Smartphone Application Development Outlook

Mobile usage and more specifically smartphone usage, represents a unique opportunity for application developers and brand owners alike to generate new revenue and brand awareness. The combination of always on 3G Internet, GPS and portability, means that consumers are increasingly turning to their smartphones for business, shopping and leisure activities. Unlike open platforms such as the Internet, smartphones are separated by a range of operating systems, handsets and carrier support.

Market share Trends

The mobile operating systems to target are Apple's iPhone OS 3.0, RIM's Blackberry 4.6+ and Google's Android. These are the largest growing mobile OS platforms; others such as Symbian and Windows Mobile are experiencing slower growth in market share and also suffer from platform "fragmentation", further lowering their effective market share. Of all the competing operating systems, only the iPhone/iPod Touch allows for near universal application development.

The Risk of Fragmentation

Software fragmentation simply put, is the incompatibility that arises from software that starts from a common codebase and over time through updates and revisions, forks into multiple sets of unique code. A non-tech example would be the English language; today there are numerous dialects of English around the world. Some are easily recognizable, while others are beyond comprehension without a translation. Fragmentation, makes it impossible to create one version of an application per platform, instead the developer needs to craft multiple versions, each one tailored to a specific device or operating system.

There is significant platform fragmentation with non Apple devices, notably the Blackberry OS, with a large roster of legacy devices such as the blackberry 8100, 8700 and 8800 families. For example the Blackberry Storm 2 runs os5.0, has a touchscreen, accelerometerc and Open GL for 3d graphics. The Blackberry Bold 9700 however, launched at the same time uses the traditional keyboard/ non touch screen layout, does not include Open GL support and uses a different screen resolution. Things are potentially worse with Google's Android, due to its open source nature and lack of standardized models. Each manufacturer can build a totally unique Android phone running on a variety of OS versions, ranging from Android 1.5, 1.6, 2.0, 2.0.1,and 2.1.

The iPhone line can be drawn into three main groupings; the original iPhone, the iPod Touch and the iPhone 3GS. The vast majority of software written for the platform will run on the original iphone, except for applications that use the compass, MMS, or GPS. The iPod Touch does not have a camera, so any app that needs a camera will not function. The iphone 3GS is the newest model and is becoming the baseline model for app developers, especially those utilizing live video and location based services.

When developing native apps for the Blackberry, the largest pool of compatible devices are the Blackberry Curve 8300, 8900 and the 8500 series, followed by the Bold 9000, Bold 9700 and the Blackberry Tour.

Android OS has a large number of devices, but models marketed under "with Google" can be thought of as reference phones with common specifications and functionality. The T-Mobile MyTouch 3G, T-Mobile G1, Sprint Samsung Moment, all fall in this category. HTC's customized Android devices are also popular; these include the HTC Hero and the Verizon Droid Eris.

App development tools

Native iPhone apps are built with Apple's Objective C language using Xcode and then submitted to the "App Store" for distribution to the general public. There are several third party tools that allow development with other languages such as Actionscipt (Flash CS5), Lua, and Javascript. The third party development tools take higher-level scripting languages listed above, coverts the code into Objective C and also exports the finished app as a.ipa file for submission to the App Store. Each of these third party tools supports at least several unique iPhone features such as the accelerometer, multi touch input to varying degrees. Other features such as GPS location and the camera may be limited until these tools mature.

Blackberry apps can be built with the Blackberry JDE plug-in for Eclipse using the Java language. Applications can also be built with the Javascript based Phonegap, which may lower the level of developer experience needed to begin development. Blackberry apps can be sold via the official app store known as Blackberry App World or they can be sold through 3rd party providers such as Mobihand.com. Android is also based on Java, and it too uses Eclipse IDE with the Android Development Tools plugin. There is no oversight by Google on the types of apps that can be built for Android, Google, however does reserve the right to remove malicious apps.

Types of apps to create

On the iPhone, the majority of apps currently available are games; they can range from Adobe Flash games ported with minimal functionality to full 3d games using Unity 3d. Outside of games, many iPhone apps are mobile extensions of websites utilizing open API's. Examples include Tweetie 2 using the Twitter API, and Insight, which provides two-way syncing with Basecamp. These apps can be built by single person/small teams and don't need custom designed artwork or interfaces. Today's independent game developers are being obscured by large studios with 3D artists, modelers and programmers with access to brand name IP's.

The majority of non gaming apps are complex widgets that communicate with 3rd party API's and follow Apple interface guidelines reducing the need for graphic artists.Android roughly parallels the iphone in with games being the most popular downloads followed by general interest apps. Blackberry apps are primarily business applications such as Poynt, with fewer games on the platform compared to Apple and Google's offerings.

Currently, technology such as augmented reality, which overlays internet data, live camera feeds and GPS into a seamless experience, will begin to mature in the next year and become mainstream. Apps that utilize the camera to read barcodes for price comparisons will also gain prominence. This article hopefully has given you a clearer understanding of the smartphone market and their associated ecosystems. Currently, web developers have been on the sidelines waiting for tools to mature and leverage their web based skills.

Blackberry App Development for Healthcare Industry: Benefits

As the technology is advancing, smartphone applications are the most talked about for mobile health solutions. According to a mobile research company, research2gudiance, by 2015 smartphone applications will allow mobile health industry to reach more than 500 million people. Currently there are more than 20,000 mHealth apps in major mobile application stores, 75% of which follow the paid business model. As mHealth market is growing up, more healthcare providers are entering this market and expanding themselves via mobile applications as a result of which the business models will broaden up and include drug sales revenue, advertisements, healthcare services and much more.

Demand for BlackBerry application for smartphones and playbooks for healthcare industry is increasing at a rapid pace. The mobile or playbook apps can help the healthcare industry in many ways. Clinicians and physicians can practice medicine anywhere with the immediate access to the information they need. Such apps can help reduce the burden of carrying and keeping files and medical records of the patients on the paper, instant communication at any point of time, costs can be controlled and medical errors can be reduced to certain extent. The healthcare mobile apps can also benefit the patients, wherein they can have an app that could remind them when they need to take the medicines and remind them of their appointment with the doctors, this in turn could also help the growth of the pharmaceutical industry.

Such solutions will help the doctors to use a single device rather than using many devices which would help in proper communication and workflow management. This way the doctors could be linked to the patients, nurses, support staff etc and vice-versa. The mHealth app could also be used for group messaging critical alerts, calendar and contact infrastructure, nurse call integration to increase healthcare interoperability and much more.

Mobile health apps have a promising future ahead as per the research records by various analysts which are as follows:

1) Deloitte Center for health solutions found out that more than 50% of the consumers want personal monitoring device that would help them to improve their health or find solutions to ailments.

2) Remote patient monitoring with the help of mobile health apps will be over 5 billion dollar market by 2014, revealed a research done by Juniper.

3) A survey done my Mc Kinsey revealed that people are willing to pay more on mobile doctors and medication logs.

4) Wireless home health market will be around 5 billion dollars by 2013: Parks Associates

With the growth in the mobile applications for the healthcare segment, companies and hospitals are opting for them all across the world. Thus it is safe to say that mobile technology in global healthcare has three advantages:

1) Medical consultation to remote patients

2) Doctors can monitor the patients remotely

3) Making the patient's information available globally to the healthcare system

Therefore, it is safe to say that mobile solutions for healthcare industry are very beneficial and can help you out in every possible way to improve the business for your healthcare department and at the same time find, locate and help patients from remote backgrounds.

Blackberry Platform - Enterprise App Market Place Potential

Not all mobile apps are the same, and choosing the right platform to launch yours on can be the key to your apps success or failure. Some things to think about when considering where to launch your next app are the audience you're attempting to reach and the strengths and weaknesses of the platform. If it's a large market consumer audience you're trying to reach, blackberry mobile is a winner. If you're building a complicated app that users can run in the background while using their phone for other functions, you'll want to use a multitasking platform like the Blackberry applications development platform.

The blackberry app development industry has it far better today than it did when it first launched. As with all new platforms it needed some time to build popularity and start offering different options for users. The blackberry mobile world is always growing and changing, and while some developers are showing rising profits others are declining drastically. Blackberry is still the leader for consumer and business users alike on a worldwide level. BlackBerry App World is an application distribution service and application developed by Research In Motion for the majority of blackberry devices. It provides BlackBerry users with an environment to browse, download, and update third-party applications. The blackberry mobile app service went live on April 1, 2009. RIM's BlackBerry App World is holding strong with 7.7% of app market shares and brought in $165 million in worldwide sales. RIM recently stated they have over 20,000 available apps. Compared to Apple's App Store which has over 250,000 and Google's Android Market which has 100,000 apps, the BlackBerry App World needs work. Of the three major app providers, they have the largest revenue per app compared to the Apple App Store and Android Market.

Customers benefit from having access to integrated apps developed specifically for them, using Blackberry tools, and a much bigger catalog of apps from multiple other developer communities. Customer feedback has been overwhelmingly positive about the reliability and flexibility that Blackberry has to offer. For developers, the way to go is the blackberry app development platform mostly because of the tools that are available. Blackberry applications have extremely rich graphics, full multitasking, and ultrafast processing. Blackberry app development is growing with the use of WebWorks which offers leading HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript support on a blackberry mobile platform. They offer developers the ability to package and distribute apps to a broad customer base.

Blackberry app development continues to evolve with their various development technologies used to deliver reliable experiences for developers. Developers using Blackberry platform tools enable top of the line integration with their Blackberry applications. They are the most committed of any mobile platform to providing customers and developers with all the right tools. They continue to offer the best platform for both application users and developers. Your company could be developing great Blackberry applications today. If you're looking for a platform to develop on as a consumer or a business, this is it.