Friday, 10 May 2013

Are Your Mobile Apps Really Meeting Your Enterprise's Software Quality Standards?

With more and more users switching from their PCs to smart handhelds, it is inevitable for businesses to pick fresh and innovative ideas to suit the latest trends. As surveys highlight, a constant surge is noted in the number of people using mobile devices to access the web, obtain information, and stay connected with not just their loved ones but increasingly with colleagues, business systems and cloud in recent days.

So, launching robust mobile apps to lure the huge user base that appeals to both Android and iOS camps as well as RIM/Blackberry, Windows Mobile users, is a must today. Based on the needs and objectives of a business, an organization has the opportunity to develop smart business-to-consumer (B2C) centric apps, along with apps for business-to-employee (B2E), business-to-business (B2B) or government-to-citizen needs.

Regardless of the target audience, it should be kept in mind that the enterprise mobile app offers unique features while meeting the latest industry trends, because of the fact that mobile platform vendors are exploring all ideas to make their user experience stand out and needless to say, your app isn’t going to find a place in app stores unless it meet the standards.

While planning and developing an interactive mobile application, here are our suggestions to consider some facts to ensure that it meets the software quality standards of your enterprise over a longer period of time.

Deciding the Right Mobile Platform A modern user has options to choose from several front-runners in cross-platforms mobile development tools like RhoMobile, Appcelerator, PhoneGap, Sencha Touch and MoSync. No matter which platform you choose to develop your app, they all especially bank on two aspects: Apps and User Interface (UI). And the one that takes the front seat is UI, since user experience starts with a great visual appeal to lure potential customers. So, it would be inevitable to say that major app developers mostly bank on great user interface development first.

Robust Mobile App Development
The mobile device users have the liberty of choosing a wide range of free and paid apps. High quality apps with advanced features and eye-catchy designs always have the opportunity to grab the attention As the enterprise app will represent your company, it becomes more important to choose the design and features that keep the users engaged and covert them into loyal customers. Along with launching the app, you must upgrade it on a regular basis to encourage the users to access the app frequently. You must remember that the user experience will have a direct impact on the growth, revenues and profits of your business.

Seamless Integration with the Back-end Systems The popularity of a mobile app often depends on its seamless integration with the back-end database and systems. The integration also decides how information and content are delivered to the user. Your budget may not allow you to set up independent back-end databases and services for the mobile apps. So you must evaluate and modify your existing back-end system to work in sync with several mobile apps. It is also important to develop the right programmable interfaces that facilitate communication between the app and back-end systems. Also, the integration must be tested regularly to ensure a better and improved user experience.

Addressing the Privacy and Security Issues The constant increase in the number of incidents related to mobile device frauds and scams has affected the popularity of mobile apps negatively. Many users, nowadays, are skeptical about installing new apps launched by comparatively unknown developers. Most of the operating systems are designed with advanced security features. Also, each app has to go through a comprehensive screening and reviewing process by the mobile platform owners. But you must address the privacy and security concerns of the users properly to gain the trust of the users, and convince them to download and access your mobile enterprise app regularly.

Overcoming Time and Budgetary Constraints In comparison to traditional desktop applications, the mobile apps are developed within a shorter span of time. The current competition suggests developing the apps in a planned budget along with the stipulated time, so as to a constant update on apps helps you to keep ahead of the competition. It is also a good idea to manage the project through a manager who can manage software life cycles through dynamic and agile project management techniques.

If your company has prior experience in developing enterprise apps, the new mobile app can be developed without putting any extra time. But you must test each feature and specification of the app to ensure that it meets the high software quality standards of your organization.

We provide mobile app development services. To know how our mobile application development expertise can help your business, please visit Mindfire Solutions.

Friday, 3 May 2013

Android, The World's Most Popular Mobile platform

According to science fiction, Android is defined as a robot with human appearance. Android, Inc. was founded in 2003 as a mobile technology development company aimed at leveraging advanced smart features of mobile phones and catering the diversified customers needs. Google acquired the company two years later as part of its initial foray into the mobile technology market. Android was rewarded with market-beating growth; it has a broad selection of mobile phones like ipads, tablets and smartphones.

Android devices are much smarter and very popular because of its functionalities, multitasking, faster and easy browsing, cloud synchronization and easy ways to connect to Google maps. Managing photos easily by one click and with no time can share it with friends and family. It helps to connect to social networking channels like Google Talk, Google HangOut, Facebook, twitter etc. Email can be sent and received from every corner of the world without much difficulty. One can get the exact location of any place they move in to from Google maps with latitude, longitude and street view detail information, thanks to the advanced world of latest technology. Android phones support 20 languages, can recognize your voice to search or type emails for you, this states that it works like a robot for you. Widgets help to interact with your favorite apps right from your Home screen. You can add and resize your calendar, email feed, important Google+ posts and more, so the important stuff in your life is right there within reach. One can share information by the beam of the phone, it happens with the power Near Field Communication. It comes with the latest cool features which makes it all the more demanding with the Face lock feature which is a facial recognition technology by which your android device can open with a smile.

Android is the world's most widely used smart phone OS which has a large community of expert Android developers writing applications for it in Java. It has open source code for community-driven projects, which has added new features for advanced users or bring Android to devices which were officially released running other operating systems. Google has developed mobile OS that works with many Smartphones like Motorola Droid, Nexus etc. Android is the hot technology as its openness nature helps programmers to modify and customize the OS for each phone. Android smartphones are cheaper to produce and have varied graphical user interfaces.

Android is number one Smartphone operating system having maximum 91.1% of all smartphone shipments in 2012. It has reached the maximum of triple-digit growth for the year. Samsung being the biggest contributor to Android's success, having 42.0% of all Android smartphone shipments during the year. Google Play helps you build visibility and engagement across your apps and brand value. It gives websites higher placement in weekly top charts and give higher ranks for the best apps. Google says Android will ship with a set of core applications including an email client, SMS program, calendar, maps, browser, contacts and more. It has an incredible statistics, Android sees 700,000 activations daily, 350,000 devices activated every single day and accounts for nearly 60% of all first-time smartphone purchases, for the entire market. Over 250 million Android devices is in use around the world. Android has progressed as a viable threat to Apple. It has been entering to other digital devices like refrigerators, cars and television sets because of its robotic nature. Google is pushing Android as a generic solution to any platform that needs a lightweight operating system, positioning it to replace low-end Linux devices. Google also overhauled the browser, drastically improving performance. This was the first version of Android that aimed to be able to display the desktop version of a site in addition to the mobile version, finally allowing smartphone users to browse the whole web with a tough on their mobile screens. Indeed an interesting and easy invention with Android which subsequently led to the current day mad race of android app development.

We provide mobile app development services. If you would like to know what makes us expert android app developers, please visit Mindfire Solutions.