Use iPhone to spark your mobile initiative

Author: John Y Chen

Most firms still think in terms of low resolution and in general low-capability devices when designing applications for mobile platform and for good reason because most cell phones fall into that category. iPhone is a game changer in that this is a fully functional computer with graphics capabilities that dwarfs even some full-sized PCs on sale today. Your basic $500 dell computer using Intel’s graphics chipset renders complex graphics slower than an iPhone. Savvy developers have latched on to this fact and took full advantage of the capability to give iPhone users experiences that’s far beyond what’s imaginable even one year ago and the level of innovation is still accelerating.

With over 17 million iPhone installed base as of Apple’s first fiscal quarter in 2009 and with an additional 13 million iTouch devices that are capable of running iPhone’s software, developing for mobile platform has never been so profitable since the beginning of cell phones. With the App Store distribution model any app can be seen by millions of potential users who can download and pay for it instantly. Developers have responded by writing 25000 apps in the 9 months since the App Store opened. And to put it in perspective, six month after App Store launch there were 10000 apps so in the last 3 months where data is available the number of apps increased 150%.

At the heart of iPhone is the operating system which is basically OS X Leopard, a system that powers every new Apple computer today. And this is a primary reason why iPhone’s success will not be easily duplicated because writing Operating System is a non-trivial task, just ask Microsoft how long it took Vista to finish and or ask Palm how they are doing in their latest version of Palm OS. Both OS’s were set back by delays after delays and when they finally shipped got less than stellar reception. This piece of software and its Software Developers Kit (SDK) allow developers to do fantastic things that turn any mundane task into interesting ones.

The other reason that iPhone is successful is their users. Contrary to competitors who claims that Apple levies a “tax” because their users pay a premium relative to users who buy PC counterparts, iPhone users understands and expects products that go above and beyond their call of duty in terms of design and functionality. Case in point is an app called “Where to?” which provides a categorized directory for searching. At first the designers of the app had used a list to show the categories but they wanted to jazz up the interface and making it more enticing so they came up with a 3 dimensional rotary image. As a result the phone was very well received and became one of the most popular apps.

Where to interface.

So how do you make a successful iPhone app that’ll make your company look good and generate interest among your subscribers? While you don’t need to throw out all your WAP templates you do need to think in terms of what is the best user experience irrespective of the limitation you have set for yourself prior the arrival of iPhone. Hire a good graphics/interface designer let him or her dream up ideas with customer’s needs in mind. iPhone’s SDK provides a rich set of canned UI’s that can quickly give any app a polished look but to really catch the user’s attention you’ll need to go beyond that. It could be as easy as adding a page turning animation for a book reader such as “Classics” app has done.

In additional to aesthetics iPhone also provides host of other features that give user a richer experience. For instance, its built-in accelerometer allow the users to use physical action such as shaking it to get a random result. An example of this would be an application that choose a new place to visit or eat whenever you shake your iPhone. Built-in GPS is yet another feature that can be integrated into your app to provide location relevance in everything you do. In the above example, you could filter down the list of places to go by proximity. An example would be “Twiddler” that uses shaking action together with GPS to find the best activity for your mood.

In iPhone 3.0, scheduled to be released in June 2009, even more features are added to allow more timely interaction between application developer and its users. A new notification framework allows users to be notified instantly when something relevant has occurred. And unlike SMS which only delivers text, rich content in the form of images, sounds or even movies can be delivered without user incurring additional cost.

The arrival of iPhone has upped the ante on mobile software development. Developers are no longer bounded by limitations of the mobile devices rather the challenge is the ability of the developers to throw away their preconceptions and deliver to their users what they meant to deliver in the first place.