Mobile apps

Mobile Application Market and Platforms

• Mobile apps
• Mobile Applications (Russian Market)
• Mobile Applications (Global Market)
• Apple App Store
• Google Play Store Google Play Music Google Chrome Web Store
• Windows Store Microsoft Online Store Windows Azure Store Microsoft Office Store
• Huawei AppGallery
• Global Developer Service Alliance (GDSA)
• Yandex.Store
• Opera Mobile Store
• Android app stores
• SAP Mobile Applications
• Real estate mobile apps
• Mobile applications for personal finance accounting
• Mobile alcohol selection apps

History

2025: Keys to promoting the app to 20 million users

The launch of a mobile application is a whole era. To scale properly and take first place, it is better to study the experience and rake of others in advance. In this article, we will analyze how to gain user trust and occupy our niche in the market thanks to timely release, meticulous product development and effective promotion methods. Peter Starokadomsky, SMO maam. Read more here.

2024: SwiftUI or UIKit: What's behind the future of mobile development on iOS

The mobile application market continues to grow rapidly, increasing volume and profitability annually. Global consumer spending on applications, according to the Data.ai report, grew by 3% in 2023 and reached $171 billion. Developers have to make difficult decisions to choose the right platform for their projects and compete for user attention. Together with Alexei Gurin, a leading developer of mobile applications for iPhones in large technology companies (tutu.ru), we understand how the emergence of SwiftUI changed the market and what tasks are more effectively solved with its help. Read more here.

2018: Russia adopts mobile application development standard

The state approved a preliminary standard for the development of mobile applications, according to a statement by Rosstandart, published on the agency's website on July 10, 2018. The requirements are advisory in nature, but, according to the authors, will have to become a "guideline in development." Read more here.

2017: Waiting for free apps for Apple and Google to disappear

The free model of distributing applications for smartphones will very soon cease to exist. This was announced in July 2017 by the head of the mobile development department of Artezio (Artesio), the author of the Cost Track project Igor Esipovich. According to the expert, a monthly subscription system will come to replace the free and shareware model, which at the moment is becoming a priority for many developers.

"Free and shareware apps are making less and less money for their creators," Esipovich says. "If earlier free applications were well monetized through advertising, and shareware brought enough profit thanks to internal purchases, now the situation has changed and the model using a monthly subscription comes first," the expert noted.

A significant role in the growing popularity of the subscription model is played by Apple's policy, which relies on monthly deductions rather than one-time sales revenues.

"Apple is seriously encouraging developers to implement paid subscriptions. The corporation receives 30% from the sale of content, and only 15% from the subscription, leaving 85% to the developer against 70% of the income from the sale, as in the usual case, "said the head of the Artezio department

The expert notes that while in digital stores the largest profits are generated by projects with a shareware distribution model.

"A shareware model, or rather a freemium and premium model, works much better than everyone else so far. For example, Clash Royal, Clash of Clans, World of Tanks - these applications are not sold, they provide only built-in purchases. Mortal Combat carries no less promoted brand than Ubisoft with Assassin's Creed, but it is in Mortal Combat that built-in purchases are much more efficient, "Esipovich notes

The specialist believes that over time, the shareware model will become unpopular, and the developers will receive the main income from the updated subscription. At the same time, there will be practically no completely free applications.

2013: PwC on the future of mobile apps

According to the forecast prepared by PwC in September 2013, the next generation of innovative solutions in the field of mobile technologies will be aimed at recognizing and modeling the contextual situation of the consumer. Information about users in three main parameters - physical location, virtual and social environment - will become the main resource that will create mobile applications and services with radically new capabilities and capable of predicting consumer preferences. Mobile devices will be able to become truly digital assistants.

PwC's Phase II report on the Mobile Innovations Forecast (MIF) Phase II: New technological capabilities demonstrates how the user experience will change with the next generation of mobile technologies.

"We are entering a new, dynamic phase in the development of mobile technologies, marking a transition from a limited set of information and computing functions to intelligent analysis and rationalization of the physical, virtual and social environment of device users," said Raman Chitkara, head of international service practice for PwC technology companies. - Soon, mobile devices will be able to analyze and predict human needs using platforms that involve the user, relying on information obtained from numerous sources. The main goal of this process is to create even more intuitive mobile devices. "

As noted in the PwC report, contextual intelligence in mobile computing will be able to obtain situational information from three main sources, including:

1) device data (for example, power supply, operating system, data storage, etc.);

2) data on the physical environment (location, weather, etc.);

3) user data (ID, applications, stored information, etc.).

The capabilities that mobile devices, networks, applications and next-generation services should have in order to collect user data from sources such as sensor sensors on devices, laptop computers and the electronic ecosystem of transponders on other people and objects, and process them:

• localization and navigation,
• sensor devices and user interfaces,
• ID and information security technologies,
• Next Generation Networks and Clouds
• mobile operating systems.

2010: Mobile Application Types

Regardless of which device this or that program is used for, mobile applications can be divided into paid and free.

Free applications, as a rule, are quite simple software with a limited set of features. Free software is often designed to solve a specific problem (for example, viewing e-mail). According to experts from the GetJar organization, free applications in most cases are used by phone owners for a short time. One of the reasons for this behavior of users is due to the fact that it is inconvenient to work with several open free applications at once. Firstly, this affects the performance, and therefore the battery life of the device. Secondly, the user can simply be annoyed by the constant transition between programs (especially on touch-screen devices) and the associated loss of time.

As for paid mobile applications, they, on the contrary, offer the user advanced functionality for each individual software product. For example, the alternative SPB Mobile Shell user interface for Windows Mobile-based communicators offers the user several options for managing the device and its software using a single application. In addition, developers of paid mobile software, as a rule, offer the ability to update software.

Also, mobile applications can be divided into entertainment (multimedia), communication, navigation, reference and application. Entertainment mobile software includes audio and video players, image and e-book viewers, games. Communication applications are responsible for the user's communication by phone and SMS, his contacts in e-mail, ICQ, social networks. Navigation programs include applications that work with the GPS system, electronic maps and geographic coordinates. Reference software includes various dictionaries and encyclopedias, searchable databases. Applications include notebooks, organizers, a calculator, programs for working with graphics and text.

2000s: The Age of Communicators

By that time, smartphones and communicators began to gradually conquer the mobile cellular device market. With broader capabilities and performance, they differed from conventional mobile phones by the presence of a fairly developed operating system (Windows Mobile, Symbian OS, RIM, Android, Mac OS), which is open to software development by third-party developers, unlike the software environment of conventional mobile phones, which is closed to third-party developers. It should be noted that the installation of additional applications allows you to significantly improve the functionality of smartphones and communicators compared to conventional mobile phones. But, note that each specific operating system requires the installation of applications corresponding to it, that is, programs created specifically for a particular OS. For example, the organizer program created for Windows Mobile cannot be installed on the Simbian OS used in Nokia Corporation smartphones, or Mac OS ( Mobile Touch version) for an iPhone from Apple.

In addition, it is worth noting that the presence of a fully functional operating system does not make smartphones and communicators more attractive in the eyes of most users. Modern cell phones, or rather models belonging to the middle price category and above, can often cope with many tasks. They can work with e-mail, view text documents and spreadsheets, photos and video files.

In addition, the screens of a number of cell phones are not inferior to most smartphones and communicators, and the latest models are also equipped with touch screens and memory card connectors. Therefore, today it is the owners of ordinary mobile phones who make up most of the consumers of software applications.

But on the other hand, smartphones in the eyes of this category of users look more attractive due to other features, such as, for example, advanced multimedia functions (a better camera, advanced video playback capabilities, improved musical abilities), Wi-Fi, GPS and others.

It should also be understood that programs written specifically for the operating system of a smartphone or communicator are full-fledged sequences of low-level microprocessor commands compiled into binary code. And due to the fact that all smartphones and communicators have more powerful processors than mobile phones, the programmer's ability to create such applications is practically unlimited.

Specialized applications are more functional, they use processor resources more efficiently than J2ME programs based on a variety of Java platforms designed to work in devices with limited resources (limited processing power, limited memory, small display size, portable battery power, as well as low-speed and insufficiently reliable communication capabilities). Therefore, smartphones are popular among software developers and enthusiasts.

1990s: The Age of Mobile Phones

The starting point for creating mobile applications was the appearance of a screen on a mobile phone. Naturally, the first phone software was built-in applications that were designed to perform specific phone functions and were installed into the device by the manufacturers themselves.

Perhaps the first mobile application, in addition to the software responsible directly for the operation of the phone, was the phone book - the part of the device's software that ordered the user's contacts. At first, only the name and phone number of the subscriber could be entered into the notebook. But gradually new functions were added to this application - in addition to the name and phone number, it became possible to enter the address, email and other data of a particular subscriber.

With the advent of the ability to exchange short text messages (SMS), another application was added to the phone, allowing you to write, edit, send small electronic texts.

The time of the first mobile application installed on the phone on top of existing software can be attributed to the end of the 90s of the last century, when cellular communications began to gradually enter the lives of millions of people around the world. It is worth noting that by that time, phone manufacturers already clearly imagined that software for a "mobile phone" was a promising direction, both in terms of technology development and in terms of their separate commercial use. Then, in addition to the most necessary applications, manufacturers began to install additional software into the software shell of cellular phones. As a rule, these were various multimedia applications - small arcade games, ringtone editors, calculators, calendars, etc.

Third-party developers who offered cell phone owners applications similar to those originally installed, as well as a lot of other useful and sometimes useless software, did not lag behind.

With the advent of WAP technology in the cellular market in 1997, which allows you to access the Internet using a mobile phone, the number of software applications, like their developers, began to grow. The fact is that now it has become much more convenient and easier to install any program on the phone, since earlier the installation of the application could only be carried out using a DATA cable connecting a stationary computer or laptop with a mobile phone. It is worth noting that at that time not every cell phone model was supplied with a DATA cable, which limited the use of mobile applications.

The ability to access the Internet directly through the phone made it possible to install various software on the device, as well as games even for those people who did not have a home computer. In addition, WAP could function even on budget phones, due to which the number of users of mobile applications also increased. The only disadvantage of WAP access was the high cost of data transfer - by downloading only a few programs for the phone, the user could spend his entire account.

By the beginning of the new millennium, the rapid development of the mobile content market in general and mobile applications in particular began. Like mushrooms after rain, specialized sites for the sale of software products and multimedia content for mobile phones appear. And the emergence of new technologies for data transmission using cellular communications (GPRS, EDGE) allows you to reduce the cost of mobile Internet traffic. Users began to download pictures, music ringtones, games, useful programs, etc. from the network in unthinkable quantities.

Safety

Main article: Mobile application security

Superapps

Main article: Superapps

Web Application Portals

Today, in addition to independent Internet platforms for the distribution of mobile applications, leading manufacturers of cell phones smartphones and communicators create their own similar resources. Some of them already have or plan to open their own platform for the sale of mobile applications in the near future. Such specialized portals for mobile distribution ON already have a phone manufacturer - iPhone a company (), Apple App Store a company (OVi), Nokia Corporation a smartphone manufacturer - Blackberry a company (RIM BlackBerry App World and Application Center), a company (), Google a company (Android Market PlayNow arena Sony Ericsson) and a number of others. In addition to the applications themselves, these online resources also sell a variety of mobile content (music, videos, pictures, e-books, etc.).

Application Development Tools

In addition, manufacturers of mobile phones, smartphones and communicators and creators of operating systems, as well as mobile operators, release software tools for creating mobile applications. They are offered on the basis of both open and closed software and are often designed to write applications for a specific operating system, which often means for a specific model of a mobile device (for example, iPhone, Google phones or Nokia Corporation smartphones).

Links

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