Fragmentation Stifles Innovation in Mobile and It's Here to Stay

Kenan Wang


There's a concept that we at Ondeego call the Mobility Barrier. The Mobility Barrier is our name for all the issues that prevent companies or individual developers from creating mobile applications. It is the reason that innovation in mobile hasn't hit the point of inflection, where growth becomes exponential. Right now innovation in mobile has largely been linear (with the notable exception of the iPhone). Up until a couple years ago a select group of people from the carriers or the handset manufacturers provided almost all the innovation (primarily in the form of new devices and features) in the mobile space up. "Apple has fundamentally changed the industry from a focus on hardware to a focus on software and content," says Ken Dulaney, an analyst at consultancy Gartner (IT). In response the major players in the mobile industry - the carriers, platform vendors, and handset manufacturers - are showing a willingness to work with outside groups particularly ISVs (check out the 100 Million Club http://www.visionmobile.com/research.php#The-100-million-club) to drive innovation through software and content. However, the Mobile Barrier still prevents the everyday developer from contributing much to the mobile space outside of the iPhone app store. What will change things is when the economics change so that the everyday developer can contribute to innovation too.

One lesson that Mobile can learn from the recent Web movement is that innovation is largely a product of economics. When making websites became easy and cheap enough to make, so that businesses and everyday people could contribute- that's when the web took off.

The potential of HTML to create graphically attractive web-sites and the ease with which these sites could be accessed through the new generations of web-browsers opened the Web to whole new groups. Until now, the Web had served two main communities - the scientific community (accessing on-line documentation) and a wider 'netizens' (net citizens) community (accessing e-mail and news-group facilities). Now commercial web-sites began their proliferation, followed at a short distance by local school/club/family sites. These developments were accelerated by the appearance of ever-more powerful (and cheap) personal computers (which increased both the number of netizens and the potential market for businesses) and by the increase in capacity of the communications infrastructure. The Web now exploded.

Griffiths, R. T. "Internet for Historians, History of the Internet: The Development of the Internet."

What we see is that the Mobility Barrier is preventing the supply of mobile apps from meeting the latent demand for mobile apps - there is a gap in innovation. In a study by IBM, “89 percent said they would like a higher level of personalization through the ability to pick and mix applications, services and other characteristics of the handset such as form factors and designs. Moreover, 81 percent would switch to a provider that offered greater choice for customization.”
http://www.telecommagazine.com/international/article.asp?HH_ID=AR_4564

Furthermore, a detailed look at the behavior of app phone users and non-app phone users shows promising signs of the potential for mobile innovation. http://www.gravitytank.com/apps/#

There are three main layers to the Mobility Barrier. One layer is technical issues. The second layer is business issues. The third layer is the lack of understanding of the mobile space. All of these layers are interconnected and affect each other; however, it's possible to take one area as the focus of our discussion to drive our analysis of the problem. Today we will talk about the technical issues blocking mobile innovation, particularly fragmentation.

Damith C. Rajapakse, from the National University of Singapore, School of Computing, has a superb article discussing Device Fragmentation. Rajapakse describes fragmentation as "the inability to 'write once and run anywhere'." He breaks down the reasons for fragmentation as

-"Hardware diversity, such as differences in screen parameters (size, color depth, orientation, aspect ratio), memory size (heap, persistent), processing power, input mode (keyboard, touch screen, etc.), presence of additional hardware (camera, voice recorder), and connectivity options (bluetooth, IR, GPRS, etc.).

Software diversity:
-Platform diversity, such as differences in platform/OS (Symbian, Nokia OS, RIM OS, Apple OS X, PalmOS, Mobile Linux, Android, BREW,etc.), API standards (MIDP 1.0, MIDP 2.0, etc.), optional APIs, proprietary APIs, variations in access to hardware (e.g., fullscreen support, access to local storage), and differences in multimedia support (e.g., codecs), maximum binary size allowed, etc.

-Implementation diversity, such as quirks of implementing standards (different interpretations of the standards, bugs, etc.). Incideentally, fragmentation resulting from implementation bugs/quirks is one of the most tiresome type of fragmentations, according to practitioners.

-Feature variations, such as light version vs full version

User-preference diversity, in aspects such as in language, style, etc., or accessibility requirements

Environmental diversity, such as diversity in the deployment infrastructure (e.g., branding by carrier, compatibility requirements of the carrier backend APIs, gateway characteristics, opened ports, restrictions on access to outside the network etc.), locale, local standards."

Each of these separate issues don't just add to the problem, they multiply it. We as application developers have thousands and thousands of possible variations (Rajapakse calls them Operating Contexts or OCs) to worry about. The problem is big.

Rajapakse further classifies these issues into two types of diversity:

"Essential diversity: This is the diversity that differentiates a product/service in some useful manner. This kind of diversity is intentional and often unavoidable. For example, users will continue to differ in their preferred size for a device, and the device manufacturers will continue to differentiate the devices in terms of size.

Accidental diversity: This is the diversity that - does not serve any useful purpose, is often introduced unintentionally, and is often avoidable. For example, diversity due to API implementation bugs/quirks is unintentional, avoidable, and does not serve any useful purpose"

He states that essential diversity is here to stay and will only get worse as the additional features and capabilities are added to different devices. This seems like a fairly reasonable assumption. Because each person treats and uses their mobile device so differently no hardware or feature standardization, like what has happened with PCs, is likely. Two factors contributing to increased essential diversity are:

" Desktop-class mobile applications: As devices become more capable, there is more potential for feature-rich, mission-critical (and consequently larger, and more complex) applications to move to the mobile platform. This is likely to exacerbate the fragmentation problem. Specifically, it will increase the effort required to fit one application to multiple OCs.

Growing number of new device models: Even released applications will continues to fragment, as more and more new OCs need to be supported. This fragmentation may be hard to predict, or plan for. It also becomes necessary to identify OCs no longer cost-effective to support."

Accidental diversity can be addressed, he says. Better standards would go a long way to help. However he accurately points out that the major mobile players - Carriers, Device Manufacturers, and Platform vendors play a critical role.

I believe even accidental diversity has little chance of getting better in the near future. Some efforts exist toward promoting standards and consolidating the number of platforms. Things like the Open Handset Alliance, or efforts by Sun may help in the long run. However, with such a proliferation of platforms in the market, more platforms entering every day, and no pressing need for the major players to reduce fragmentation, fragmentation will only get worse in the near future, and will be slow to get better.
http://disruptivewireless.blogspot.com/2008/03/handset-os-fragmentation-is-here-to.html

Rajapakse also discusses at length the various ways of dealing with fragmentation. http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~damithch/df/dfApproches.htm

We use what Rajapakse calls the All-In-One, Self Adapt approach to dealing with fragmentation.

Compliance Through Mobile Applications

Compliance Through Mobile Applications

Oren Salomon

Compliance – What it is and Why it Matters
Patient compliance (also known as adherence or persistence) with doctors’ prescriptions is essential to treating medical conditions. Many patients choose to ignore doctors’ orders for any number of reasons, but the result are the same: lost sales to pharma companies and increased healthcare costs for healthcare providers as the entire system has to absorb the consequences of letting medical conditions spiral out of control. This cost can be forwarded onto consumers in the form of worsening their quality of life, possibly even through death in extreme cases. In financial terms, hospital stays are expensive and avoiding them through compliance is a much more economical solution. Bacteria can mutate and evolve into a bigger problem for those who do not fully comply with anti-biotic prescriptions.

According to a McKesson report, the leading cause of non-compliance is simply forgetting to take one’s medication. Nearly 80% of respondents of a study of those who did not fully comply with doctors orders cited this as a reason for non-compliance, followed by running out of medication (19%), too costly (9%), perceived lack of need (9%), side effects (7%), and the very rare no improvement seen (3%). All of these are causes that need to be addressed as non-compliance is one of the most costly problems facing the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries today.

Compliance Hurting the Healthy of the Industry: Costs to Pharma and Healthcare
The primary cost to pharmaceutical companies is the lost revenue from unfilled prescriptions. Conservative estimates indicate that only 60% of prescriptions actually get filled and while 100% compliance is an unrealistic goal, some of the $70 billion in revenue lost annually from non-compliance could reasonably be captured if pharmaceutical companies find a way to merely increase compliance rates. Essentially this means for every percent rise in compliance, the pharmaceutical industry as a whole stands to gain nearly $2 billion in sales. Rather than targeting new potential customers, which is very costly and involves pushing doctors to write more prescriptions (and leads to charges of “disease mongering”), pharmaceutical companies can raise revenues in a more cost effective manner by converting more existing prescriptions into sales. As will be discussed in the next section, this can be achieved by better managing relationships with existing patients using new mobile technologies.

Non-compliance is not only an issue in the lost revenue from the marketplace for drugs, but can also tamper with research and clinical trials. One of the key problems with non-compliance is that patients and especially paid test subject patients do not always freely admit when they are not complying with doctors’ instructions with regards to prescriptions. This creates problems in research models as some test patients will effectively place themselves in a placebo category by not taking the medication given to them without telling those running the trial. This can conflate variables in research and also lead test results for drugs to represent less effectiveness than actually achieved. Controlling for non-compliance is difficult when testing for it is expensive and researchers like doctors rely on honesty from their patients for effective treatment. Doctors and researchers are simply too busy to conduct a lie detector test on their patients to guarantee compliance. There must be a better means that doesn’t waste doctors’ time, researchers’ time, or patients’ time. Convenient and effective ways to increase compliance can be achieved through mobile technologies.

Lastly there is the myriad of costs for the healthcare industry as a whole. Medical problems do not simply go away and if allowed to fester the patient’s condition can deteriorate and treatments for worsening conditions become progressively more expensive. Often times, if the condition leads to extensive hospital stays, the medical bill can spiral into six or seven figures, a medical debt many patients cannot afford, leaving taxpayers and the healthcare industry as a whole the burden of paying for their mistakes. Fulfilling prescriptions immediately and taking medication as prescribed is an effective form of preventative healthcare that can keep healthcare costs down for our society. Healthcare costs for our nation are spiraling out of control and growing faster than any significant section of our national GDP. More so than Social Security, Healthcare costs represent the biggest budget challenge for the federal government. New mobile technologies promise to raise compliance and therefore hopefully mitigate the challenges that growing healthcare costs present to our society.


Pharma’s New Swiss Army Knife: Mobile tools to combat non-compliance
A popular mobile tool for raising compliance to date has been SMS, commonly referred to as text messages. An SMS reminder sent to the patient when they need to take their medication or refill their prescription can be an effective tool, but there are significant limitations. First and foremost, there is the 160 character limitation of any SMS message. Second, text messages, like email, can be considered invasive and even intrusive. Creating an opt-in feature can help keep this from being viewed as annoying, but the SMS is a 1 way communication tool that cannot easily adjust for the customer’s individual pill schedule or refill schedule. There is no room for the creation of rich content explaining the benefits, side-effects , and implementation instructions of the medication. Additionally, depending on carrier infrastructure, SMS messages can be delivered late or not at all – resulting in non-compliance. Generally, SMS messages serve best for campaigns that send an undifferentiated non-personalized message to a wide reaching audience. Serving an individual patient through SMS is therefore generally ineffective when compared other, more sophisticated tools.

Branded mobile applications behave much like programs on a computer in their high functionality, but reside on an individuals’ most personal electronic device, their cell phone. Much more secure from both hackers and other physical users, cell phones are a personal item that are generally not shared and therefore provide a digital safe haven for storing this kind of personal medical information. Because they are always opt-in (the user has to willfully choose to download an application to a cell phone), being perceived as invasive is almost never an issue for mobile applications. The power of mobile applications to increase compliance lie in their ability as a powerful communication tool, not only to remind the user to both take and refill their medication when appropriate. Mobile applications can feature as much content as most websites and display them in similarly easily accessible and navigable formats. The patient can become educated on the benefits, side effects, and implementation instructions (particularly useful for inhalers) on their own time, sparing doctors and pharmacist’s time and efforts. Unlike pamphlets with this information that are quickly discarded, mobile applications (until deleted) follow the patient everywhere they go. Additionally as a digital format, mobile applications offer the ability to animate instructions, which can often be more helpful than static illustrations.

In sum, mobile applications offer many improvements over existing approaches to combating non-compliance without suffering many drawbacks. While mobile applications require an upfront start up cost, their maintenance is often low cost and does not require many human hours. A mobile application, much like a website, works overtime and is available to the consumer 24-7 for confidential disclosure of information. A mobile application, unlike an SMS can be outfitted to include full disclosure (fair balance) on side effects and drawbacks of medication and therefore comply with legal regulations much easier and still leave plenty of room to express benefits. Therefore mobile applications represent pharmaceutical companies’ best tool yet to combat non-compliance.

64% of Doctors in the US have Smartphones

64% of Doctors in the US have Smartphones: A Beachhead for Pharma Mobile Applications

Oren Salomon

This article points out some very useful statistics and trends, namely that 64% of doctors in the US use smartphones. Compared with the 27% adoption rate of the general population, doctors are early adopters. This makes sense – HCPs were some of the first adopters of mobile technology like pagers. They are the quintessential mobile professionals.

Popular uses of smartphones for doctors have been searchable digital versions of medical reference books, which often number in the thousands of pages. Dosage calculators are also popular. Though the smartphone can perform many tasks of a desktop, it is available wherever busy doctors go, while desktops stay in the office. The only limiting factor of a smartphone for doctors seems to be screen size. Within a few years, it is conceivable that doctors will manage their practices primarily through their smartphones rather than their computers.

Today, national initiatives are pushing for implementing digital healthcare services. If patient info and the like becomes available through secure online resources, then the smartphone becomes an attractive platform for health applications because of its mobile convenience. The appeal of bringing health applications to the “point of care” explains why the smartphone has been the most quickly adopted technology ever by doctors.

This all means that mobile applications can be a beachhead for pharma marketers. As doctors become more accustomed to downloading mobile applications to their smartphones, the opportunities to get a larger share of the doctors’ time increase. This is because doctors’ while constantly busy, will find themselves idle with nothing to do at various times of the day, perhaps on a train or the 2 minutes between appointments with a moment to spare. Though your sales rep could never reach them at this moment, the doctor might choose to open up the mobile application on their smartphone and learn a little more about your product offering.

4 Keys to a Great Developer Ecosystem

The Pre's biggest disadvantage is its app store, the App Catalog. At launch, it has only about a dozen apps, compared with over 40,000 for the iPhone, and thousands each for the G1 and the modern BlackBerry models. Even worse, the Pre App Catalog isn't finished. It's immature, it's labeled a beta, and Palm has yet to release the tools for making Pre apps available to more than a small group of developers.

- Walt Mossberg, Wall Street Journal, June 4, 2008

With the rise of new app stores, attracting developers to a platform or app store is important to drive revenue and stay relevant. Today’s consumers know that “there’s an app for that,” and they want that app on their phones. If today’s carriers or handset manufacturers can’t offer those cool and useful apps, consumers will switch to another platform, carrier, or app store to get them.

Today’s carrier or handset manufacturer is now serving more masters than ever before – in addition to their stockholders and consumers, they must now attract developers to their offering. App stores and great developer programs are a way for carriers to be more than “dumb pipes,” and maintain relevance in the rapidly growing mobile content ecosystem.

The good news is developers will flock to these new platforms and create applications. They will sell them in app stores, which will drive app store revenue, and drive consumers to these platforms. A good vibrant developer program can increase revenue, drive new consumers to devices, and add new services to devices without effort on the part of the manufacturer/carrier. (For example, see the iPhone.)

The bad news is that developer programs can go off the rails – see Palm’s struggles with their Pre development community. As you can see from the Palm testimony, when developers get mad, they use the internet to show their disapproval – like here , here and here – and thoughts spread virally amongst developers really, really easily. (A lot of developers are bloggers, active forum contributors, and avid social media users. Some of them are even SEO/SEM experts. It is one thing to be hated on the internet, but it’s quite another to be hated by the people who can get to the top of Google page.) Palm’s poor launch is a wake-up call to take a look at what makes developer programs succeed or fail.

Today’s app developers are not traditional ISVs (independent software vendors) – they are college kids in dorm rooms, experienced programmers coding after hours, and small shops run out of garages – think the early days of the internet. While larger ISVs are important and part of a vibrant ecosystem , their needs are different than those of small developers. Because of this difference in motivation, it makes sense to give ISVs a separate track, with a business development manager contact. Smaller developers, by contrast, need a contact who understands them – someone who is a developer and understands the technical and logistical problems associated with creating applications for your platform.

The keys to attracting small developers to a particular platform are simple yet often missed: give them tools, share revenue with them, communicate with them, and be transparent with your rules.

Give Them Tools

Today’s mobile application developers are looking for the most effective way to create and bring to market their mobile service. Because it is impossible (or at least very difficult) to predict what will be a runaway success in an app store combined with fragmentation issues, creating an app is a substantial upfront cost to a developer not just in cash outlays but in time costs as well. One way you can lower the barrier-to-entry for new developers to your platform is to give them great, easy-to-use tools and lower their time costs so they can spend more time developing and less time learning how to use your tools.

Apple’s iPhone SDK is a great example of this – they created tools that made it easy for developers to create visually attractive applications. Fragmentation is still a huge problem and appears to be getting worse. If you operate a mobile application store on multiple handset platforms, you must give developers tools to allow them to tackle the fragmentation issues. By contrast, Palm refuses to distribute their SDK publicly, and has about a dozen apps.

Sharing is Caring

Sharing revenue with developers is very important to attracting them to your platform. While the standard is becoming 30% with Apple App Store, other stores are picking different revenue splits. Windows Mobile went with the same split, while BlackBerry opted to give their developers a little more with an 80/20 split. T-Mobile has taken a different tack with their announced app store – it will cover all T-Mobile handsets and have a revenue share based on bandwidth use. Now that there are carrier app stores and independent app stores, it is very possible that a consumer will have more than one app store on his or her phone – even one from a carrier, one from a handset OEM, and an independent one. With that in mind, developers will sell their applications in the stores with the largest reach and the most generous revenue share. Some app stores, like China Mobile, have announced revenue splits as high as 50-50 between developers and the carrier. If your app store is not the only option, developers will seek other venues to distribute their apps.

Have a Dialog with Your Developers

Communicating with people who are developing software for your platform at their own expense is important. Forums, wikis, and blogs are the best ways to do this – developers, by their nature, will first Google a problem they encounter. Have a developer relations staffer monitor these forums, and answer questions. BlackBerry has done a great job of this – all of the developers I know comment on how responsive their developer relations staff is on forums.

Not communicating with your developers is a grave mistake. Complaints in the blogosphere are rampant about trying to get answers to questions from Apple. Then, there is the mother of all PR/Developer Relations disasters, Palm’s actions with their PreDevCamp group. It seems that the organizers of these events signed an NDA with Palm, tweeted to their community that they signed such an agreement, and were then informed that they violated the NDA by tweeting about it. Developers will use social media to communicate with each other about your product – join the conversation or let it happen. Trying to muzzle it will lead to a disaster – such as one of the organizers of your dev community writing an article in Businessweek airing their grievances and predicting your failure. Hell hath no fury like a developer scorned.

Transparency

Developers, particularly small developers, will follow the rules of your app store. However, if you have rules regarding submissions, it is important that they be applied evenly across the community and across applications. When you don’t do this, you have the PR storm that Apple had around approvals – the process itself, approving the baby shaking application, and the Trent Reznor/NIN debacle. Whether you decide to approve everything or follow content standards, you must consistently follow this policy.

Conclusion

Today’s consumers expect mobile apps on their devices. (See the Walt Mossberg quote at the top of the article.) A thriving developer ecosystem is a great thing for a platform and an app store, and will drive revenue if properly managed. Transparency, dialog, sharing revenue, and provision of tools are keys to growing a developer community.

(Disclosure: Ondeego is a BlackBerry Partner.)

Questions? Comments? Want to discuss developer relations strategies? Reach Matt at Matt (at) ondeego (dot) com, or leave a comment.

Ken Singer Talks About Ondeego on Mobile Presence

Last week, Ondeego CEO Ken Singer was interviewed for the Mobile Presence podcast. Ken talks about how carriers and handset makers can empower developers and drive revenue in their app stores.

Ken Singer on Mobile Presence

Great Article on Mobile App Strategy

I saw this article on mobile application strategy in Mobile Marketer today, and it's great.

Applications Integral Part of Mobile Marketing Strategy

A mobile application is a tactic in mobile marketing strategy. An app by itself will not solve all of your problems, nor will people magically discover it. However, a mobile app is one of the deepest, stickiest way a brand can connect with consumers. The Weather Channel example in the article is particularly interesting. It shows that for services that consumers engage with regularly - weekly or more often - a mobile app is generally a better play than a WAP site.

Follow Us on Twitter!

Now, you can follow Ondeego on twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ondeego

Wireless in Cars versus Mobile Phones in Cars

I saw this on FierceWireless Today:
Gartner Says Wireless Connectivity to be Main Focus for Vehicle Manufacturers by 2012

This is intriguing - wireless in cars. It should give carriers new subscribers, which is good. The ARPU will be pretty low - but does ARPU still matter when you're talking about devices that aren't phones? For reference, the Amazon Kindle II's ARPU for Sprint is something like $2/user.

However, I wonder: does it make more sense to put a wireless app, the infrastructure, the SIM, etc, into a car, or does it make more sense to use everything the mobile phone the passenger already has to do the same thing? Maybe through bluetooth (or some other way) the car could communicate with the passenger's phone, and piggyback on the existing infrastructure and handset ownership.

Either way, a subscription fee for wireless in your car when you already have a wireless device in your pocket seems like a pretty hard sell.

Branded Mobile Applications - In the Trenches, Beyond the iPhone - Extended Edition

Parts of this post appear in the article “Branded Mobile Applications: In the Trenches, Beyond the iPhone,” in the Mobile Marketer Guide to Classic Advertising. This is the “extended version – blog cut.” The extended blog version pieces are in italics. Additions by Matt Gratt – reach him at Matt (at) Ondeego (dot) com.

Branded Mobile Applications: In the Trenches, Beyond the iPhone

By Ken Singer

Many said it couldn’t be done, but Apple’s iPhone proved that consumers will download and engage with a wide variety of branded mobile applications. The Zippo Lighter mobile application is a good example – it is the 13th most downloaded free iPhone app, with over 2.5 million downloads (Apple). Other applications offered for everything from ski condition reports to recipe finders to other branded mobile services for consumers have generated substantial brand utility, website visits, and even direct revenue. While brands making software services for mobile phones may seem strange, it reflects several current trends in marketing. No longer can brands “interrupt” consumers into attention, as Seth Godin and many others will tell you. The iPhone application needs to be of serious utility to consumers – often aiding them in enjoying the brand’s products. For instance, as a snowboarder, I love the North Face Snow Report app (and the many other ski report apps out there from different brands – REI, CLIF Bar, etc) – it enables me to find the ski resort with the best powder on a weekend pilgrimage to Lake Tahoe. Rather than trying to interrupt me while I consume media, the brand is instead reaching out and giving me a service to help me enjoy their products.

However, only 17 million consumers use iPhones, compared to the more than 50 million BlackBerry users (Walt Mossberg, AllThingsD, April 10th, 2009.) There are also millions more smartphones on Windows Mobile and other proprietary operating systems. In the United States alone, there are more than 75 million smartphone users – the vast majority are NOT iPhone users. Lots of others in the blogosphere (http://www.unstrung.com/blog.asp?blog_sectionid=626&doc_id=164642>) having pointed out that the iPhone is not dominant, particularly as you look across the world. In the United States, the BlackBerry Curve outsold the iPhone last quarter (http://www.businessinsider.com/iphone-outsold-by-blackberry-curve-in-us-last-quarter-2009-5). The iPhone is a great device – it has a great user interface and has really pushed the mobile landscape forward – but many mobile developers, particularly those in the Silicon Valley, fail to see the world beyond it. For instance, today Adverblog (http://www.adverblog.com/archives/003879.htm) points out that while 98% of Creative Directors own iPhones, less than 2% of the world’s phone-using population will even be able to download “an app for that.”

With the recent launch of BlackBerry App World, Windows Mobile Skymarket, the Android Market, and countless other application stores, an easy-to-use distribution channel now exists for these phones. Together, they give brands access to over 45 million consumers, more than any major network on TV. These app stores represent the future of mobile marketing and provide an extraordinary opportunity for consumer brands to make an early mark in this emerging medium. Brands that got their apps in the store in the first 25 apps or so did phenomenally well – see Kraft’s iFood Assistant and Zippo’s Lighter app. These other stores are growing quickly, so the next big thing in mobile advertising will be apps for all smartphones, not just the iPhone. For consumer brands, the BlackBerry app store and others are untapped markets for reaching your consumer.

Best Practices in Multi-Platform Marketing

Making apps for other phones can be a little bit trickier than making apps for the iPhone. With the iPhone, there’s one platform and one distribution channel. There’s an SDK provided for you, and many agencies (and who knows how many vendors – apparently everyone who owns a Mac) have developed iPhone development capabilities and expertise. The iPhone app is the low-hanging fruit of mobile apps – you just have to hope it gets approved by Apple. With branded apps for other phones, there are a few more hoops to jump through – but the rewards can be exponentially larger, in terms of AdAge coverage, PR, and most importantly, downloads. Your favorite friendly mobile applications vendor (like Ondeego) can help you navigate the trickier waters of other handsets.

Before you begin developing your killer marketing app for the smartphones of the world, ask yourself who you are trying to reach. Your target demographic will determine your target handsets. Also, if you’re aiming at a wealthy, educated, professional demographic, then targeting BlackBerry and Windows Mobile smartphones make sense. If you’re aiming toward a younger, more urban demographic, less feature-rich handsets like RAZRs, KRZRs, and lower-end smartphones are more appropriate.

Once you know what handsets your target demographic is using, you can begin the task of selecting a distribution channel. The OEM app store for the devices you’re targeting is obvious, but you should add in the independent app stores (Handmark, Handango, GetJAR, etc.), and a Web-to-SMS portal from a microsite. There are also carrier application stores, but many of these require particularly arduous approvals and testing. Approval times should be accounted for as many app stores have non-transparent approval processes – they can range from days to months. Apple’s somewhat schizophrenic approval policy has become a favorite topic of the blogosphere (http://www.unstrung.com/blog.asp?blog_sectionid=626&doc_id=164642). MG Siegler from TechCrunch has made this a personal crusade (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/02/like-my-parents-in-1994-apple-find-nins-the-downward-spiral-objectionable/), and writes some great articles on it. Other app stores approval processes range from no process what-so-ever to elaborate and Apple-like to unknown. Always have a back-up plan – there’s lots of ways to distribute an application – and make sure you budget time for approval mishaps.

Something we didn’t get to in the article is QA, or quality assurance testing of your mobile app. It is pivotally important that your vendor tests your application on all of the phones he or she claims it works on. Real phones – not emulators. Make sure they also test it on all carriers they say it will work on. At Ondeego, we use DeviceAnywhere – a great testing service that lets you use real phones over the internet - to make sure our applications work on all handset and carrier pairs that we claim. (Disclosure: DeviceAnywhere worked with Ondeego to provide free hours to the UC Berkeley students developing mobile applications in our class at UC Berkeley. They’re a partner of ours.)

Marketing your application is also very important. To be effective, your mobile application should be part of a holistic strategy across multiple channels – not just an application. You’re launching a branded mobile service, and consumers have to find it to download it. Advertising on other mobile applications or websites can be effective, but blogger outreach and social media is the most cost-effective way to market your app. While there are many best ways to publicize your app, we’ve found the cheapest, most effective way is through blogger outreach. There’s a lot of device specific blogs and area specific blogs – ie you have a golf course finder for BlackBerry – you should reach out to BlackBerry bloggers and golf bloggers. The drawback here is that you have to have a good application that people will write about. (Then again, if you don’t, you may be barking up the wrong tree. Just having a mobile app isn’t enough – it has to have real utility to the end user.) Alternatively, if you have money, you can use ad buys on other mobile sites and applications – the main advantage to these is it targets users that already use mobile services. As is somewhat obvious, these ad buys cost money, while blogger outreach is free.

Considering a multi-platform mobile app? Come see the experts at Ondeego. We’ve launched marketing apps for large brands that work on most handsets on the market. Email sales@ondeego.com to set up your free consultation.

Note: All statistics are current as of this writing. They may change.

Flurry: Analytics for Mobile Apps

Flurry: Mobile Analytics Provider

I was recommended Flurry (http://www.flurry.com) by one of our friends at Trend Mobility (http://www.trendmobility.com). Flurry is a really cool mobile analytics service that works across almost all platforms (just like Ondeego's applications). With just one snippet of code, you get close to real-time analytics and insights about your app and how it gets used. It's like Google Analytics for mobile – you even get pretty graphs in flash on your analytics page. Cool product, responsive team – a good thing, all in all. If you’re a mobile app developer looking for insights into consumer behavior, or a brand seeking to understand who actually uses your app, it might be the piece you need.

(Disclosure: We use Flurry to track some of our applications. )