New technologies and savvy developers are in line to give iPhone a run for its money
Finance & Commerce, by Arundhati Parmar
The numbers are eye-popping.
In just 15 months since it opened its App Store, Apple reports that it’s had 50 million customers, who’ve downloaded a total of 2 billion items, selecting among some 85,000 apps that have been developed.
No wonder so many application developers in Minnesota and elsewhere love iPhone and the App Store. And no wonder that many developers are looking forward to yet another possible boom in business, when and if Apple's third-party application model becomes popular on competing cell phone platforms.
So far, only AT&T customers have been able to use the iPhone. But rumors are rife that Apple may make a deal with AT&T’s competitors because of complaints about AT&T service.
Until that happens, the latecomers to the mobile applications world, such as Research in Motion (which makes the corporate world’s ubiquitous BlackBerry phone) and Palm (maker of the newly released Pre smartphone) have a chance to catch up.
And then there is Android, the open-source operating system developed by Google to which many cell phone manufacturers have hitched their fate in a bid to provide consumers with another alternative. Last year, HTC made the first cell phone on the Android operating system under the T-Mobile banner, called the G1. Now, Motorola is embracing Android, too – the Illinois company will be releasing its first Android-enabled smartphone, Cliq, through T-Mobile; on Oct. 19, it will be available to existing subscribers, and it will be released to all consumers Nov. 2.
“The growth of the Google Android has been kind of an eye opener – there are 18 new phones coming out by the end of the year on the Google Android platform,” said Wade Beavers, CEO of mobile-application development company DoApp. “So it’s made us think that this is probably going to be the next popular one.”
Location-based advertising
DoApp, whose seven-member team works out of Rochester and Minneapolis, is currently working on launching its Mobile Local News application platform on Google Android. The platform can be used on the iPhone as well; WCCO-TV already has an application in the App Store that viewers can download. Beavers will focus on having customers launch their apps on BlackBerry next, followed by the Pre.
Through the Mobile Local News platform, as well as the companion Adagoago ad network, TV stations, radio stations, newspapers and other publishers can sell advertising to companies just as they would on TV, radio and print. The difference: Advertisers can now use geo-targeting, providing especially relevant ads to users. In other words, a business based in Rochester can use the WCCO app to know when a user has the app open and if that person is near the business, then can place an ad that he or she will see (but only if those customers have opted to be geo-tagged).
“So if I am a coffee shop, I only want to advertise in a six-block radius, I can do that,” Beavers said. “Only when the app is open in that area would my ad show up.”
Digital coupons can be delivered to users, who can store it on their phones and share with friends on Facebook, Twitter and via e-mail with a single click. They can be printed or scanned by retailers, who have special equipment that scans the coupons straight from mobile phones.
While it can be a boon for advertisers, the application can be very useful to news outlets such as WCCO. Like CNN’s iReport, which enables anyone with a camera to take a video and upload it to the cable news channel, the application lets users shoot a video, take a photo and write a story, which the broadcast station can use.
“It’s really about the engagement,” both from an advertiser’s perspective and the broadcast station’s point of view, Beavers noted.
Companies pay a one-time fee to DoApp to develop the application using its Mobile Local News platform and then, once they begin to sell advertising, to share revenues with DoApp.
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Another local company that has gone the platform route without creating one specific application for mobile phones is Recursive Awesome. Co-founders Justin Grammens and Sam Schroeder have developed the Mobile Vid Hub platform, which allows any producer of video content to upload videos – with an app branded under their icon and logo – to the iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Palm Pre. A website would host the videos; an application built using Mobile Vid Hub would communicate to the website.
“You upload the video only once to the website and it would show up on all four devices,” Schroeder said.
A band that wants to use such an application to share videos with fans also has the ability to understand how fans are reacting to the content. Users are able to comment on the videos, and Recursive Awesome can provide data to help the band understand which videos are most popular. Currently, two video producers have signed up and a golf instructor is interested, Grammens said.
Companies pay a fee to develop the application, as well as a monthly subscription based on how many people have downloaded the application.
Unlike DoApp and Recursive Awesome, the Nerdery Interactive Labs, a division of Sierra Bravo, has deliberately decided not to build a platform that works on multiple mobile frameworks. They have a “technology agnostic” approach to development, as developers at the Nerdery create apps one by one based on client requests and on the mobile environment of the client’s choice. (Those clients are actually ad agencies building apps for their end customers.)
“Everything we do is custom, which gives us the flexibility to explore all options and recommend the right stuff per project, based on the objectives of our (ad agency partners) and their clients,” said Mark Malmberg, a spokesman for the company.
The company is in the process of developing an app for the BlackBerry Storm – a finger-painting app that allows users to choose colors and move a finger on the surface of the screen. It has also developed multiple applications for the iPhone, including one that lets a user calculate how far they are from the Nerdery.
The Nerdery charges each customer a fee for development and all the communication needed to get the apps approved. So far most clients have wanted apps for the iPhone, but soon that might change.
“There are companies that are getting smart and they are realizing that they want their applications on different platforms, (not just iPhone)” said Andrew Watson, interactive developer at the Nerdery. “I think you are going to see Android getting more popular because it is coming to so many mobile phones.”
But the window of opportunity for competing cell phone makers may be brief. Speculation is rife that Apple will cease the exclusive deal it has with AT&T – iPhone users have been less than impressed with the shoddy coverage of AT&T – and sign on with Verizon.
“Truth be known, if Apple was on another carrier, it might be game, set, match,” Beavers said.
iPhone: I love thee, I love thee not (sidebar to above story)
The intense relationship between iPhone and developers has been marked by both love and hatred. Now, with the advent of the Android Market, the App World for BlackBerry users and Palm Pre Applications, developers for the first time have a yardstick with which to measure that relationship.
The money:
Apple developers have to pay $99 a year, and “if you don’t renew, then they pull your apps from the App Store,” said Sam Schroeder, a developer at Recursive Awesome.
With Google Android, developers pay $25. With the BlackBerry, it’s a $200 that covers 10 submissions, whether or not those ideas are approved.
The process:
Apple has a 120-page document that developers must read closely.
“Apple lays out this is what thou shalt do and this is what thou shalt not do,” said Jon Rexeisen, Schroeder’s colleague at the Nerdery.
By contrast, BlackBerry has a best-practices guide. Apple also tests the applications and puts them under duress to see how they perform when cell phone coverage is patchy or WiFi connectivity is not reliable.
“With a BlackBerry or Android or even on the Pre, there is really no rule; if it works, it goes live almost immediately,” Rexeisen said.
Communication:
This is especially a sore point for developers. Apple may take weeks or even months to communicate whether something needs to be changed for an app to be approved. Developers largely see this as a desire to control the quality of what gets into the App Store and ultimately on the iPhone or the iPod Touch – after all, consumers may blame Apple for a badly functioning app instead of the developer who created it. But Wade Beavers, CEO of DoApp, believes lack of communication is endemic to the tech industry as a whole.
“None of them gives you a human body to talk to; that’s my frustration,” he said.
Software development:
For all the hoops that Apple seems to make developers jump through when it comes to the actual coding, the company also makes it infinitely easier to actually write the apps.
“Development for BlackBerry is colossally more tedious than iPhone development in terms of the technology,” Watson said. “If you want something like a button with an image on it, you have to write the code yourself.”
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