Kashif Nawaz’s Weblog

Since the very first day of iPhone launch, It has concentrated to put forward the trend of application development for iPhone through its marketing campaigns and by providing a complete development to distribution path to its users.

This trend has developed an environment where we have different mobile technologies and almost each of them has a totally different development environment and its own standards. With all this, we have got some app stores and much more are coming up in near future.

To encourage the developer and Business community for providing more and more quality contents, subscription, selling and Ad driven  earning models have also been introduced.
Question for application developers is “Why to choose a particular platform for development“. But they are most of the time guided by the clients who want their applications to be developed for a particular target market.

Now, why it has been a significantly high trend of Application download in iPhone users than any other smart phone of similar capabilities for similar kind of applications?

1. It is up to the Mobile Manufacturer to attract a user group who have more interest in using application.
2. It is all about how do you place your product.
3. Then providing the contents for the end users.
4. Guiding the content developers for the development to distribution path to be followed in order to have a win-win situation.

Last day, I had gone through a research result for the trends of Mobile Application development.

Developers Trends for Choosing Platforms

Above stats depict a picture of iPhone rule in the world of mobile applications till 2015 while the other platforms are placing themselves at the appropriate position.

What this graph does not show is the opportunity that is their for the J2ME and Symbian market. Nokia and other players having Java enabled Mobiles are working on the path to cash their potential in the field of Mobile applications and other related contents.

Nokia, being the industry leader, with largest market share of mobile phones and having better re-sale value of their mobile phones are in better position to lead in this race as well.  Recently the shipment of Nokia Smart phones and Motorola’s Android enabled handset have clearly showed the path of great opportunities to content developers in near future.

Mobile application developers have been having very tough time to port their applications on different platforms at the same time.

So far, choosing a mobile platform for application development mostly been based on what you have to pay in order to get your result of investment over providing contents.

Following are the trends to create an environment of huge applications development focus for not only the iPhone but for other mobiles phones as well.

• iPhone is no-doubt in good position to provide return over investment,  But with huge increase in number of application and decrease in qualitative and useful contents are going to cause a  gradual decrease in return over investment.

• J2ME and Symbian phones have huge potential and gap in terms of market share and penetration.
• Android has already set the stage to be in a position to take the lead in mobile contents.

• App stores are offering deals for 70/30 percentage of revenue by providing better distribution model.

• MNOs are intended to increase data usage by offering different packages to end users.

• Mobile manufacturers are providing more smart phones
• Business personals are also intended to invest more on porting their web solutions to mobiles

Apart from above,  work is being done to provide standards in Mobile content development and developers are being equipped with tools to Develop Once, Run Anywhere.

In our next post, we would be having a look at currently available and upcoming tools and technologies to lower the development costs and set standards for mobile applications/contents development.