Posts tagged Infographic
[Infographic] Mapping the Tools in the Mobile Development Ecosystem
Feb 10th
The mobile development ecosystem is a large, complicated space. There are innovative startups making tools for native and mobile Web apps along with large enterprise-grade companies that offer solutions from cloud support to frameworks and developer environments. For a mobile developer, it can be confusing to know where to turn and what to use to make the best app possible.
Mobile “backend-as-a-service” startup Kinvey created a map for ReadWriteMobile to help developers understand the ecosystem. Kinvey brackets the mobile ecosystem between two primary pillars: the service providers and the original equipment manufacturers. In between lies the meat of the environment from the “as-a-service” providers (platform, infrastructure and backend) to mobile software developer kit and application programming interface sources. Who has acquired what? What partnerships dominate the ecosystem? Use the map below as a resource when developing your next mobile app.
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Mapping the Complicated Ecosystem
The original players in the mobility space were the OEMs and carriers. In 1998, there would have been next to nothing in between those two pillars on the map below. With the rise of the application ecosystem, the service structure for developers has grown rapidly as enterprises and entrepreneurs rush to meet the needs of developers.
“In the mobile world, the service providers and the handset OEMs were the original two players. With the transition to apps and services, all the other new layers have inserted themselves in between the original two players of the ecosystem,” said Kinvey CEO and co-founder Sravish Sridhar.
Kinvey places itself in the middle of the ecosystem. To its right are the PaaS and IaaS companies such as IBM and Rackspace, which are closer to the carriers than the OEMs. To its right are the mobile SDK and API providers, which have more in common with the OEMs.
“Slowly, major players have come into the space, and are now tunneling their way across the ecosystem through acquisitions or by launching new services themselves. For example, Google has been most proficient with an acquisition-led strategy,” Sridhar said. “Companies that are not acquiring are launching new services on their own. For example, Amazon Web Services started with IaaS and now have PaaS, and are growing out other mobile-specific services. Apart from developing Windows Phone, Microsoft is now improving Azure IaaS, and will soon have a robust PaaS platform.”
The goal of the BaaS providers is to bridge these worlds by bringing cloud infrastructure to developers and make it easy to integrate SDKs and APIs. It is not an easy task as it requires a knowledge of robust technical networks as well as the needs of front-end developers.
“As a leading Backend as a Service provider, we tie in IaaS, PaaS and Mobile APIs, and connect them right down to the Mobile SDK, so that millions of dynamic and rich apps can be easily built on any platform, bringing value to billions of users all over the world,” Sridhar said.
There is a lot of movement n the ecosystem, as the map shows. Appcelerator’s acquisition of Cocoafish is the latest example of one pillar moving to another. Kinvey has partnered with Urban Airship and talks with a variety of companies in other pillars, including appMobi. The company’s platform ties into a variety of cloud providers including Amazon Web Services, Rackspace and Microsoft Azure.
Click here for a larger map, hosted by Kinvey.
Kinvey, Competition and Consolidation
Boston-based Kinvey (a recent TechStars alum) is a unique startup in the mobile development world. Sridhar is very supportive of the ecosystem at large, including his primary competitors like Parse and StackMob. The idea is to see every company grow to the fullest of potential.
Sridhar often writes about startup and entrepreneur relationships. Kinvey does not attack its competitors or make edgy comments about how Kinvey may or may not be better than its rivals.
The first startup that Sridhar worked at was Austin-based United Devices, a company that focused on grid computing to manage high performance computing (HPC) infrastructures. From 2000 to 2005, grid computing was a hot vertical in the technology community with a variety of large and small companies entering the space. Sridhar noticed the ill affects of how sniping and holding negative opinions of the competition had on the ecosystem at large.
“A lot of this perspective came from my last startup. I was part of the founding team at United Devices and we were building grid computing software and a very similar thing happened at that company that is happening right now at Kinvey is that we thought we were doing something cool and unique and lo and behold, within about six to eight months, there were about 20 competitors,” Sridhar said.
“We got really paranoid about them and started talking about each other in the press in a negative fashion and started talking negatively about each other with customers and what happened is that I found that was doing more harm than good and the space took a while to develop. One of the reasons that grid computing, which was all the buzz between about 2001 and 2005, didn’t take off is that the whole ecosystem didn’t push it forward. We were waiting for the bigger companies to adopt it. My theory about creating this ecosystem called backend-as-a-service is that we should all work to collectively define it and make it successful.”
We wrote about the consolidation in the mobile services last summer when Urban Airship bought SimpleGeo, much to the surprise of the mobile developer community. When it comes to the BaaS players, some of the first startups are starting to get acquired, like Cocoafish by Appcelerator. When it comes to Kinvey, StackMob and Parse, each has a tie to a major company that may be interested in acquiring it within the next few years. Of those three, each has created a niche for itself to the point where it could grow to be fairly large and stave off acquisition as well. It behooves the companies in the space to help each other grow at this point.
That is in stark contrast to another emerging segment of the developer ecosystem that has emerged with the app economy. Mobile analytics is a high-growth area with companies large and small growing rapidly and looking for developer and media attention. Whereas there is very little bad blood between Kinvey, Parse and StackMob, mobile analytics startups like Kontagent, Apasalar, Flurry, Localytics and others hate to see one company mentioned and not their own (this plays out in my inbox on a daily basis).
Developers: What services are you using to create a backend infrastructure for your app? What do you think about the startup competition in the space vis-a-vis larger cloud providers or in juxtaposition with the mobile analytics space? Let us know in the comments.
Top Image Courtesy Shutterstock
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Infographic: ShutterStock Reaches 200 Million Image Downloads
Feb 7th
Shutterstock.com claims it is the first such venture to reach a total of 200 million downloads of licensed images of stock photography, vector graphics and other illustrations. “Searching the word ‘networking’ used to return images of handshakes and business contacts; now it’s all about online social networking,” says Jon Oringer, Founder and CEO of the company.
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Yes, images about cats lead the way, no surprise with over 400,000 downloads, surpassing “only” 79,000 downloads of last year’s Royal Wedding. But what is interesting is that vector graphic downloads are on the increase, and vintage images are also up. Who knew the Internets could be so nostalgic?
Shutterstock has been providing licensed images to businesses, agencies and media organizations since 2004 and has more than 17 million images online.
Disclosure: ReadWriteWeb uses Shutterstock for some of its post illustrations.
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[Infographic] History of Mobile App Stores
Feb 7th
The rise of the app store has fundamentally changed the concept of software delivery. Gone are the days when zealous software companies sent users discs in the mail (oh, AOL, we remember you well) that ended up making better coasters than programs. Many computers these days do not even ship with a CD-ROM drive and smartphones have never seen any type of physical downloads. The delivery mechanism of the application store is an often-overlooked revolution of the mobile era.
A Croatian startup named ShoutEm that provides a platform for iOS and Android app creation created a timeline infographic of the history of the mobile app store. Starting in 2008 with the advent of Apple’s App Store, the game has fundamentally changed. Check it out below.
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The Apple App Store launched in July 2008, a year after the first iPhone was released. It had 500 apps and, to many, was a revelation. It also marked the beginning of the dominance of the native mobile application. 10 million applications were downloaded in the first weekend.
The Android Market launched a couple months later in October and had 50 apps to start.
Research In Motion was not far behind, announcing its BlackBerry App World at its developers’ conference in October 2008 and accepting submissions from developers in early 2009. Nokia’s Ovi Store opened in 2009 starting its short-lived run as the No. 2 global app store behind Apple’s trailblazer.
The Windows Phone Marketplace launched in late October 2010. By July 2011 it had nearly 30,000 apps. As of Jan. 2012, it has almost 50,000. The BlackBerry App World had about 37,000 at the end of July 2011.
Apple reached the 100,000 app mark first, a little more than a year after launch, in November 2009. Skipping ahead, the Android Market hit 200,000 in early 2011 and nearly doubled its developer output through the remainder of the year. As of now, the Market has about 400,000 apps available while iOS has nearly 550,000.
Check out the timeline below. It ends in Aug. 2011 but we know the history since. The Ovi Store is in decline as Nokia gradually phases out the Symbian series, BlackBerry is in flux and awaiting new devices and trying to spur developers in to creating apps for the platform again while iOS and Android maintain exponential growth.
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Madonna’s Super Bowl Halftime Show Tops Google Searches [Infographic]
Feb 6th
We’re 24 hours removed from Super Bowl 46, in which the New York Giants defeated the New England Patriots 21-17. But it was neither the Giants nor Patriots that people were searching for most last night on Google during the game. It was Madonna.
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
Pinterest Driving More Referral Traffic Than Google+ [Infographic]
Feb 1st
Forget Google+. Pinterest is the hot new social network right now. Numerous reports agree that unique visitors to Pinterest are skyrocketing, and that Pinterest is driving more referral traffic than Google+, LinkedIn, Reddit, and YouTube.
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[Infographic] The Rise and Fall of Megaupload
Feb 1st
We’re not even two weeks into the aftermath of the Megaupload shutdown, but the saga seems to unfold with a new angle or detail everyday. From Kim Dotcom’s colorful personal life to questions about the fate of non-infringing data uploaded by former Megaupload users, this story is far from over.
However, if the company’s lawyers don’t manage to mount a convincing defense, Megaupload itself could disappear forever. It’s too soon to tell, but in the meantime, we thought we’d take a look at some key dates and data points in the history of Megaupload.
Founded in 2005, Megaupload grew to be a massive and incredibly controversial site over the years. Estimates vary as to its actual traffic and user base, but suffice it to say that the service was huge. The controversy didn’t start on January 19, 2012 when New Zealand police raided Kim Dotcom’s mansion and arrested several Megaupload executives. Prior to that, the company had faced copyright lawsuits, a Google AdSense blockade and country-wide bans outside the U.S.
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(Click on the infographic to enlarge it.)
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The Rise and Fall of Megaupload [Infographic]
Jan 31st
We’re not even two weeks into the aftermath of the Megaupload shutdown, but the saga seems to unfold with a new angle or detail everyday. From Kim Dotcom’s colorful personal life to questions about the fate of non-infringing data uploaded by former Megaupload users, this story is far from over.
However, if the company’s lawyers don’t manage to mount a convincing defense, Megaupload itself could disappear forever. It’s too soon to tell, but in the meantime, we thought we’d take a look at some key dates and data points in the history of Megaupload.
Founded in 2005, Megaupload grew to be a massive and incredibly controversial site over the years. Estimates vary as to its actual traffic and user base, but suffice it to say that the service was huge. The controversy didn’t start on January 19, 2012 when New Zealand police raided Kim Dotcom’s mansion and arrested several Megaupload executives. Prior to that, the company had faced copyright lawsuits, a Google AdSense blockade and country-wide bans outside the U.S.
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(Click on the infographic to enlarge it.)
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[Infographic] Google Apps Has Some Big Paying Clients
Jan 31st
SaaS backup provider Backupify has recently examined its own customer sample to do some demographic profiling of Google Apps users. The results are somewhat intriguing, as you can see in the infographic below. If you remove .edu domains, Google Apps still has nearly 40% of all of its seats used by businesses with more than 10,000 employees. The company surveyed their customers who have at least 30 users.
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How did Backupify obtain this information on the size of each domain that is part of the Google Docs ecosystem? “When someone signs up for a trial, one of the pieces of information Google sends us over [in] the API is the total number of seats on the domain.” This makes for some fascinating information:
Backupify recommends that “Whether you sell a per-domain product in the Google Apps marketplace, or a per-seat product, you should customize that product for both: Very few solutions work for mom-and-pop businesses and also work for large universities and software consultancies. However, Google Apps is relatively young and Google has increased staffing in their partnership department this past year, signaling that they take their partners seriously and want to build a strong ecosystem that includes add-on developers.”
More information and their original blog post on this analysis can be found here.
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Google Driverless Cars ‘Shockingly’ Safe & Efficient [Infographic]
Jan 28th
Driverless cars could double the efficiency of working parents, reduce parking costs and state licensing revenue, and take millions of drunk drivers off the road each year, according to a new infographic from Aptus Insurance.
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[Infographic] Security Concerns Surround Mobile Payments and Coupons
Jan 26th
Legal firm Loeb & Loeb is full of thinkers. Its clients and attorneys know that the world is a fluid place and the technology sector dynamic and ever-changing. As part of its “Media MindShare” series, Loeb & Loeb has turned its attention to the digital marketplace to study what the dominant issues will be in 2012.
One of those issues is mobile commerce. That includes mobile payments and coupons as well as the security issues that inevitably will accompany the mobile commerce vertical. Are people really prepared to pay with their phones? What is holding them back? Check out the infographic from Loeb & Loeb below.
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The infographic points out data reported by eMarketer that 35.6 million mobile phone users will use mobile coupons by 2013. But not all people are comfortable with mobile coupons. Nearly 52% of consumers are “not likely to use” mobile coupons, a study from Opus Research points out. This is due to in part to security worries people have over handing a cashier their phone and in other part due to concerns over the validity of the offers. Some people are outright embarrassed.
Another problem is the notion of data breaches. We have seen it many times with credit cards. Take the restaurant example. A waiter brings you your check. Without thinking, you pop your credit card into the book and the waiter comes back to swipe it at a terminal in back. But maybe that waiter is up to no good and has his own credit card reader in his pocket. He swipes the card through the restaurant’s POS terminal and then again on the reader in his pocket. He then has the card number and can do what he wants with it.
This has been a problem in Europe, though steps have been taken to eliminate the practice. As a former chef, I have seen waiter co-workers of mine get fired and arrested for the same practice. It happens.
Now, think about replacing the credit card with your smartphone. Are you really comfortable handing over a device that can contain very sensitive information over to a stranger, even if that person is standing right in front of you and not taking the device out of sight? To a certain extent, this is an irrational fear. The new era of mobile payments will likely mean that your phone never leaves your hand. POS systems set up with NFC or the ability for a cashier to scan your phone with a QR card reader means that you should never be handing your device over to anybody. Yet, the research says that people have security fears and that is a valid concern.
Check out the infographic below and let us know what your concerns are in the mobile payments space in the comments.
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