Technologies, Platforms, Success Factors And Enablers For A Successful Mobile Business App

Technologies

Write a report discussing the technologies, platforms, success factors and enablers for a successful Mobile Business app. Discuss the different cost factors and key components of a mobile solution that will influence these costs. You should do case study and compare 4 or 5 different business mobile apps to support your arguments.

Mobile devices which are considered as cutting-edge technology of the modern era seem to grab more attention of today’s press. Even though, the applications work in a similar manner both on laptops or desktops but what really matters is how easily the customers can make use of it which governs the success of a business... From small applications to large applications, with the use of best optimization solutions, mobile software has grown exponentially and this has lead to the positive growth of the business sector.(Sullivan, 2015).

Irrespective of the age group, almost everyone does have mobile devices and everything is now just one tap away. Most importantly, growth of internet from cables to cellular data, and the increase of mobile devices have increased and the growth is impressive.

The applications that run on the mobile environment depend on several factors which include:

• Screen resolution
• Expensive data usage
• Connectivity issues
• Limited interactive possibilities
• Hardware limitations etc

In mobile application development business, there are two types of business models that are present. Namely, native or on- deck and the other business model is the off -deck or it may be also called as Third party (Islam et al., 2010).

Mobile technologies vary from one device to another. Mobile technologies and the operating system that are built in each device aren’t the same. And because of this reason, there are various technologies that are been used or to support all types of devices with different operating systems.

There are different mobile technology stack that are present in current world. For example: iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, Tizen, Cross-platform and Hybrid. At present, iOS and Android are leading the race of the mobile technology.

Now each stack has its own implications and hence, the technology that is been used to create a business apps gets changed. There might be various factors that are taken into consideration while creating a business app in terms of technology. Such as:

• If the business app is too small, then there is no need of cloud computing to be integrated with the app. This reduces lots of cost.
• Resources for creating the app and choosing appropriate resource to get the work done.

In terms of technology, these are some of the technologies that are been used in iOS apps (Scand, 2018):

• Objective-C
• Swift­
• C/C++
• AppCode
• iOS SDK
• XCode
• ARKit etc.

When coming to Android apps, these are the technologies that are been used under hood:

• Java
• Kotlin
• C/C++
• Eclipse
• Gradle
• Maven
• Android Studio
• Android SDK etc

Platform

When coming to Windows Mobile, the technologies that are been used are:

• XAML
• Visual Studio
• C#
• C/C++
• .NET

Mobile application development platform is one of the type of the software development tool that allows a business rapidly build their own customized software in line with their business requirements. These platforms will also help in deploying for both smart phones and also tablets (Techtarget, 2017).

There includes various factors that are considered while selecting and finalizing mobile app development platform because once the app is built,  it is a time consuming and also costly affair to introduce change because of the unscheduled or unplanned design or improper understanding of the business app. Once the third party software is purchased for the development of the app using their inbuilt API’s, it should also be fairly useful to test and run the same app on various devices without much effort needed in configuration.

Code portability is one more factor to look upon while shifting or moving the app from one platform to the other because to shift or to port the code from one platform to the other isn’t that easy. Compatibility issues, coding issues, browser related issues, maintenance and update issues, performance issues and many other issues come into picture. So, it is more advisable to take care of the portable software at the beginning or development stage of the mobile app (Think Mobiles, 2018).

The greatest advantage of the cross platforms apps is that they can run on all the devices without much change. Testing is easy and hence, time consumed is also less.

There are many cross platform mobile app development software which are present in the market and are popular among masses (Furlan, 2018):

• PhoneGap
• Sencha
• Kony
• AlphaAnywhere
• Redhat
• Xamarin
• iFactr etc.

• Building awareness regarding app – it is a fact that  mobile applications are helping business groups and more the  users are relying on the company, the more the company gains. It is important to note that the users don’t get much attention when the app is deployed. It has to be put on notifications and, more successfully the app is updated and deployed there are more chances that the app catches the eye of the user. Once the user discovers the application, the road to configure, install, and activation of the app should be smooth and if it is not the case, then there are high chances that the user loses interest and deletes the app (Aetherpal, 2018).
• Dependency at early stages – If the application is installed in a user’s mobile then, the user must need to have great experience rather than completely abandon the application out of frustration. Each application gets a chance to create the impression in customer’s mind and this has to be made packet full (Aetherpal, 2018).
• ROI Business and success in terms of technology – It is clear that the application can do business and this is actually twofold. It is because if the sponsors are happy and if the application is productive then it does good business in the market and if that doesn’t happen, more than the shareholders, it is the customers who lose at larger extent. And because of this reason, the terms and conditions of the app needs to be clearly mentioned to the customers or users who are using it. In the end, it is the customer who judges the business in the market (Aetherpal, 2018).
• Timely information – It is important that the application should let know its customers about the changes that are been done and what benefits can be secured with the changes made in the application. If the change sounds lucrative, it is a well-known fact that any customer would love experiencing it.
• Sharable – Suppose if the app is content -based or dealing with the content which is in the application, we often hear some news getting huge attention or buzz around and this mainly happens because of the sharing. In the same regard, for the budding app or application, it is more vital to get it shared and let it into the public first. At the same time, security measures should be taken care because no one wants to open any span email sent by any third party user, which can lead to corrupt mobile devices. Hence, application developers should take utmost care in sharing of the mobile app (Hylton, 2011).

• Complexity of the business – If the algorithm that processes the data of the application can’t enhance the application, then it is a negative sign. If the platform that has been used is native which is built by own, then it has to be well maintained in a structure, for example, as MVC pattern. It has to be well understood that the logic gets bigger if the application provides more configuration to the users (Varshneya, 2018).
• Having backend infrastructure will increase the cost of building the app because to build such apps, resources are more important moreover programming skills are needed to build the app.
• There are few more areas at which, the cost gets increased such as data storage, app infrastructure, data encryption techniques, scalability, administrative tasks, 3^rd party software integrations, controls of the app etc(Varshneya, 2018).
• Hosting costs – If the app needs to be hosted 24x7, to deliver fast loading environment to the user, then it needs to be put somewhere so that the user doesn’t get any issues while using the app in terms of data. There are few more costs that are associated with hosting costs which are: web traffic, database hosting, optimization of the memory, security of user’s data and volume of requests that the app receives etc. (Kaysharbor, 2018).

• TripView – This app facilitates its users to plan their trips by train, bus, ferry, coach services and light rail. This app is highly data rich and this can be clearly observed because to getting the routes of all the stations, stops of all the busses and their routes isn’t that easy, to load on the mobile devices. Hence, the data that’s been loaded to track the bus or train needs to be high and at the same time, to fetch the data, application needs to communicate with the servers at real time and also with high efficiency. Coming to the business strategy, this app also provides its users the benefit of Opal card which is third party integration to the application. As we have discussed above, third party integration in the app is cost- effective (Transportnsw, 2018).
• WikiCamps – This app provides its support to smart phones which includes window, iOS and Android mobile devices and at the same time, it supports tablets and Windows PC which is a webapp. Now, to provide such extensive app to all the devices, it is understandable that it takes lot of resources to build the app and at the same time, this app is clearly not backend based which is built by own programmers. And this concludes that the app uses cross platform mobile app development, which is a third party software and since the data are  also rich, data management system is high and needs continuous updates which increases the cost as the data usage increases (Wikicamps, 2018).
• Procreate – This app is exclusively made for iPAD and iOS devices. This application is highly used to create paintings, illustrations and also draw beautiful sketches. This app is solely built for one specific device in mind and this narrows down the applicability of the as it is not cross platform mobile app and thus it is not cost- effective. As the app is targeting specific users, this increases the growth of the users and also increases the business of the app because targeting a specific kind of audience is easier and also, it can support multiple users with ease in less time thereby increasing productivity of the app (Procreate, 2018).
• Clipp – This app gathers all the events that are happening in Australia and then, collaborates with them and provide users of app with benefits at low cost. This app is collecting huge amount of data and the data needs to be updated on timely basis. This app also facilitates its users to split the bills and this is huge advantage to the app users. This app is also supporting Android and iOS devices which narrows us down to cross platform application (Clipp, 2018)

1. To develop a mobile app, the key factors that has to be dealt with are:
2. Design – For ensuring smooth experience to the user
3. User friendly – Develop the application that is user -friendly
4. High algorithms are cost -effective and also require resources to program the application.
5. Cross platform mobile applications which are built on third party software should be well studied and then, it should be used in the mobile apps.
6. Success factors should be followed in order to get or grab the attention of the user or customer.
7. Cost and key concepts should always be remembered because this phase can drown the company and leave its customers into trouble. Managing of resources, data, security, cross platform costs and hosting costs should be maintained.
8. Mobile application should target specific users so that the app seeks the attention of the users and later, it can be provided for cross platform devices with ease.

References

Aetherpal (2018) Five Critical Factors for Successful Enterprise Mobile Apps [online]. Available from: https://aetherpal.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/wp_criticalfactorsforsuccessfulappdeployments.pdf [Accessed 2018 May 2018].

Clipp (2018) Clipp [online]. Available from: https://clipp.co/ [Accessed 21 May 2018].

Furlan, A. (2018) Cross Platform Mobile App Development Guide (2017) [online]. Available from: https://www.businessofapps.com/guide/cross-platform-mobile-app-development/ [Accessed 21 May 2018].

Hylton, R., 2011. Top 10 Mobile App Success Factors [online]. Available from: https://transpara.com/blog/2011/10/17/top-10-mobile-app-success-factors.html [Accessed 21 May 2018].

Islam, M.R., Islam, M.R. & Mazumder, T.A. (2010) Mobile Application and Its Global Impact. International Journal of Engineering & Technology, 10(6), pp.72-77.

Kaysharbor (2018) 5 factors to look out for [online]. Available from: https://kaysharbor.com/blog/mobile/mobile-app-development-cost-and-factors-to-consider [Accessed 21 May 2018].

Procreate (2018) Sketch. Paint. Create [online]. Available from: https://procreate.art/ipad [Accessed 21 May 2018].

Scand (2018) Mobile Technologies [online]. Available from: https://scand.com/technologies/mobile-development/ [Accessed 21 May 2018].

Sullivan, F.&. (2015) It's Time to Seriously Assess Your Mobile App Strategy.

Techtarget (2017) Mobile application development platform (MADP) [online]. Available from: https://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/definition/mobile-application-development-platform [Accessed 21 May 2018].

Think Mobiles (2018) What are the popular types and categories of apps [online]. Available from: https://thinkmobiles.com/blog/popular-types-of-apps/ [Accessed 21 May 2018].

Transportnsw (2018) TripView [online]. Available from: https://transportnsw.info/apps/tripview [Accessed 2018 May 2018].

Varshneya, R. (2018) 5 Factors that Influence the Cost of Building a Mobile App [online]. Available from: https://www.inc.com/rahul-varshneya/factors-that-influence-the-cost-of-building-a-mobile-app.html [Accessed 21 May 2018].

Wikicamps (2018) What is WikiCamps [online]. Available from: https://www.wikicamps.com.au/ [Accessed 21 May 2018