Google Glass Apps

It was during a talk at the I/O conference in which senior developer advocate Timothy Jordan provided developers with a walkthrough of Google Glass. Judging by the cue outside the door, there will be no shortage of app developers seeking to utilise Google Glass. The New York Times has already developed an app for Google Glass and the challenge for the company is to engage consumers and brands simultaneously in the build-up to a full public launch. CNN, Facebook and Evernote are also on board at an early stage; with one commentator noting “Twitter works beautifully well with Google Glass”.

Google Glass GDK

The GDK is a work in progress. Google are effectively encouraging app developers to dream up new ideas in order to define the future direction of the GDK. There is also the small issue of the Google Glass app market place. Any flourishing app marketplace requires a fluid means of discovery for potential users. So for those app developers fortunate enough to be a part of the Glass Explorer programme, it’s a case of getting ideas across to Google that could be incorporated into future versions of the GDK.

Google Glass App Development

As with any app development project, Timothy Jordan wants developers to test thoroughly, maintain simplicity and avoid getting in the users way. What exactly does he mean by this final point? Essentially Google Glass users should be able to receive things like notifications, without interrupting the services that Glass provides. At present, app developers creating for Google Glass can think about content deployment, navigation and photos. Things like ‘Google Hangout’ will become extremely prevalent features for users. This enables two-way, real-time video communication between users via Google Glass.

Ultimately Google require ambitious app developers to create software that defines the way in which brands and consumers can engage with the technology. Firstly Google needs to get these tools in the hands of developers in order to stimulate new ideas and innovation around Glass. The unveiling of the GDK will represent another huge shift towards a successful launch for Google Glass.

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1.) Start At The Start

App development projects take time. Most projects can roughly be segmented into pre-production, production and post-production. Depending on the complexity of the requirements, apps can take a long time to develop. If you’re serious about your business and your serious about developing your app, you should give the same level of attention to marketing. Marketing is not just something you design of the back of your napkin after your app has been launched. If that’s your approach, chances are your business won’t survive for long. You can mitigate these risks by planning your marketing well in advance of pre-production. Build a Twitter following, post development screenshots, start a Facebook or write some content. Do anything, but do something and do it early in the day.

2.) Get Web Savvy

The Internet is now mobile. Desktop is dwindling but here’s where the app developers with web technology experience have a serious advantage. When you launch your app, the aim is simple, you want people to download it and hopefully purchase your products or services at some stage, be they virtual or otherwise. Your job, in the context of marketing, is to enable people to discover and download the app. One of the best ways to do this is create a mobile responsive landing page or microsite. This differs from a regular website in many ways and is designed as a ‘funnel filler’ for your app and focuses almost entirely on conversions (the number of people that hit your site divided by the number of people that successfully download the app). You can remove unnecessary navigation and create a stripped back version of your main site that’s designed purely to direct people to the app store. How do you direct people to your mobile responsive landing page? That’s another issue…

3.) Use Blogs & Social Media

With blogging and social media, you have so many channels at your disposal. In order to effectively market your app, you will need a blog. Why? Because your prospective customers will be interested and it’s amazing for SEO (search engine optimisation). Talk about your app, talk about how you made it, post videos and screenshots of the development and work expeditiously to engage your fans and followers. Develop a mantra or manifesto that enables people to connect emotionally with your project and use all the social media channels like Facebook and Twitter that are at your disposal. A good, well thought out social media and content strategy will work hard to engage users and cut through meaningless competitive noise.

4.) Design A Press Release

You cannot push water uphill. This is what I was told in relation to marketing. So in other words, if you suck, your ideas sucks and everyone thinks you generally suck, your app is doomed and using blogs and social media is just a waste of time. Think about your project in great detail and identify what is likely to engage your customers. Understand the difference between a feature and a benefit and convey the latter to your customers. Be absolutely meticulous and make every word count. Once you’re happy you can send it to local and national press and online publications.

5.) App Release Marketing & ASO (App Store Optimisation)

If you’re developing a paid app for iOS and looking to break into the top 25 free paid apps in the charts, you’re going to need to hit about 40k downloads per day. That’s some serious traction and few developers reach this level of success. Apple considers the number of installs your app receives and the first few days post-launch are absolutely critical to success. Most apps and games that make money, tend to make lots very quickly before sales fade out into the long-tail. You must be ready to capitalise on that early buzz and make sure you’ve done your keyword analysis for the app store. The latter is essential in terms of discovery once your app is live. There are a whole bunch of assets required before you launch your app such as screenshots, app icons and descriptions so it’s best to have these ready well in advance of your planned app submission date.

So we’ve covered 5 tips in terms of how to successfully market your app. The problem is that developers tend to be focused on the technical elements of the project. Making features work better often takes priority and this can be detrimental to marketing and the overall success of the project. Make sure you have an even balance in both and dont discredit one for the other. Marketing needs technical development and vice versa – it’s a wholly symbiotic relationship and requires bags of mutual respect. Some other tips we havent had time to cover in detail include the creation of a newsletter and mailing list and using PPC (Pay-Per-Click) online marketing to drive traffic at your website and landing page.

The post How To Market Your Mobile App: Top 5 Tips appeared first on Waracle.

The figures could indicate that Samsung is now the biggest player in the smartphone market. The Korean firm accounted for roughly 31% of smartphone sales with Apple making up an 18% share of the market in second position. This is a huge step-change from when the two rivals were virtually on a level standing in terms of global smartphone sales for the same quarter in 2012. This trend only looks set to continue with the hotly anticipated launch of the Samsung Galaxy S4 which runs the Android OS. This should enable Android to continue to widen the gap and strengthen its foothold as market leader, in a global market increasingly driven by sales of web enabled mobile devices.

It appears that many Apple evangelists may be holding off on purchasing an iPhone 5, in favour of waiting for a new model. Apple is poised to launch a low-cost smartphone specifically designed to tap into the mass-market; a strategic move that could enable them to encroach on Google’s continuing dominance and growing market share. There are a huge number of Android devices today, aimed at a non-premium end of the market that Apple need to seriously consider. In 2007 Apple blazed a trail with the iPhone. In 2013 the trailblazing innovation appears to be coming from Google with the imminent launch of Google Glass and the much hyped self-driving car. In terms of dominance in the mobile OS market, Google is the main player with the biggest share.

The market is also being driven by low-cost smartphone offerings from the Far east including Chinese manufacturers Huawei and ZTE. It’s sales of smartphones and feature-phones in the Far East that are representing the bulk of the numbers. In Q1 of 2013, sales of smartphones in China accounted for a whopping 25.7% of the global total. Whilst Apple still has a strong grip on premium price, high-end devices; it’s innovation in new markets that will dictate future success. With wearable tech and self-driving cars set to provide the next technological frontier, the race for supremacy will be fascinating.

However these figures don’t consider one highly fundamental metric – the revenue and margins accrued by each brand. By displaying marketshare we can’t actually see who’s making the most cash. History dictates it’s Apple that pack the killer profit margins, with Samsung practically giving away devices to gain market share. But whilst Apple’s pricing strategy has proved incredibly profitable, consumers are now more demanding of the smartphone technology, and the innovation gap is closing. Second generation smartphone owners are now purchasing a new device based on apps they already use like WhatsApp, Angry Birds etc. The fact is that Google Android can deliver on these apps at a vastly more affordable price-point and consumers no longer have to pay a premium for that experience and luxury. These figures suggest the balance of power in the global smartphone market between Apple and Google has fundamentally shifted in favour of the latter.

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After all, you should be thinking about the user first right? You want them to have a great experience so that they’ll share it with their friends and tell them to also use the app.

A good product, we’re told, will create its own viral marketing. There are multiple examples of this, from Angry Birds to Draw Something to Instagram. They all created great user experiences and beat out the competition to become legends in the mobile app world. This type of viral spread is sometimes quite slow though, at first at least, and can take a lot of marketing effort from the developer to generate enough traction to really get things moving.

And yet every other week we seem to be hearing about new app success stories through the viral market, so how is this possible?

Well, it could be that so called “dark patterns” are starting to creep into everyday app development.

What are dark patterns?

Well, darkpatterns.org describes them as:

“A Dark Pattern is a type of user interface that has been carefully crafted to trick users into doing things, such as buying insurance with their purchase or signing up for recurring bills.”

We’ve all felt their effects, with, for example, trials that require you to input your payment details and you have to actively opt-out of the subscription (we’re looking at you Netflix).

They are designs that are meant to trick and misdirect users into doing things that they don’t intend to but are beneficial for the business that’s created the design in the first place.

Now, dark patterns are created by those with intent to deceive, so what about creating accidental patterns?

Well, that comes under “UI anti-pattern”, which is a UI that hasn’t been purposely designed to misdirect the user, but through laziness, sloppiness or plain oversight, the user is much more likely to do something that can, say, vastly increase the social footprint of the app by accident.

How would this happen?

Well, many apps these days have a “connect with your contacts” or “invite your friends to use this app” feature, and most of them, when you use this, will let you choose which people you want to send invites to. But some do it the opposite way, where they’ll auto-select all of your contacts first and then you have to unselect the people you don’t want to invite. This can lead to many users inviting all 300 of their contacts to use an app, which can cause an explosion of users of an app in a very short amount of time, but many of these users will not become real active customers.

This spike and crash scenario is becoming more common, which perhaps points to these dark patterns slowly coming into use as developers try to find new ways to attract customers and encourage growth. Remember, growth is good, but too much too soon is going to cause a burn out rather than a proper establishment of a strong user base.

As app developers, it can be tricky to walk that line between wanting success but also wanting to not be a flash in the pan. Natural growth is the best way to make that work, and it may be more effort and more time, but it will be worth it on the other side.

The post The Rise of the “Dark Patterns” in App design appeared first on Waracle.

What creates that spark? Well for apps usually it’s finding a need for something useful that isn’t there, but probably should be. There are a lot of apps out there trying to solve the same problems (travel times, weather etc), but app developers in Iceland have certainly taken the biscuit for the most original app idea we’ve heard of in a while.

Essentially, Iceland has such a small population and long history (320,000) that young people looking to hook up can never be quite sure if the person they are wanting to be with isn’t related to them in some way. Apparently accidental sex with unknown first cousins isn’t that unusual in Iceland.

So what did the Icelandic app dev team do? Made an app that has a direct link to an online registry 720,000 people who were born in the country in the recent-ish past that partners can check before they start removing any clothes.

Their slogan is “Bump the app before you bump in bed” and the app is designed to talk to the same app on another phone and compare the user’s personal data to find out just how related they actually are. Of course, that may not stop them from carrying on, but they at least can’t claim ignorant bliss.

As one user review on the Play store said:

“If I would have had this app last year I probably wouldn’t have gone home with my cousin.”

So, sucks to be them, but the fact remains that the idea is quite ingenious. And it is likely to be an app that is very popular with the younger generations, as there are probably many stories like the one on the Play store.

Like we said at the beginning of the blog, good apps are partially good design, but it always helps to have a solid idea to work off of. So instead of just trying to copy others and make apps that already exist, try to find problems that haven’t been solved yet, or are unique to your country or area. And if that isn’t an option, or you’re really set on an idea that’s already been done, get those planning hats on and work out how you can make your app the one that’s going to define that little piece of appdom, rather than it being a tagalong.

The post Iceland’s “anti-incest” app, a perfect example of the power of good app ideas appeared first on Waracle.

The study involved 1000 respondents in the UK to establish their feelings on which global brand would be best positioned to improve car safety. Perhaps surprisingly, Apple came out top of the poll with a convincing 21% share of the vote. The Google team were close behind with 19.8% share. Interestingly, both of these brands pipped Volve, a brand heralded for their attention to safety features, who achieved a 19.7% share. The results are interesting given that Google and Volvo both have existing interests in self-driving car technology – the future of transportation. To date, Apple has made no formal announcements surrounding the development of self-driving car technology.

Apple has been focused on developing the functionality within the Siri app and it’s integrated driver assisted features. This is designed to improve overall driver safety, but lags behind the progress made by both Google and Volvo. According to insiders at Apple, it’s no secret that the late Steve Jobs had aspirations to disrupt the global automotive industry. To the extent that high profile members of the Apple board have discussed the fact that the idea of an Apple self-driving car has been mooted. It’s perhaps the perception of Apple’s ability to create high quality products that have persuaded consumers they’re capable of improving car safety.

In the future, consumers will expect cars to be more intelligent. It’s not uncommon for people to ‘mod’ their own vehicles with tablet devices. It’s just a matter of time before car manufacturers start integrating the latest technology, as consumer tastes become more sophisticated and the technology becomes more ubiquitous. In essence, this paves the way for tech giants such as Apple and Google to capitalise upon the perception that they are capable of innovating and disrupting the automotive industry, with a particular focus on road safety. It’s interesting that consumers see Apple and Google as the companies most likely to provide the required technology and user experience in the context of road safety.

The post App Developers UK: Would You Drive An Apple Car? appeared first on Waracle.

Apple

Apple was the first firm to bring users a huge range of apps in its App Store, which launched back in 2008. The company paved the way for other manufacturers who quickly launched their own app distribution services. But, even today Apple continues to generate significantly more revenue for its developers than even its biggest competitor, Google Play, which is available on Android devices.

An Apple report reveals that at the beginning of 2013 the App Store generated 40 billion downloads from its 500 million active account users. Almost 20 billion of these downloads occurred during 2012 alone, with a staggering two million app downloads in December last year, making it the best month in the market place’s history.

According to Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of internet and software services, over $7bn has been paid out to iOS developers over the last five years. Flurry Analytics research firm predicts that over the next 12 months the rate at which apps are downloaded will continue to soar.

Google

Google’s Android platform is Apple’s biggest competitor, offering smartphone users the choice of more than 700,000 apps in the Google Play store. Last year the OS saw downloads jump by half a billion in less than one month, raising its total number of downloads to over 20 billion.

This huge boost over such a short space of time is largely down to the increasing number of Android device activations, an area will continue to grow with the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S4 now on the market.

However, apps developed for Android devices are created in a very different way to those for the iPhone, and this is due to the open-source nature of Google’s OS. This means various iterations of the software can be adapted across many different devices, which makes it difficult for app developers who then have to program their creations to work on a vast array of hardware configurations and software iterations.

Google may well have a higher instillation rate of apps compared to Apple, but the App Store generates significantly more revenue than Google Play.

BlackBerry/ Windows Phone

Both BlackBerry and Windows Phone have never been highly regarded for their selection of apps and have had somewhat of a lacklustre start when it comes to getting big names on board.

For BlackBerry it was only after its BB10 software was released earlier this year that a greater number of developers started to optimise its creations for the mobile platform. But, similarly to Windows Phone the Canadian manufacturer still has a long way to go before it is able to offer anywhere near the level of apps now available on Android and iOS.

Even when BlackBerry was top of its game a few years ago Apple still managed to record 20 times the number of app downloads. This is down to a number of reasons, including that developers continue to hit problems when trying to optimise their software to work on the OS, and those who do manage to do so price their apps much higher than counterparts on rival platforms.

Apps make cash

To provide a clearer understanding of the number of apps being downloaded research firm Xyologic has recently released a report highlighting the number of app downloads that took place in March 2013…

Of course many of these apps will be free to download, so what financial benefits do they have? Well it’s all about in-app purchases which means that once you’ve downloaded an app you’ll be presented with lots of extras which you can buy to enhance your game, such as additional lives.

Just because an app is free it doesn’t mean that it won’t end up costing you, and unless you disable in-app purchases via your handset’s setting menu the likelihood of you giving into temptation is very high indeed.

Of course there’s a raft of other apps available that are there to help enhance our smartphone experience and assist us in our everyday lives, so there is no doubt that having a wider selection makes for a stronger OS.

Over the last few years smartphone manufacturers and app developers alike have started to recognise the huge potential to earn money by way of these apps. And, as smartphones and ultimately app stores continue to grow to meet the wants and needs of the consumer, it seems that the revenue the app world generates will only continue to soar.

Written by Sarah Hazelwood of Dialaphone, a great place to find all the best mobile phones.

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Apple Developing Budget iPhone

The supply source has been proved correct with Apple rumours in the past, the company broke details of the parts being used to develop the Apple iPhone 5 prior to it’s launch. Based on rumours that are currently circulating, the Apple budget iPhone will be designed as a hybrid between the iPhone 5, the iPod classic and the iPod touch. Many reports are suggesting that in order to drive down device production costs, Apple are intending to launch a budget iPhone made from plastic and cheaper materials than the iPhone 5. Whilst this will make the budget iPhone cheaper to develop, it will also mean it’s less durable.

How Much Will The Apple Budget iPhone Cost?

In order to appeal to mass-market mobile consumers, Apple will need to position the budget iPhone as a cheaper product than it’s existing ranges. This may sound blatantly obvious, but less expensive does not necessarily mean cheap and poor quality. Rather than being a device targeted at the bottom end of the market, Apple will attempt to create a balance between price and the quality of the product offering.

This is a smart move by Apple. Whilst focusing on high-end consumer products has worked amazingly well for Apple, Google has made considerable ground in appealing to the mass-market mobile audience. Fundamentally it’s the sale of apps and the quality of the app store ecosystem that often sway users to adopt Apple. Whilst the new budget iPhone may be inferior in terms of the quality of the hardware, when compared to the iPhone 5, it still has access to the same great apps and software to make the device as engaging experience as possible. The development of the budget iPhone could be a genuine threat to Google’s authority when it comes to selling mid-range, mass-market mobile consumer products.

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This represents an impressive landmark for Apple. As of March 2012 there had been 25 billion app store downloads. Since that time, the company has successfully doubled the number of apps that have been downloaded. In it’s first year of operation alone, the app store racked up an impressive 1.5 billion downloads.

So in addition to this grand milestone, Apple has released the top 25 paid apps of all time. It’s really not surprising to see some of the contenders, the ones you’d really expect to see. The list of the top 25 paid apps is dominated not surprisingly by games. Interestingly, games were less prominent within the top free apps. In the paid category, games occupied 19 of the 25 spots.

The Top 25 All-Time Paid iPhone Apps

1. Angry Birds
2. Fruit Ninja
3. Doodle Jump
4. Cut the Rope
5. Angry Birds Seasons
6. WhatsApp Messenger
7. Camera+
8. Words With Friends
9. Tiny Wings
10. Angry Birds Space
11. Pocket God
12. Plants vs. Zombies
13. The Game of Life Classic Edition
14. The Moron Test
15. Where’s My Water?
16. Draw Something
17. Monopoly
18. Angry Birds Star Wars
19. MotionX GPS Drive
20. Skee-Ball
21. Scrabble
22. UNO
23. Minecraft – Pocket Edition
24. Color Splash
25. The Sims 3

If you’re an iPhone owner, you can see how the list stacks up against your own. Do you agree with the apps that are in the top 25? Are they worthy winners? Are there apps that deserve to be in there but aren’t for whatever reason? We’d love to hear your suggestions and comments. So congratulations to the app and game developers who managed to make the list. Keep up the good work!

The post App Developers UK: Exploring The Top 25 Paid iPhone Apps Of All Time appeared first on Waracle.

That, however, seems to have changed with Q1 of 2013.

IDC have just released their Q1 mobile device shipments numbers and for the first time ever, smartphones now outnumber their simpler feature or dumbphone cousins. The global phone market consists of 418.6 million devices and now 216.2 million of them were smartphones. For those who don’t like maths, that’s 51.6% of the global market now being a smartphone.

Good news for any company wanting to develop an app.

It means that smartphones are now the official leader in mobile technology and there will be more and more opportunities for companies developing apps, especially moving in the developing markets of India, Oceana and, of course China.

IDC’s numbers also show up something that we’ve sort of known already, but to see it in black and white really lets the numbers hit home.

Namely, Samsung are the undisputed juggernauts of the mobile manufacturing industry when it comes to number of handsets shipped. In Q1 alone Samsung shifted 71 million phones, which is than a quarter of the entire mobile market’s numbers (32%). The closest competitor is, predictably, Apple, but they only shipped 37 million handsets in the same quarter, just over half the number Samsung moved. The rest of the named market is made up of other Android manufacturers such as LG, who have seen a massive spurt of growth recently, largely thanks to the Nexus 4 and their clear targeting of different market tiers with the Optimus G being the flagship and the lower priced L series.

2013 Q1 Smartphone Numbers:

It’s perhaps a little tragic that Nokia and Blackberry are now so far behind in sales that they haven’t managed to break out of being caught in the “others” category.

What’s notable about this, aside from the mobile industry still being very much a 2 horse race for manufacturers, is the apparent domination of Android right now. Only Apple currently has the clout to stop Google’s little green robot from holding every position on this table in some way or another, and it seems like nothing can stop Samsung at the moment. And they’ve not even properly released the S IV yet.

That said though, if Samsung only concentrated on selling premium products like Apple do, this table would likely look a lot different. Samsung’s power is the ability to sell multiple phones to literally every level and every location of the mobile market. It will be interesting to see how 2013 progresses in terms of numbers. After all, Google’s I/O is up in a few weeks and Apple have announced that they have “big things” coming in Q4 of this year.

As always, it’s an exciting time to be involved in the mobile industry, and if your company is wanting to develop an app, you can be sure that your app will be reaching an ever wider audience.

So why not talk to us today and see what Waracle can do for you?

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