree? And what other related changes can you imagine?
Many thanks for sharing your thoughts 
Kind regards,
Aliona Kavalevich – Business Development Manager (LI page)
Aliona.Kavalevich@altabel.com
Altabel Group – Professional Software Development
- In: Apple | iPhone | Mobile
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The necessity for companies and developers to market and promote their individual applications has never been more important than ever, and is often absolutely crucial to an app’s success.
Now we have absolutely different situation we have a flooded App Store with various applications and an imposing mass of competition. With more than 300 apps being released on a daily basis, it is much more difficult to gain free press at niche websites as well as make it into the Top 100 charts. This is where the practices of marketing and advertising are absolutely essential to survive in the App Store.
To begin with you should be ready with your precise plan of your further action. Your plan of attack should really begin before you even open Xcode. As with any other business model, you must cover all grounds including research, design, artwork and branding, coding and hardware, and advertising and marketing.
Pre Launch marketing
Building a buzz around your app and allowing users to become aware of it’s release will add to the success of an application. You can do this promotion and marketing yourself through iPhone forums, social networking platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, and creating individual web pages dedicated to the application itself.
Aside from word of mouth promotions, pre-launch hype also begins with advertisement campaigns and website takeovers. Nothing is better than having your application branded across a website for a certain amount of time. Other ways to gain recognition are Press Releases, demonstration videos on YouTube, and user reviews.
App Launching on AppStore
So you have your ready iOS application and the next step you would like to begin with is to upload it to the AppStore and start its promotion there. Below some tips how to make it in a better way.
Here I would like to highlite that this is the most important part of your iPhone marketing mix. Most people look for cool new apps either on their iPhone/iPad, or through iTunes. Why? It’s the most convenient! That’s why it is so important for iOS application developers to focus on app in-store appearance most. When I use term “in-store appearance” I mean the following components:
App name should be concise enough to attract attention, but should also contain the most important keywords. It is one of the most important factors in search result ranking within the App Store.
Customer Reviews & Ratings it is important to make sure that your application doesn’t look like noone’s ever downloaded it. No reviews, no downloads in the eyes of iTunes users.
iPhone App Marketing Services allow you to build a positive image for your app and attract more downloads across different country app stores.
Colorful and interesting screenshots - Important factor in relaying info about your app. Great screenshots make users be interested in further downloading of the app and trying it in the action.
App description – it is make sense from a search result perspective. Should start with a bullet point list of important features, followed by a text description
Also one more thing we should pay attention to is Application Icon. Make sure that you have an attractive and eye-catching app icon that best represents and sells your application to the user. If your application icon lacks any attention, your product branding awareness is doomed from the start.
There are some smaller ways to gain attention across the net and within the App Store. So you can cause your app to jump back into the “new” charts by changing the release date of the app to the date at which your update was approved, which allows your app to be released in the next batch of updates that hit the App Store.
Also one more great idea is to offer “lite” versions of your application, especially if they are higher priced. It will offer not only free promotion but if the user is impressed enough, they’ll spring for the full version. Think “try before you buy”. Make sure the lite version includes a majority of the features offered in the full version, otherwise a user will move on and you potentially lost a buck to begin with.
This is some of the basic tools covering the first steps you need to do while promoting your application on the AppStore. For sure using AppStore as a core tool to promote the application is not the only variant but at the same time this is the most important playground for further application promotion campaign.
So my questions is what any methods/approaches do you use to promote your application on the AppStore? How do you promote your apps?
Please feel free to share your comments and opinions.
Kind Regards,
Natalia Kononchuk
Altabel Group – Professional Software Development
- In: Apple | Mobile
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Steve Jobs wasn’t a fan of Android. He thought it was a rip-off of the iPhone. He saw the iPhone as a ground-breaker and Android as an attempt by Google and a consortium of device manufacturers to bring a similar product to a wider market. He famously told his biographer Walter Isaacson that he would “spend my last dying breath if I need to” and “every penny of Apple’s $40bn in the bank” to right the perceived wrong done to Apple by Google. “I’m going to destroy Android,” he pronounced, “because it’s a stolen product…” Jobs’ quest led indirectly to the decision of a US court to award Apple $1bn in damages, and to place an injunction on Samsung distributing some of its product in the US.
But Android had been under development since 2003 and was purchased by Google in 2005, two years before the advent of the iPhone. Granted, its later development was undoubtedly influenced by the range of features incorporated in the iPhone, and the potential and scope of Nokia’s Maemo project.
Theft is an emotional concept and technology is a complex proving ground. The iPhone is an elegant synthesis of intricate ideas and technologies that had gone before, many of them originally developed, patented and supplied by companies such as Samsung and Motorola – now owned by Google. Smartphones and touchpads existed before the iPhone.
Samsung says it has spent billions on research into mobile technologies over the past 25 years and noted in its own submissions to the court that “the flash memory, main memory, and application processor for the iPhone” are supplied by Samsung. It said “also manufactures Apple’s A5X processor and is the sole supplier of the Retina display used in the new iPad”. It also initiated many of the wireless standards and technologies that make it possible for an iPhone to talk to other phones.
Apple’s distinctive contribution has been collation and design, derived from an understanding of why and how a Smartphone could and would be useful and attractive to an end user, and which features would enhance that effect. The iPod, iPhone and iPad are instantly recognizable for their cleanliness and simplicity – and the software is focused on simplifying the tasks of the end user.
Apple’s talent has been to transform utility into an art form, to reduce apparent complexity and anticipate the wants of the user. By collating the possibilities of the Smartphone, and pulling together the virtues of design and utility, Apple has lifted the concept of smart devices to browse the web from geek heaven into user space, which makes it all the more surprising how little attention other device and computer manufacturers have paid to the role of design in selling hardware.
But the bigger issue isn’t copying, or imitation, but the broken nature of the patent and so-called intellectual property industries. In an industry where last year’s must-have is already out of date, there is something obscene about a court case that involves, among other things, a dispute about patents and design registrations such as the one “for overall design of the product, including the rectangular shape, the rounded corners, the silver edges, the black face, and the display of 16 colorful icons”. Or the one “for the configuration of a rectangular handheld mobile digital electronic device with rounded corners”. These are not technological or design innovations.
The decision of the court to punish Samsung for its intrusion into the markets Apple considers its own, and in the words of Samsung’s press release “to give one company a monopoly over rectangles with rounded corners, or technology that is being improved every day by Samsung and other companies” is symptomatic of the ongoing crisis in the creative and technological industries.
The decision against Samsung is just the latest event in the war. It is bad news for everybody, not least the users and developers of Android and the iPhone, as each of these companies scrambles to buy up the ownership of patents. As Google’s chief legal officer, David Drummond, put it last year: “A Smartphone might involve as many as 250,000 largely questionable patent claims, and our competitors want to impose a tax for these dubious patents that makes Android devices more expensive for consumers. They want to make it harder for manufacturers to sell Android devices. Instead of competing by building new features or devices, they are fighting through litigation.”
And what do you think? Are you on Apple side or Samsung?
Kind Regards,
Lina Deveikyte
Altabel Group – Professional Software Development
- In: Apple | iPhone | Mobile
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At WWDC 2012, Apple took the wraps of iOS 6. Due to be released in the fall of this year, Apple has added several new features to the OS that will surely be a boon for business. Lets jump in and talk about a few of these features and how they may benefit your organization.
Maps
One of the most talked about Apps to receive an upgrade in iOS 6 is Maps. Apple chose to drop Google as its map provider and built a new solution from the ground up, using crowed sourced data for traffic and Tom technologies for navigation. The App now renders maps using vector art, making the App much more responsive while adding a great new feature called Flyover, which renders cities in stunning 3D. Siri is now fully integrated as well, so asking for directions will instantly produce turn-by-turn navigation results. You can even ask Siri, while navigating, how much longer until you reach your destination.
Facebook integration
For those of you out there that manage your organization’s social media, the introduction of Facebook integration will almost certainly be assisting in your day-to-day task. Simply add your Facebook username and password within the iOS setting, just as you do with Twitter now, and Facebook will automatically authenticate Apps that use Facebook authentication. Share your information using hooks that can be built into any App using Apple’s Facebook API and from most every App that comes native in iOS.
Passbook
Passbook is a very interesting tool that Apple will be making available in iOS 6. Think of Passbook as your digital wallet, allowing you to store boarding passes, movie tickets, retail coupons, loyalty cards, and more. Granted Passbook will make travel far more convenient with powerful features such as real time updates such as gate changes and location based notifications.
FaceTime
There isn’t really much new with FaceTime. Essentially it’s the same App as before, only now FaceTime works over 3G. But combined with the power of AirPlay, and the ability to project your conference to a display, it’ll be a renaissance in telecommuting, networking, and conferencing. As more iOS devices come to market and business adopts them, video conferencing will become far more accessible. FaceTime is remarkably easy to use and convenient, as it can be accessed while traveling.
Phone
The phone App received some simple but great new features, and features that seem to be targeted right at professional users. In the new phone App, declining a call produces a new set of actions, such as Reply with Message or Remind Me Later, allowing you to message the caller or remind yourself after a meeting while sending your call to voice mail. Additionally, for those times that your undivided attention is needed, Apple has provided a new Do-not-Disturb preference within the OS Settings.
Mail
Mail has received a few minor but useful tweaks such as a new VIP inbox that allows you to easily select contacts from your address book that will place any email communications into a specially marked inbox. Also mail now has the ability to add photos and videos inline.
Have you heard about some others updates to iOS 6? You could list them bellow.
Best Regards,
Kristina Kozlova
Altabel Group – Professional Software Development
Microsoft may gain a powerful set of partners to help Windows 8 become a success – AT&T and Verizon Wireless, who need leverage against Apple’s onerous demands for subsidies for every iPhone the carriers sell.
AT&T and Verizon are both eying Windows Phone as the Smartphone platform they can promote to push back against Apple demands for high subsidies and royalties. Mobile operators are sick of taking orders from Apple…iPhones are occupying an increasingly dangerous share of mobile operators’ Smartphone sales. In 2011, iPhones represented half of AT&T’s Smartphone sales, and now that Verizon has recently voiced a similar shift in sales, the companies’ fears of an Apple takeover are growing stronger.
There clearly is a danger now that iPhone is going to get a stranglehold of the U.S. Smartphone market, and I don’t think operators are crazy about that. The larger the share of the market that Apple owns, the higher the subsidies it can demand from carriers. Those subsidies eat into carrier profits and fatten Apple’s bottom line.
Apple’s demands for subsidies in order for a carrier to sell an iPhone are legendary. U.S. carriers heavily subsidize all Smartphone hardware, primarily to entice new customers to buy a two-year service contract that costs more than $1,700 over that period. The iPhone 4S with 16GB sells unlocked from Apple for $649 (useful on many GSM carriers with a separate contract), but Verizon, AT&T and Sprint sell it for $199.99 with a two-year contract.
Beyond that, Apple also gets a portion of the monthly revenue that carriers get from each customer who buys an iPhone, and it’s a hefty cut, as much as $600. And that number is on top of the subsidies for the phone itself.
Given all that, it’s no surprise that AT&T and Verizon would see Windows Phone as a possible savior. Microsoft badly needs Windows Phone to succeed, and it also doesn’t have the same leverage to demand high subsidies and monthly royalties. Verizon is particularly interested in pushing Windows 8 phones when they hit. Verizon CFO Fran Shammo hopes to use Windows 8 phones as leverage against Apple:
“We’re really looking at the Windows Phone 8.0 platform because that’s a differentiator. We’re working with Microsoft on it.”
If Verizon and AT&T do make a concerted effort to push Windows Phone, it may finally breathe life into the struggling operating system. As the release of the Lumia 900 shows, Windows Phone devices are just as good as iPhones and Android phones – but by itself, that’s not enough.
Kind Regards,
Lina Deveikyte
Altabel Group – Professional Software Development
