Smartphones not only provide seamless connectivity but are also a window to the world, through a wide range of mobile applications, for a user. The future stores more for mobile applications and is destined to go beyond accessing mails, social networking, mobile banking and entertainment etc., playing a bigger role and touching every sphere of a human life.

As apps grow smarter and sophisticated, the critical challenge before various stakeholders in the mobile app ecosystem would be to leverage from futuristic technologies to balance power with performance so as to optimize user experience. One of the most talked about future technologies, Mobile Cloud Computing with its recent success and potential has the power to become a disruptive and dominant force and aid iPhone app developers and others in facing the challenges of the future.

What is Mobile Cloud Computing?

Mobile cloud computing refers to an environment where both the storage of data and its processing happens outside the mobile device. The app is run on a remote server and a user can get access to it through the browser available in his mobile device. Gmail, Google Maps etc., are some of the examples of applications making use of mobile cloud computing.

In most mobile applications today, except a few that has already adopted the Cloud, data storage and processing is done within the device. However, with apps getting more feature rich and expected to handle volumes of data, on-the-device storage and processing would not only be difficult but to an extent impossible. In such a scenario, Mobile Cloud Computing with its capability to store data and process it outside the device, on the internet, without disturbing the real performance of the app would come handy to app developers.

Advantages of Mobile Cloud Computing for iPhone app developers

iPad and iPhone app developers have some genuine advantages in adopting Mobile Cloud Computing. The major benefit for developers from cloud would be that it will address the issue of platform fragmentation. App developers will no longer be required to develop different versions of their application for various platforms. Apps built using cloud computing will run on browsers and will not depend on the operating system of the device. It means that apps will not be restricted to a specific platform thereby allowing iOS app developers to target all mobile devices with suitable browser capability. This, in turn, will help developers get access to a bigger market.

The other major benefit of adopting cloud computing would be a significant reduction in costs of developing a mobile application. And, most importantly cloud based mobile apps will provide developers with the freedom to bypass app stores and save on their revenues as they no longer would be dependent on app stores to sell their creations. Currently if you have built an app for an iPhone or iPad, you are required to submit it in the Apple App Store or any other compatible third party store from where users get access to it. All major app stores charge a part of the revenue, generally 30 percent, every time your app is downloaded from the store. However, a mobile cloud computing application can be accessed by the user via the browser on his device thereby saving revenue for you.

Challenges for Mobile Cloud Computing

However, all is not hunky-dory in the adoption of Mobile Cloud Computing. There are a few major challenges which need to be adequately addressed to make large-scale integration of cloud computing with mobile app development. One of the key challenges is continuous internet connectivity, latency and bandwidth. For on-the-go and seamless running of cloud applications, mobile devices would require incessant internet access at all places which is presently not available. However, new technologies such as 4G and HTML5 with its ApplicationCache interface, wherein users can get access to your app even when they are offline, can address the issue.

Another significant issue with Mobile Cloud Computing is the limitation of mobile phone and Tablet devices. These devices have smaller screen size, less processing power and memory when compared to desktops where cloud computing has met notable success. The feature deficiency of mobile devices may restrict app developers in utilizing the full potential of mobile cloud computing and may generally limit it only to SaaS cloud, wherein only data storage and processing would be performed outside the device. Security is also a key concern in mobile cloud. Sensitive data may be at a threat if a device is lost.

The future of Mobile Cloud Computing

Mobile cloud computing is still in its nascent stage. As said earlier, there are only a handful of applications that use cloud computing. But the situation is fast changing as developers realize the benefit of cloud and begin adopting it in their development process. The mobile cloud computing market is expected to peak and soar in the next 4 to 5 years. A forecast by ABI Research predicts the market to grow over 100 times in the next 4 years from $200 million in 2010 to $20 billion.

iPhone application development using Mobile Cloud Computing may be in infancy but it is surely poised for rapid growth and wide expansion as app usage pattern changes and applications go more powerful. It provides some major benefits to iOS app developers and has the potential to seriously alter the current app ecosystem.

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“The reality about mobile apps is that average user engagement plummets to less than 1 percent only 90 days after they are downloaded, and that means lost revenues for app developers and poor ROI for company brands,” said Daniel R. Odio, CEO of Socialize, Inc.

“By allowing the community of app users to discover each other, Socialize can increase user engagement and app usage by 54 percent. And by letting users share their in-app experience with the outside world, apps can go viral,” he added.

For android and iOS app developers, the Socialize SDK offers turnkey social network features that can enhance existing or new applications. In addition, they would also be able to monitor app users’ likes and comments and thereby will get a feel of user’s preferences.

With the recent change in app ranking algorithm in App Store and Google Android Market wherein user engagement rather than number of downloads becoming a key parameter for app rankings, the Socialize SDK will surely help Android and iOS app developers to boost user engagement and make their app popular in the app stores.

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“Explosive mobile adoption in the enterprise is creating new demand for mobile applications focused on solving business problems,” said Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box.
“This innovation is not going to come from legacy software vendors, which have been slow to embrace mobility and even slower to embrace true openness. At Box, we’re investing aggressively in building a powerful open platform that developers can easily tap into to create killer apps for today’s mobile workforce,” he added.

Box will release a Java code library for Android and update its Objective-C library for iOS development which will allow app developers to add Box functionality to their apps more easily and include the collaboration benefits of Box with features such as uploading, downloading, sharing, commenting, tagging, search and version history.

The new collaboration API methods allow users to share and edit content from their mobile device. It will also allow app developers invite and manage collaborators in addition to viewing connections.

The Box Mobile Developer Challenge will run till September 9, 2011. The challenge is open for app developers around the world and offers $50K in cash and prizes, including $25,000 for the top application, $5,000 of InMobi mobile ad network credits, HP TouchPads, and an opportunity to a pitch meeting with Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

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AddThis is making it simple and effortless for iPhone developers to add sharing and analytics to their apps and mobile websites. The iOS SDK will bring for iPhone app developers all the features and analytics that is offered by AddThis for browser-based web pages for their native apps and mobile web pages.

The AddThis iOS SDK will make integrating sharing into your app easy and quick. iPhone app developers will be able to enable, customize, and track social sharing in their application. Developers will get access to all sharing services avaiilable for the web.

AddThis is planning to release SDK for Android app developers in the near future.

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WatchMouse has announced introduction of a new In-App Monitoring (IAM) service, a revolutionary technique for measuring and monitoring network performance in mobile applications. The IAM provides an open source library that iPhone developers can integrate in their application, using easy, low-impact changes in the code to inculcate which web service calls to monitor. IAM will then collect performance data for the app  while ensuring privacy for the mobile user.

“Modern smartphone platforms like Apple’s iOS or Google’s Android OS all feature apps that rely heavily on the Internet connectivity of the device as well as availability and performance of the web services with which they communicate,” said Mark Pors, CTO at WatchMouse.

“An app will not function as intended if the web service on which it relies is slow or the network falters, and users can end up frustrated, or worse, delete the app. WatchMouse IAM is the first product to give developers a way to measure the performance of apps as real users experience them”

The IAM makes available real user experience and performance data and will allow iPhone developers to identify issues, improve the resilience, performance or consistency of the web services. All the collected data is then delivered via dashboard reports.

Once enough data is collected, iPhone developers can then switch back to original mode of operation. The service also provides total control to a user who can opt-out of data collection whenever desired.

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Other findings from the report are-

• One third of the developers surveyed make less than $1,000 USD per app.
• Around 50% of app developers participating in the survey make money through a salary or commission highlighting the role of corporate monetisation in app development.

• Pay-per-download is the top revenue earning model for developers making money directly followed by advertising and freemium models.
• Not all platforms have equal money making potential. There are large discrepancies across platforms in terms of revenue potential with iOS topping the chart, making 3.3x more money than Symbian (1.0) followed by Java ME (2.7x) and BlackBerry (2.4x). Android (1.7x) and mobile web (1.6x) were found to be the weakest performing platforms in revenue earning per app for mobile developers.

The report once again validates the dominance of iPhone developers in both app development and revenue earning from the apps.

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Appirio, has announced a new mobile application development framework that will enable iPhone developers to build custom, native mobile enterprise apps without writing native iOS device code. The latest framework will leverage the Force.com cloud platform to help manage mobile applicationss in real-time without necessitating any redeployment.

“Companies that can harness the power of the cloud and mobile in a smart way will get the best of both worlds,” said Narinder Singh, Chief Strategy Officer at Appirio.

“Unlike web apps that happen to run on mobile devices, mobile cloud apps give companies a better way to centralize the control and the maintenance of apps while taking advantage of the cool features, performance and offline capabilities that only native apps offer,” he added.

Appirio’s latest mobile application framework will allow iPhone developers to create solutions combining the speed and usability of a native application with the flexibility and manageability of the cloud. It also enables iPad and iPhone developers to update their apps in real-time, without requiring to redeploy. This will save significant amount of time for iPhone developers as they wouldn’t have to do re-compile, re-test, and re-deploy code.

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If you wish to be an iPhone developer but don’t have in-depth programming skills on Objective-C and the iPhone SDK (Software Development Kit) then latest version of mobile app development tool MobiForms 6.0 can be of excellent use to you. The app development tool which was earlier available for other platform developers is now available for Apple iOS devices and promises to make iPhone app development easy for both, naïve and experienced iPhone developers.

Mobiforms 6.0 is a simple app development tool with an intuitive, drag and drop interface and allows you to build apps easily. Moreover, unlike iPhone SDK you do not have to to own an Apple Mac to run it. The MobiForms 6.0will run on both Windows PC and an Apple Mac. It also saves you from paying the expensive membership fee for iPhone Developer Program.

MobiForms supports Apple iOS camera, GPS integration and SQLite database connectivity and helps in building any type of mobile applications including surveys to field service, signature capture to bar coding.

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• Ask yourself some tough questions- Before you embark on the search for an iPhone app developer, step back and ask some tough questions to yourself on why you want to develop an app, who will be your target audience, and whether an application would be the right way to reach your target market.
• A good iPhone developer will go to any length to build a quality app- As a businessman, you want to build an iPhone application and you have a broad idea which needs to be broken down to the bottom, study and understand its various elements and then transform it technically through appropriate development process in to a high-quality app. A good developer will go to any length, think out-of-the-box to get the job done. The app development industry is fairly young and there aren’t many developers who have the wherewithal to take complicated assignments. So, ask as many questions as possible, ask him to come with a blueprint, look at his client list and then pick the right one.
• Keep it simple- A latest study by Harris Interactive and commissioned by EffectiveUI reveals that majority of users download apps based on good user experience (UX) and recommendations, rather than getting swayed by the brand name of the company. So, focus on keeping the app simple, easy to use and with a clean user interface. One of the mistakes entrepreneurs do is to build an app that is a replica of their website. An iPhone application has its limitations and replicating your website on it will clutter it and diminish the user experience. So, better focus on core functionalities and Keep it simple.
• Budget for hiring an iPhone app developer- It depends on what you want your app to do. If it is a simple app then it will cost you less but if you want multimedia and other interactive features in it then you are looking at a big figure.

In the next article, we will talk of some other key considerations while selecting an iPhone app developer.

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The young iPhone app developer learnt writing the programme after watching online tutorials. According to CBR, Bond, from Paignton, Devon, and McNeil are believed to be the youngest app developers in Britain. Nine-year-old Lim Ding Wen from Singapore holds the title of being the youngest app developer in the world.

“I’ve always been fascinated by computers and how they work and when Seb [McNeil] mentioned this might be a possibility I thought “Why not?” says Bond.

“So I bought lots of books about how to develop applications and then sat for hours watching YouTube tutorials and researching the Internet until I could make my own,” he added.

Source- CBR

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