Apps vs. Sites vs. Content - a vendor-agnostic view on building stuff for the mobile web

Apps vs Sites vs Content A vendor-agnostic view on building stu for the mobile web

What’s this all about?“A primer for managers, developers,business owners, architects on the mostlyconfusing world of mobile devices,mobile delivery platforms & the e ortsinvolved in monetizing the stu you’regoing to build or you’re going to spendin the year 2011”

What does that mean?

AgendaBack then and todayMobile PlatformsHow to code for mobile platforms e big decision: What are you building?Making money? e future - Tablet Wars?

Me (Disclaimer)Kai is...an Apple fanboian Adobe fanboisomewhat of a Windows-disliker& interested in “weird” programminglanguages

Back then

MXDU 2003(Sydney, Australia)

How was it back then?J2ME was BIGBuying content was a pain in the neckLots of individual “app stores”Installation and compatibility woesHuge device fragmentation“ e search for the killer app”

Today“ e web is dead” (Wired Magazine)

Variations“Mobile is the new standard”“Don’t design for desktop, design formobile”“...to empower people through greatso ware, any time, any place and on anydevice...” (*) e app revolution??? Really???

What changed it?

SuccessApple believed in an innovative conceptApple had a delivery and paymentsystem right there and ready to useEssentially: Apple was at the right placeat the right time

Mobile Platforms

Apple iOSiPhone 1, 3G, 3GS, 4iPad 1 and 2iPod TouchiOS v1 to v4 are out in the wild, v5 betaBased on OS X Mach kernelApple has and wants to keep full control

Google AndroidVarious device vendors (HTC, Samsung,Motorola, LG etc)Google doesn’t focus on hardwareFragmentationAndroid is Open SourceBased on Linux kernelNetwork operators and device vendorswant full control

Symbian OSConsortium-driven (but really Nokia)4+ ﬂavours: s40, s60, UIQ, MOAPHistory: EPOC (a PDA OS)Free of charge to licenseSome degree of OS fragmentationAlive and kicking

“ eres no chance thatthe iPhone is going to get any signiﬁcant market share. No chance.”

Windows Mobile/PhoneTraditionally various device vendorsPre WP 7: massive fragmentationLack of strategy within MicrosoBest of breed of MSFT technology stackWP 7 prescribes exact hardware specs

OthersPalm webOS (mainly Palm Pre)Nokia Maemo (R.I.P.) / MeeGoLimo FoundationRIM Blackberry OS

Coding for mobile

Lots of options

Native

Common themesIDE (Editor and/or interface builder)CompilerDevice EmulatorQ: How do you (beta-)test?

Coding for iOSFor iOS 2+ XCode and iPhone SDKMac onlyObjective-C (or C) based on CocoaWell-supported but also well-controlledenvironmentCa. 90% iOS 4.x vs 10% iOS 3.x

Objective-C and C librariesCocoa Touch Camera, Accelerometer, Image Picker, Multi-Touch ...Media PDF, Video Player, Quartz, CoreAnimation ...Core Services NET, File Access, SQLite ...Core OS File System, Security, Mach, BSD C libraries

Coding for AndroidJava - but there’s no JVM: Dalvik VMAndroid SDK, usually in EclipseSDK per sub-release (usually)Variety of APIs, can become tricky dueto device and hardware fragmentationand OS versions/API levels in the wild

Coding for SymbianOSMajority: C++, Java or PythonNokia-provided SDKsIssue with OS ﬂavour fragmentationMany di erent hardware proﬁles around

Coding for WP 7Visual Studio 2010 Express for WPExpression Blend for WPC# and VB.NET (the latter not for free)XAML, Silverlight and XNAPromising due to deal with NokiaGoes well with MSFT stack

Application Object (Windows Phone 7 speciﬁc APIs)Silverlight (Presentation and Media) XNA (Game development)Common Base Class Library

Coding for RIMJava and custom APIs (Adobe AIR)Prop. tooling (rather complicated)Non-trivial deployment mechanismsClever move: Android sandbox

HistoryiOS 1 just allowed custom web apps“Make or break” (or jailbreak) e limitations of iOS 1 are what causedAjax-based mobile web apps to becomesuccessful.

Coding mobile JS appsLeverage HTML(5), JS, CSSjqTouch, JQuery Mobile, SenchaTouchVariety of CSS libs to create native look& feelsWebKit - used on all major platformsWebStorage API / LocalStorage APIGeoLocation API / Caching

Cross-Platform

Coding with Flash/AIRBy design cross-platformFlash CS5/5.5 to iOS packager (exporttool)Flash Player 10.x & AIR 2.7 on AndroidAIR is one of the major dev platforms onRIM’s playbook tabletFlex for mobile: v 4.5.1 (just released)

Flash Player on devicesDepending on the device: 10 / 10.1 / 10.2Molehill (3D) will ﬁnally come to mobileGame development!Leveraging lots of existing libs and code

AIR on devicesAIR 2.x: ﬁrst release of AIR for devicesNow at 2.7 -> even on iOSApps install as native apps and can besold through app stores

Recent ExampleFlash-based game engine built on Flixel1 hr to make it workiPad 2 - 20-25 fpsiPhone 4 - 5-7 fpsGoogle Nexus One - 10-12 fps

Recent ExampleFlash-based game engine built on FlixelA er about 6 hrs of optimisationiPad 2 - 30 fpsiPhone 4 - ca. 20 fpsGoogle Nexus One - ca. 20 fps

Coding with TitaniumSimilar idea as Flash PlatformCode in JS, compile to native appSupport for Android and iOS

Coding with PhoneGapBuild app in HTML/CSS/JSiOS, Android, BlackBerry, Palm,SymbianRequires underlying SDKs installed

What to build?

I don’t know!

But here are some ideasMobile presence?Better visibility through app stores?Features?Monetization of your solution by selling?What are your target users?WHERE are your target users?

Content

How to deliver content?Again - need to monetize by selling“things” or maybe a subscription model?Text/Images on websitesPDF documentsInteractive Magazines (for instance viaAdobe’s Digital Publishing suite)

Making money

AppStoresIt’s unlikely that you’re going to becomerich. Not impossible though.General concept:BuildGet into platform’s dev program and getapproval for your appSell under a revenue sharing model

General rulesSome stores have requirement docs forapprovalUnstable apps, links to competition’sstores, objectionable (porn) content,racist and discriminating content areusually not approvedInvestigate the rules before you code!

Some numbersiTunes AppStore2010 - 2.5+ billion turnoverPrediction for 20136+ billion for iTunes AppStore17+ billion for all major platforms

More numbersiTunes AppStore: 340k+ appsNokia Ovi Store: 30k apps (+10k WP7)Android Market: around 200k appsAndroid Market has a huge momentumthough as the platform is growing

App PricingAvg purchase price: US$ 4.03Avg selling price of top 100: US$ 2.1445% of all apps are US$ 0.9919% US$ 1-2just 9% are US$ 7+

Revenue SharingCommon model: 70/30 splitBB AppWorld is di erent - concept ofindividual kiosks: 80/20 but then thekiosk owner also keeps a certain shareInteresting question: What’s the futuregonna be re the revenue sharing?

Pricing and legal stuApple: US$ 0 or US$ 0.99 - US$ 999MSFT: US$ 0 or US$ 0.99 - US$ 499Android: US$ 0 or US$ 0.99 - US$ 200Devs usually hardly have any rightsHaving to agree to overseas legal t&cs

In the Future

e tablet wars of 2011iPad -> iPad2About 35-40 new Android tabletsannounced for 2011RIM Playbook

Android for the masses

What could causeAndroid to fail?

Android #fail?Stupid handset manufacturersEven more stupid network operatorsDevice fragmentationGoogle is actively working on this -there’s a shi towards less openness andmore control with Android

My recommendationTry to leverage your existing skillsDon’t focus on one single platformDo not discard cross-platformdevelopment because “it’s not native”.

at’s it! Finito!Go home and build stu !

Apps vs. Sites vs. Content - a vendor-agnostic view on building stuff for the mobile web

by Kai Koenig on Jul 17, 2011

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Apps vs. Sites vs. Content - a vendor-agnostic view on building stuff for the mobile web — Presentation Transcript