iPhone applications

Among the clients I work with, iPhone applications seem to be pitched on a weekly basis. I’m not going to argue the “cool factor” of some of the things that are possible on the iPhone and newer mobile phones in general, especially with the involvement of GPS – have you heard about foursquare? But the question is, does your business need an iPhone application?

A quick way to get an idea of how many of your customers/clients are using an iPhone to engage with your products is to check your website statistics. Most traffic analytics tools, including the free Google Analytics tool, will tell you how many visitors you are receiving from the iPhone/iPod devices. This number doesn’t necessarily represent what percentage of your customers have an iPhone, but it does give you a solid understanding about how many of those customers are actually visiting your website on their iPhone.

If you have a high percentage of iPhone visitors to your website, chances are the decision to develop an iPhone application for your business should be an easy one. The next problem becomes what features to build and who to build with – which I can help with if need be. On the other hand, if you don’t see a high percentage of iPhone traffic to your website, that doesn’t mean you can’t benefit from an iPhone app.

There isn’t any golden formula that will tell you if an iPhone application will be successful for your business or not. But as more mobile networks start supporting the iPhone, it can be safe to assume that the iPhone will become an increasingly common way for your customers to engage with your brand. The possibilities are endless, but they’re effectiveness is limited by how many of your customers will actually use the application, and remember to use it on an ongoing basis. I’ve heard daunting stats claiming that over 50% of iPhone apps are only used once or twice, then uninstalled or forgotten.

I think the safest way for businesses to approach iPhone application development at the present time is in groups. A restaurant shouldn’t build their own app, they should unite with a dozen other restaurants and build one app to serve everyone’s purpose. Remember, to benefit your business it must be useful to the user, and that user doesn’t want to install six separate applications for his six favorite restaurants. Keep it functional and useful, and considering current iPhone trends, more and more people will come knocking…

Android Paid Applications

It’s a slick process. You sign into your Google account, venture into the Android Marketplace and find the application that suits your needs. Hit the “buy” button and voila, you have your new app. When signed into your Google account you’re automatically signed into your associated Google Checkout account, making purchases completely seamless.

Independent game and app developers often step in at the 99 cent price – even well known developers often sell their products for less than $3. Thinking back a year or two to my Bell Mobility experience, when using their marketplace, I couldn’t even find demos for 99 cents. The average game was $5 and ringtones were usually $1-$3. I was a victim until I found some websites with loads of free content – $5 data package and I could download all the content I wanted.

None the less, it’s an interesting evolution. Mobile phones and their carriers begin to support the Internet and the carriers try to cash in big. The unrealistic prices open the flood gates for more creative approaches which lower price and make more content available. What everyone seems to forget is that 1-3 year period where data cost $50/mb to prevent you from downloading your own content via the web. Your only option was to use the built in services with ridiculous per download prices.

As web ready phones become more popular and network speeds increase, eventually these games and apps will just be monetized by in-game/in-application advertising. It has already been around for a while, and is surely going to take a chunk out of paid downloads as the web experience improves on the average mobile phone.

Loopt – the social compass

Mobile social networking sites have been gaining momentum, in both usability and hence, adoption. Loopt has put together a service incorporating what I consider to be the most important element for a mobile social network – location-based technologies. Straight from Loopt’s website, “Using location-based technologies, Loopt lets you know where your friends are by automatically updating maps on your mobile handset. Loopt even lets you send messages to nearby friends or receive automatic alerts when they’re nearby so that you never miss an opportunity to meet. Loopt also lets you journal your life so that your friends can see what you’re up to. With Loopt, mobile subscribers put themselves on the map.

For technology, networking and the always-connected mentality, this is a great step forward. But what happens if the wrong people can learn too much about your schedule? While Facebook has taken a lot of heat about how it handles user privacy, everyone had better be learning from their mistakes. As information becomes more readily available, services like Loopt need to take a close look at what Facebook and other social media sites are going through and proactively take steps to ensure security and privacy. Sure, it’s cool to know my friend is in the same movie theatre at the same time I am. What isn’t cool is when my car is stolen because the car thieves know I’m halfway across town. Loopt may only display where I am to my friends, but stolen phones or hacked services are going to become more of a threat than ever.