The mobile app developer conundrum

IN AN INCREASINGLY fragmented and diverse mobile world, smartphone apps developers are challenged to work with a growing array of devices and software, from the Iphone, Android and Blackberry operating systems to those belonging to giants like Nokia and Samsung.

The question for many developers then, is what hardware and software they should start writing for first. Many are start-ups working on a low-budget, so it is a key question to ask as failure isn't an option.

Nick Langley, technical specialist at Tesco, said in his experience the answer changes every couple of months depending on what new phone comes along. But in Tesco's case it started by developing mobile apps for the Iphone.

"The reason why we started with Iphone is because I have one, and we thought we'd try it out. Actually very few of our online customers have an Iphone as a percentage of the total," he said.

"But it's what is called a 'hero device'. It's a device where if you did something on it you will actually get more marketing, more traction and more news about it then if you did it on another type of phone."

Entrepreneur and venture capitalist Jerry Ennis had a different view, as his company's mobile flirting social network Flirtomatic started five years ago with the aim of building downloadable Java applications for the smartphones that were around at that time.

"It was just too difficult to build applications for a range of different devices, particularly when the target market wasn't really using those devices at all," he said.

"The majority of people who are our target today, aren't going to be using the smartest of devices."

So instead Flirtomatic went for a web mobile approach, where the majority of their customers still are today.

Ennis added, "It's easy to forget that the phone you or I have in our pockets are not the phones that the people who want to use the vast majority of mobile applications have."

He said that if he was given £10,000 to develop mobile apps he would go down the same mobile Internet path, but revealed that Flirtomatic is now seeing some startling results and significant user growth with Iphone apps.

"Iphone usage on a new user basis is accelerating much more than any other device."

Ilia Uvarov, of digital advertising agency R/GA, believes it depends on who wants the app.

"If you're targeting business people in New York it would be the BlackBerry platform. If you're targeting hipsters in London you would go with Iphone," he said.

Oded Ran works for Microsoft and is currently working on Windows Phone 7 as head of consumer marketing, the new boys on the block who will effectively be starting from scratch when it comes to getting a new market of developers to create apps for them.

He said of mobile app writers, "They want to build something that looks great with the best tools. They want their developers to do some design work and designers to do some development work.

"They don't want to invest too much time and effort doing that. They don't want tools that are too complicated or buy dedicated hardware. They also don't want to write it once and debug it for multiple hardware."

But there have been bad luck stories for app development. A mobile app developer, who wished to remain unnamed, said that his company had big problems with Nokia, which it decided to work with because of its size and predicted return on investment.

"We wanted to get involved with the Ovi store and Nokia. But as everybody knows already there are major problems with the Ovi store and downloading updates for your application. We’ve struggled to make any money at all from that point of view," he revealed.

He pinned it on launch issues initially, but going forward as a lucid and easy experience for customers, it simply hasn't taken off in comparison to the Iphone, Blackberry and Android.

"There is a lot more [Nokia] is working on. Hopefully Symbian will change that experience, but that was quite damaging for us initially," he added.

Tesco's Langley said, "I think it's key that people who run the apps stores really work hard for us as developers to actually put the updates we put in through a proper process.

"Apple does a good job, but there's an arduously long time where it does its quality assurance before it lets you know whether it's accepted or rejected. That can be a problem."

App writers also want to make money. Many create apps for fun, but of course profit is very important for the time you spend working on them. There are questions around revenue share and development costs, for example.

Currently Apple and Google charge developers around 30 per cent of their profits, and there is a feeling that this is a duopoly and that increased competition needs to change this.

So developers obviously have a headache when it comes to writing apps for different platforms and this is one shared by mobile operators and handset makers. 

But in terms of the most important part of the chain - the user - this is a great time with unparalleled choice. In the end all they will care about is what they can get with the phone that they own, and if developers can provide services for them they may well be quids in, if they do it well. µ