Posts tagged Mobile
[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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adCenter Increases Ad Text Limit to 71; Adds Budget Overview, Mobile Targeting
Feb 9th
To simplify importing ads for AdWords to adCenter and align with industry standards, adCenter has changed the allotted character count in ad descriptions from 70 to 71. Here’s a quick look at all the latest changes to Microsoft adCenter.
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Foursquare Brings More Search Refinements To Mobile Apps
Feb 9th
Calling it “personalized search for the real world,” Foursquare brought its mobile Explore functionality into its recently redesigned PC website roughly three weeks ago, and added some new search capabilities in the process. Those capabilities included the ability to filter places…
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Expect “Windows 8 for Mobile” at Feb. 29 Barcelona Rollout
Feb 9th
A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to ReadWriteWeb this afternoon that the Consumer Preview phase of Windows 8 testing is slated to begin on Wednesday, February 29, with a gala rollout event in Barcelona. That’s to coincide – for the first time – with Mobile World Congress, which has not generally been known as the kind of affair where a PC operating system is the headliner.
The venue may definitely steal some of the thunder from Google Chairman Eric Schmidt’s keynote, which remains set for the day before.
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A rollout at what’s arguably the world’s largest mobile tech show is a clear indicator that eliminating the Start button will not be Topic #1. Just the venue itself is the next best thing to a confirmation of news leaked last week and subsequently semi-confirmed by my colleague, Paul Thurrott: The Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 kernels will be the same; and subsequently, there should eventually, if not right away, be some degree of compatibility for “Metro-style” apps running on both platforms. This much has been discussed quite a bit in the press and not repudiated by Microsoft, but not officially confirmed either.
For Windows 8 to recapture the mindshare that PC-related software developments have lost over the past five years, Microsoft would have to execute a completely game-changing strategy, redefining the computing category by essentially merging mobile and desktop into the same class. There’s only one way to accomplish this: by aligning every consumer-facing product with the Windows brand on a single kernel, with at least one flexible software platform among all form factors. This appears to be exactly the move that Microsoft is making, and the fact that it’s declaring Barcelona to be ground-zero for this announcement indicates it will be firing everything in its arsenal.
The completely revised Start Menu for the Windows 8 Developer Preview, released last September. The Consumer Preview, in three weeks if not sooner, should feature a blue background by default, though it may have personalization options.
Granted, the expected changes between the existing Developer Preview and the coming Consumer Preview, as revealed by leaked screenshots of an evidently current build, are worth noting. As many developers noted last year, including myself, the familiar Start Button on the Windows 8 Desktop acted as a kind of trap door into an unfamiliar “Metro” world with which only frequent users of Zune or Windows Media Center might find themselves at home. The leaked screenshots indicate that Microsoft has at least listened to these complaints.
The steps it’s taking to address these concerns would appear – at least from the leaked screenshots – to include the complete removal of the Start Button altogether. Some unofficial sources have also said that the functionality of the Taskbar has been extended to compensate, perhaps alleviating the problem of Windows 7′s most useful control feature being relegated to a “Desktop” that no longer resides, in the Windows 8 world, on a “Desk” but rather in what in the Developer Preview looked like a sinkhole.
The spokesperson did leave open the possibility that the Consumer Preview may be made available for download prior to February 29. Subscribers to the company’s MSDN program may be offered advance downloads, if history with Windows 7 is any indication.
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How to Take Advantage of Apple’s Rise to Mobile Market Dominance
Feb 8th
Apple is the king of mobile. With an expanding market share, Apple is poised to break records yet again in 2012; though they must improve their iAd inventory to compete with Google. Here are the implications for mobile marketers.
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Mobile Carriers and OEMs Get Android App Testing Cloud from Apkudo
Feb 8th
When developers think of application testing, it always centers around how an app will perform on a particular device. This is especially important in the Android ecosystem that has upwards of 300 devices from a variety of original equipment manufacturers worldwide. From the inverse perspective, nobody ever thinks of the testing needs of the carriers and OEMs.
Cloud-based testing platform Apkudo thought about manufacturers and carriers with a new release of device analytics platform. Manufacturers can now test devices against the top Android apps before releasing. The idea is that if a device is tested from the supplier side, fewer handsets will be returned by consumers, potentially saving manufacturers billions of dollars.
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Apkudo tests with what it calls a “device cloud.” The configuration of more than 300 Android devices are set up in the cloud and mobile app developers can run their projects through that cloud to make sure it will work across OEMs and Android system versions.
For Apkudo’s device analytics, the opposite approach is taken. Manufacturers and network operators can test their apps against the contents of the Android Market. Apkudo will run a device against the top 200 apps in the Market to test functionality with the touchscreen, keyboard, audio, device access (accelerometer and GPS, for instance) along with performance characteristics.
This should provide developers, network operators and manufacturers with tools against Android fragmentation. As we noted last week, there is actually less fragmentation of Android devices than many think, with the optimal Android handset running on a 4.3-inch screen on version 2.3 Gingerbread. Yet, with the sheer volume of devices and applications available in the Android ecosystem, testing is still one giant headache.
Apkudo can speed up on the process that OEMs must go through to test devices. According to CEO Josh Matthews the process normally takes 6-8 weeks. Apkudo says it can do it in three days.
Device analytics will break down the results into two categories: characterization and optimization benefits. Characterization benefits help operators target competing devices while expanding their own portfolios. Imagine it as a bench mark against the rest of the ecosystem. Optimization benefits recommends how devices can be made better before release to be truly competitive in the market place.
The first U.S. carrier to sign on with Apkudo is MetroPCS. Apkudo also has agreements with “most major OEMs” in the Android ecosystem.
App developers should be happy with Apkudo’s testing abilities because it means that the OEMs could have a more efficient testing program to make sure apps work on their devices. When it comes to app functionality on Android, developers need to work the manufacturers and carriers to ensure a quality experience. The end of fragmentation, after all, is a two way street.
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Google: 41 Percent Of Super Bowl Ad Searches Were Mobile
Feb 7th
A wide range of social and mobile data are being reported by various sources in the wake of last Sunday’s Super Bowl game. For example, ad network inMobi said 39 percent of survey respondents “used their mobile device in response to a TV commercial during the game” (discussing…
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Chrome Beta for Android Will Be Good for Mobile HTML5 Development
Feb 7th
When Google announced that the Chrome browser would become its own operating system and run on netbooks, the thought around the tech community was that eventually Google would have to merge Chrome with Android. After all, what is the point of supporting two disparate mobile operating systems? The convergence has not yet occurred but may have taken a step further today as Google announced Chrome for Android available on devices running version 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.
Chrome for Android is a win for everybody. Except, of course, most users. As of Google’s latest Android platform numbers, only 1% of devices are running Ice Cream Sandwich. That will change as 2012 moves along with adoption accelerating from new device purchases and updates. Chrome for Android immediately becomes on of the go-to browsers on the platform, will be good for HTML5 development, reliability and security.
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A Big Day For HTML5
The best thing that Chrome for Android brings to the table is robust HTML5 integration. The native Android browser is known to have mediocre HTML5 performance (pre-Ice Cream Sandwich) but Chrome for Android promises to make up what has been lacking.
That will include a hardware-accelerated canvas, overflow scroll support, HTML5 video specs support along with Indexed DB (for offline caching, presumably), WebWorkers and WebSockets.
The biggest advantage for mobile HTML5 though will be the ability to bring Chrome tools to the Android platform. If a developer knows how to work in Chromium, working in Chrome for Android will be a seamless transition. This is where the possible convergence of the Chrome and Android platforms will take place.
“Much of the code for Chrome for Android is already shared with Chromium and over the coming weeks, the Chromium team will be upstreaming many new components developed for Chrome for Android to Chromium, WebKit and other projects,” Arnaud Weber, Google’s engineering manager for Chrome, wrote in a blog post.
Chrome for Android has already been put through its initial HTML5 tests with a score of 343 (+10 bonus) on HTML5Test.com. The native ICS browser scored 256 (+3 bonus) which put it in the middle of the pack in terms of mobile browsers.
Enhancements For Users
Chrome for Android promises to be fast, simple and reliable. It pre-loads pages with the Chrome Omnibox (only when Wi-Fi is enabled) and predicts where and what you want to navigate to. It also brings a simple user interface to the Android browser environment, something that many users will be very grateful for after dealing with some of the more complicated UIs from third-party options like Opera, Dolphin HD and Skyfire.
The best aspect of Chrome for Android though will be the ability to sign in to your Chrome browser and have access to all of your bookmarks, tabs and browsing history from anywhere. If you leave your computer with open tabs, Chrome for Android will recognize those and open them for you. Chrome will also be able to track your browsing history to better provide search suggestions. Like many other mobile browsers with desktop presences, Chrome for Android will also be able to sync your bookmarks to your mobile device.
This 1% Problem
We are going to be perfectly honest. No writer at ReadWriteWeb has a device running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. So, we could not put the Chrome Beta through the paces (most RWWers use iPhones as well).
And there is the rub. Next to no one has Ice Cream Sandwich yet, outside a couple Galaxy Nexus users. This poses a problem, if a temporary one. Many existing Android devices are never going to get the ICS upgrade and the devices that have it pre-installed are still in early adopter/Android geek territory.
For many, the Chrome for Android is just an exciting announcement to shrug at since most will never see it on their current devices. Chrome for Android developers have plenty of time to roll out dynamic Web apps before the mass of Android users actually gets the browser. So, perhaps there is a positive side.
Excited for Chrome for Android? Will you develop for it? What about signing in to Chrome across all your devices? Let us know your reactions in the comments.
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Smartphone Penetration: Japan Users Lead Way When Adapting To Mobile Technologies [INFOGRAPHIC]
Feb 7th
While the smartphones market in Japan has only reached a 6% penetration rate compared to 31% in the United States and 30% in the United Kingdom the countries users are far more engaged with the devices they do own. The infographic shown below demonstrates the true impact smartphones have had on Japanese consumers. Among the [...]
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Apsalar’s Daily Cohorts Gives Mobile Developers Real-Time Analytics to Engage Users
Feb 7th
When a person downloads an app to a smartphone, the first interactions the user has with the app will determine its overall success ands potential longevity. If a user likes an app, its long-term potential greatly increases. If not, well, it is destined to the black hole of app oblivion.
That is why the ability to track the first few sessions a user has with an app in real-time is critical. Mobile marketing and analytics startup Apsalar is releasing an update to its platform called Daily Cohorts that allows publishers to track app analytics in real-time the day it is published. Developers can then make determinations on how best to market and monetize the app while it is still fresh in the users’ mind.
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Oiknine describes the results of updating Xco’s app after the first batch of analytics:
“After the update is released, Xco looks at the cohorts of users who first launched the app for the 3 days after the update. Both revenue and retention is up for each cohort – not quite yet reaching the benchmarks, but a significant overall improvement can be seen. In addition, more users are now completing the tutorial, with the rate up to 75% of new users. Xco is pleased with the results but knows it needs to do more and so it will begin the iteration process over again.”
“After the update is released, Xco looks at the cohorts of users who first launched the app for the 3 days after the update. Both revenue and retention is up for each cohort – not quite yet reaching the benchmarks, but a significant overall improvement can be seen. In addition, more users are now completing the tutorial, with the rate up to 75% of new users. Xco is pleased with the results but knows it needs to do more and so it will begin the iteration process over again.”
The ability to retain users after the launch of an app is critical. All the best plans for marketing, engagement and monetization will go for naught if a user has stopped using the app after the first few days.
Apsalar CEO Michael Oiknine describes the scenario of a mobile game from a theoretical mobile gaming company called “Xco.” The company set up several cohorts to track the retention of users and finds that after three days the app is not living up to expectations and revenues are falling short. Xco finds that users that completed the app tutorial are more likely to keep using the app while those that do not are letting it slide into app oblivion.
“As Xco takes a closer look at the data they realize that by looking at the segment of users who completed the tutorial, retention and revenue are slightly ahead of their benchmarks and those users are leveling up more frequently than other users,” Oiknine said in an email to ReadWriteMobile. “However, only 65% of users are completing the tutorial. Based on this data, Xco goes into action and decides to make the tutorial more prominent in the UX after first launch of the app.”
This is a familiar scenario for many mobile games. The ability to track early sessions is extremely important. In this case, a quick tweak to the app to push more people towards the tutorial would benefit the longevity of the app.
The cohort method of analytics differs from just tracking sessions or daily average users. It provides a level of detail that other metrics (what Oiknine calls “vanity metrics”) do not.
“With daily cohorts, app developers can make critical changes fast enough so that they don’t lose the valuable users they’ve acquired,” Oiknine said.
Apsalar’s Daily Cohorts allows publishers to group users together in a single segment by the day they launched the app. For instance, users that downloaded the app the first day it was available can be grouped as “Day 1″ users and their history can be tracked as a single segment. Same with Day 2 users etc.
Apsalar’s platform focuses on engagement and monetization. Daily Cohorts is a change for the company as it used to provide weekly cohort analysis, which means that the information gained from initial users could not be acted upon immediately. A week is a long time for a newly-downloaded app and can cost the publisher thousands of dollars (and a plethora of poor reviews) if the app is subpar or users are not sticking with it.
To a certain extent, Apsalar’s Daily Cohorts falls into the realm of “predictive analytics” but with real-time data. The ability to track and group user sessions from the earliest possible moment will give developers a better understanding of how future users will interact with the app. The idea is to get actionable data as soon as possinle. Apsalar can then engage the user across apps with its Mobile Engagement Management (MEM) system that segments the user base on a common criteria.
Apsalar’s puts up its Daily Cohorts against a variety of other services that offer similar functions. Mobile analytics company Flurry, what Apsalar considers its chief competitor, tracks user sessions and has a “Re-Engagement” model to monetize user behavior. PlayHaven has the ability to track user behavior in real-time in mobile games and update an app accordingly.
Developers: What do you think of Apsalar’s Daily Cohorts? Is there anything similar on the market that you prefer to use? How important are early-stage analytics to the success of your app? Let us know in the comments.
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