Smartphones are a huge success
story of the past two decades - and the devices get more powerful each year.
Many businesses achieve significant benefits by using mobile technology -
including those in both industrial and commercial markets. Deploying
applications to mobile users involves a unique set of challenges and choices.
This article provides a
background on the current mobile technologies available.
Types of Application for Mobile
The fundamental consideration
with delivering business applications over mobile phones is the huge number of
devices, and the wide variety of features on these.
Successful mobile application Development
Company like
applist often involves a combination of technologies and
techniques. This is where a diverse skill set, together with an understanding
of the mobile landscape, is essential to provide businesses not only with
development services but also effective guidance in this time of accelerating
change. The challenges at this stage in mobile technology are mirrored by an
ever-increasing range of opportunities for businesses to implement new and
improved processes.
In general, there are two main
approaches to delivering business solutions over mobiles:
(1) Web
The mobile Web has undergone
enormous advances over the past few years. According to recent research, around
a third of adults in the UK are now using a smartphone - it seems fairly safe
to assume that this will only continue to increase. Many more mobile users have
some kind of internet access. Although the functionality of mobile Web browsers
is now at a good level, there are still considerable restrictions in terms of
network connectivity and speed - this is expected to improve over the next
couple of years as 4G kicks in, but for the moment remains a serious
constraint.
Many organizations create mobile
versions of their sites and Web services, with minimised content designed to
cope with mobile hardware and data connectivity limitations. One potentially
valuable prospect in the mobile Web will be the advance of HTML5. This
technology is still very much under development, but with major sites such as
the Financial Times opting to use it rather than targeting specific mobile
platforms it does look very promising. HTML5 offers a range of benefits
including facilities for offline support, multi-media, interactivity and
location awareness.
(2) Mobile Apps
Native mobile applications are
software solutions deployed directly onto devices such as phones. Many mobile
applications link to internet services, with the application, or
"app", handling user interaction natively. Mobile apps have the
advantage that they provide a deep level of interactivity that is suited to
device hardware - for example, using gestures or sensors like GPS. The
difficulty with using mobile
Applications to deliver business
services are the range of platforms in operation. As of early 2011, Google, Apple
and RIM together occupy around 90% of the smartphone market. However, the
mobile landscape is still in a state of change and there are other players
including Windows and Palm - it would be unwise to make any predictions about
how market share will look even in a matter of months as things stand.
Microsoft has replaced the
Windows Mobile system with Windows Phone 7, with an increased focus on consumer
use. Although Microsoft currently has a reduced position in terms of smartphone
market share, the upcoming Mango release is looking very promising, and is
being received quite well in early testing.
In terms of technologies for
mobile apps, the list is long, and depends on which platform (or platforms) you
choose to target. Among the most commonly used programming languages for mobile
applications are Java, Objective C and C++. Each of the major platforms has a
specific Software Development kit, with its own tools to help with the design,
testing, debugging and deployment.
The complexity of mobile
application development is such that targeting even a single platform involves
extensive testing. Some businesses maximize on development resources by
balancing native user interaction with cross-platform resources at the
back-end, in which case a mobile app can effectively function as an interface
for a Web application.
SMS
Aside from targeting specific
mobile platforms through software and Web development, there are additional
ways to exploit mobile contexts for some business processes - SMS is one such
case. In this model, services are delivered as SMS text messages. This has the
benefit of generally working across all phones, and payment can be handled via
users bills - but it's a very limited form of interaction. SMS also has a
problem that message delivery is not guaranteed. Integrating SMS message
handling into Web applications is quite simple - and support for processing SMS
messages from users is widely available.
About Android
Google's Android operating system
is going from strength to strength at the moment. Having initially been seen as
a platform of interest mainly to geeks, Android now occupies around a third of
smartphone market share. Android's growth is partly down to the openness of the
platform, which is available on phones across the market range and from various
hardware manufacturers, making it accessible to a more diverse range of users
than iPhone.
Apps available through the
Android Market are also subject to very little control, which produces a great
deal of variety and flexibility but naturally results in a higher proportion of
poor quality applications in circulation.
Google's approach is the opposite
of Apple - which retains significant control over its mobile phone operating
system. Google's initial idea was to make a new phone operating system which
would be open and free. Their hope was that this would encourage innovative
development of both phones and applications. Google has invested in Android
because it expected that Web searches would increasingly happen on mobiles, and
it wanted to be able to advertise to mobile users.
Although Google's position within
the mobile world seems very strong right now, it is still difficult to say how
things are going to progress. In terms of users and applications, Android has,
in the past, been seen by many as more focused on consumer services than
enterprise use when compared with Apple and RIM, but there is some evidence
that this is changing. The Android system is offering a good level of
integration with business services such as Microsoft Exchange, and the open
nature of the platform makes integrating with existing enterprise applications
potentially less troublesome than for certain competitors.
About iPhone
The iPhone was of course in a
dominant position as the advance of the smartphone took shape, and the platform
is still in a very powerful place. Although business users naturally tended
toward Blackberry in the past, both iPhone and Android have continued to make
considerable headway for enterprise as well as consumer use, while Blackberry
has started catering more to the consumer user as well. The result is that all
three of the major smartphone platforms are now occupying some of the same
space.
The iPhone offers support for
external business utilities such as Microsoft Exchange and, unlike Android,
iPhone apps are subject to serious vetting before users can deploy them. The
natural downside to this increased level of control over the platform as a
whole is a lack of flexibility, but for business applications the plus side is
a very high guarantee of quality and reliability for the end user - and
ultimately for any business processes being implemented through the technology.
With the hugely popular visual
designs and interaction models the brand is famous for, the iPhone is certainly
an attractive platform for commercial applications. Apple have been responsible
for developing innovative features whose success has prompted other platforms
to emulate them, such as multi-touch interaction.
There are some serious
considerations with iPhone development:
Apple does not permit users to directly
install applications onto the iPhone - all applications must be bought from the
Apple Store, and Apple takes a 30% cut. There may be some way around this in
the future, but at present we are not aware of it.
For certain applications the fragility,
financial value and battery life of the iPhone may pose problems.
Of course, these obstacles apply
mostly to commercial / industrial applications. They are not particularly a
problem in terms of creating end-user applications. Blueberry has the Objective
C skills necessary to develop iPhone programs, and we would be very interested
in discussing this with customers.
Although iPhone has lost
considerable smartphone ground to both Blackberry and Android, it is generally
still seen as the platform to beat, and continues to be a market leader in many
ways.
About RIM Blackberry
RIM's Blackberry platform was
long regarded as the mobile system of choice for business and professional
users, a perception that still persists to a certain degree. Over the past few
years Blackberry has also made significant advances in the consumer market,
introducing handsets that have proven especially popular among young smartphone
users.
Like Android, Blackberry hardware
is very varied, so users can access mobile sites and applications via differing
screen sizes and controls - increasing the complexity in any development project.
The Blackberry platform delivers a wealth of enterprise services as standard,
with Blackberry Enterprise Server seen as a major asset for corporate users.
Email on Blackberry is particularly strong, so users who are dependent on a
high level of security and reliability in messaging (and communications in
general) naturally tend towards this platform.
While iPhones are focused on
touchscreen interaction, as are Android devices to a slightly lesser degree,
Blackberry handsets are most likely to provide hardware keyboards for text
input. This can be a key aspect in the potential of the platform for certain
application categories.
A possible issue for mobile Web
applications targeted at Blackberry is that the Web browsers on the system
have, in the past, been significantly less advanced than those on both iPhone
and Android. However, more recent models have addressed this issue by including
the latest Web Kit browser
Native apps can be deployed
through the Blackberry App World marketplace, which has, to date, not occupied
as central a role for users as the app stores on iPhone and Android, although
the brand is clearly focusing extensive efforts on developing this aspect of
usage.
About Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile and Windows Phone
7 represent Microsoft's foray into the mobile world, which has enjoyed varying
degrees of success in the consumer and industrial markets.
From the consumer point of view,
at the moment some of the high end smartphone brands such as HTC and LG are
producing handsets with the Windows Phone operating system deployed on them,
with networks including O2 and Orange providing mobile services. Nokia and
Windows have reached a major deal in which the manufacturer is dropping its
Symbian platform entirely to focus on Windows as its operating system of
choice.
In 2011, Microsoft is due to
release a major new version of the mobile Windows platform named Mango. This
much anticipated release could alter the position of Microsoft drastically
within the mobile world, partly on account of the Nokia partnership and partly
since the system is set to include a number of new features such as increased
support for HTML5.
At the same time, Windows Mobile
has also been adopted strongly by manufacturers of industrial PDAs and mobiles
- portable computing device products designed for commercial rather than
consumer use. This has seen Microsoft exploring various industrial contexts for
mobile processing, with Windows
Mobile 6.5 particularly
successful in such environments, and hardware produced by various manufacturers
including Motorola. Windows Mobile is therefore a natural choice for many
mobile workplace needs, including warehouse and delivery services.
From a development perspective,
Windows Mobile has very strong advantages. Microsoft has provided a rich platform
of development tools - including the C# language, which is much easier to use
than C used on other mobiles. Microsoft also includes tools for communication
between software on the phone and central servers, and they even include a
small database engine.
The strong development tools and
wide availability of different devices make Windows Mobile a particularly
valuable platform for delivering business applications. At Blueberry we have a
uniquely high level of expertise on Windows Mobile systems, so are well
positioned to deliver solutions on this platform.
Mobile Solutions
Blueberry Consultants (
http://www.applist.com.au ) has the
development skills to build and deploy applications targeted at any of the
mobile platforms and hardware manufacturers in use today, having developed a
diverse range of mobile projects, including many on Windows. The team is also
well placed to provide tailored approaches involving multiple technologies and
programming languages where necessary.
With our skills in Web and client-server
development, we can design a complete system that integrates field staff and
office workers. Whatever your business process or context, Blueberry has the
expertise to provide bespoke, comprehensive solutions to mobile integration,
enhancing not only communication but also efficiency and productivity.