Developing apps for Cloud is the way forward

BANGALORE, INDIA: When Apple launched its app store or Google opened its Android market for developers, none imagined that it would create main stream opportunities for developers to monetize their applications by developing innovative mobile applications.

According to a recent report by Gartner, the worldwide mobile application market will reach $ 15 billion this year, thanks to surge in development of mobile apps.

Recently, in an interaction with CIOL, Karthik T.S , head of the mobile computing CoE User Enthusiast Torry Harris Business Solutions, shared his views on the growing mobile apps development market and how it can open avenues for mobile application developers.

He also talked about the market for developers in 2012 and what are the changes that we can see in mobile app development and trends that we can foresee in areas of mobile apps development.

Excerpts:

CIOL: What are the latest offerings from THBS offshore mobile development labs in mobile apps development arena?

Karthik T.S: Torry Harris Business Solutions (THBS) offers native smart-phone app development services on leading mobile platforms such as iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and Symbian. This includes native apps and HTML5-based apps.

Our focus has been to develop business apps for large enterprises, to support their mobility use cases. In addition to app development, we assist mobile operators and other enterprises to deploy internal App Store solutions.

CIOL: You mentioned about development of business apps for large enterprises. How mobility solutions can help organizations to achieve business outcomes?

KTS: Being able to take decisions on the move is the need of the hour. Simply put, Mobility solutions offer the key benefit of increased ‘operational efficiency’ to a business.

Increased Operational efficiency can be achieved in several ways, three such scenarios could be:

1) Business Intelligence reporting can be made available in near real-time on smartphones and tablets, so as to enable senior management to take informed decisions while not being strapped to their chairs!

2) People-oriented business functions such as approval cycles, claims, etc can highly benefit from mobility solutions. The turn-around time can be significantly reduced

3) Enterprise-wide, there are multiple business processes and use cases that make perfect sense for mobile enablement.

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CIOL: How do you see the future of Mobile apps market in India and how can it open avenues for mobile application developers?

KTS: India is one of the fastest growing markets for smartphones and tablets. As a result, there will be a huge demand for mobile apps. Considering that the prices of smartphones are becoming increasingly competitive, there are possibilities in offering content in multiple regional languages. The possibilities are unlimited — from entertainment, education, e-commerce to finance, telecom etc.

Developers have lucrative business opportunities, as the barrier of entry is very low. The developer ecosystem consists of a good mix of students, independent developers, small outlets and of course larger companies. To begin with, they can leverage the Freemium model where apps are offered for free but have built-in ads to generate revenue.

CIOL: Lot of discussions are happening in and around Cloud computing space. Keeping that in mind, how do you see developing mobile apps for cloud?

KTS: Mobile apps naturally benefit from the characteristics of a Cloud platform, such as automatic scalability, support for high volume of traffic, high volume of data etc. Today, apps are increasingly leveraging the Cloud model, wherein Web-based apps are also offered as smartphone and tablet apps.

Bandwidth is becoming a non-issue today with the high quality of 3G networks offered. Mobile apps can easily manage the data traffic to and from the Cloud platform. Considering all these factors, developing mobile apps for the Cloud makes perfect sense and has tremendous potential for entrepreneurs, SaaS providers and enterprises.

CIOL: What are the trends that you foresee in areas of mobile apps development?

KTS: Due to the proliferation of multiple handset models, OS versions, mobile platforms, etc, it would be increasingly difficult for app developers to release one app across multiple platforms. As time to market is very crucial in the mobile app industry, one of the growing trends is to leverage a common App development platform.

This platform allows developers to write a code just once using the framework’s prescribed approach. The platform generates apps for all the common platforms using the common code base. Examples of such frameworks are RHOMobile, Titanium, PhoneGap etc.

Another significant trend observed is that for most common use cases, it is hard to tell if the app was written natively or using HTML5. We foresee increased traction of HTML5-based apps in the Mobile space.

Also, we foresee increased awareness and adoption of User Experience (UX) design principles for mobile apps. We strongly believe that application of UX principles for mobile devices is not a luxury anymore, but a critical necessity. This is considering the fact that the screen sizes are smaller and the app should stand out and create a first impression, in an increasingly competitive app marketplace.

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CIOL: Can you highlight any app development projects that you are currently working on?

KTS: We are working on a variety of projects in this space, a few of them listed below:

We are working on building integrated AppStores for enterprise customers and on mobile enabling a few customer websites .

We are working on several apps for iOS and Android platforms that will be published to AppStore very soon. The apps provide solutions in the finance, social security and other domains.

We are also working on enterprise mobility projects for our employees, such as timesheets, leave management, etc.

CIOL: Your opinion on developing apps on Android platform versus iPhone...

KTS: Without meaning to sound clichéd (!), we have to admit that each platform has its own pros and cons. From our experience, we have seen that testing on the Android platform requires more effort. This is due to the obvious fact that there are several handset manufacturers who make smartphones with Android OS. This leads to a difference in app behavior across devices due to variations in screen sizes, CPU speeds, amount of RAM, etc.

On the other hand, a developer's perception is that Android apps are easy to develop as they are based on Java, compared to developing apps on iOS, considering the steep learning curve for the iOSframework.

So, in summary, iOS Apps require additional effort to develop but are easy to test due to a standard set of device configurations. On the other hand Android apps may involve lower development effort and higher testing effort since they need to be thoroughly tested across multiple device configurations.

CIOL: According to you, how will be the market for developers in 2012 and what are the changes that we can see in mobile app development

KTS: As stated earlier, we believe there are great opportunities for developers in the mobile apps market space in 2012. The increasing popularity of AppStores, sometimes creates the problem of saturation. With millions of apps on the store, developers will need to develop apps that clearly stand out compared to competition. Developers will also need to experiment with business models such as in-app purchases, subscription-based content, etc.

We see the rise of HTML 5 mainstream apps that would give stronger competition to the native apps. This will allow developers to develop apps for multiple platforms by leveraging their HTML5 skills.

We see a lot of opportunities in the enterprise mobile apps space as enterprises become more flexible with their BYOD policies (Bring Your Own Devices). Time to market and cost efficiency in developing mobile apps is going to be key in determining their success.