There was a time when Microsoft and Windows ruled the roost; it’s not so any longer. With many other players in the fray, the once ubiquitous Windows has now been pushed aside unceremoniously by upstarts like Android and the iPhone OS; and going by the numbers on a recent survey carried out by Zokem’s US
Mobile Life panel, the iPhone is the indisputable king of the mobile OS ring.
• iPhone owners are the most loyal to their brand, with 73 percent saying they would stick to Apple no matter what, with Android lagging behind with only 40 percent loyalty. Also, many who don’t currently own an iPhone, say that their next phone will be from the Apple stables.
• Rating loyalty for the Android is a trickier proposition because the OS is available for use on many mobile brands. So its collective sales may be much higher than that of the iPhone OS, especially with the phenomenal success that Froyo (Android version 2.2) is experiencing. Also, according to Zokem, 89 percent of Android users are likely to stick with the same brand of mobile phone, beating the iPhone which has only 85 percent.
• Another once-mighty player in this business, RIM and their BlackBerry OS, rate a poor 30 percent in terms of loyalty. Perhaps this is because of all the new entrants into the field and the low rate of innovation achieved by RIM.
• Windows Mobile and the Palm Pre OS rate very lowly with loyalty scores of 10, but maybe this state of affairs will turn around, what with the prediction that Windows 7 is going to be fastest growing platform for smartphones in 2011. Only time will tell of course, if this OS enjoys the same success in the mobile world as it does in the world of computers.
However, the competition in the mobile industry is fierce – BlackBerry has come out with many new models in the last year and are constantly updating and tweaking their software and OS; the iPhone is looking to stay ahead of the curve by offering multi-tasking and many more options on the mobile, and best of all, Android is being used to simulate a virtual desktop computer when combined with a keyboard and mouse – it has
become powerful enough to act as the CPU of a desktop device (check out Motorola’s Atrix if you’re curious).
So what does the mobile OS industry hold in store? From the looks of what has happened so far, we can see that the main players will be Apple, Google, RIM and Microsoft. And since most mobile platforms offer similar features barring a few minor differences, popularity and sales will boil down to brand loyalty and carrier efficiency (in countries like the US where most smartphones are tied in to a two-year contract with a service provider) – if you’re satisfied with your brand and your carrier, you’re not going to want to switch loyalties unless the competition has something really out of the world to offer.
This guest post is contributed by April Davis, she writes on the topic of Accredited Degrees Online. She welcomes your questions and comments at her email id: april.davis83(@)gmail(.)com.
It’s that time of year. Sure, there will be Turkey and family, but that’s not what I’m talking about. This is the time of year when people begin to think about Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving on which stores all over America blow out products at often jaw-dropping prices. Black Friday is an excuse to participate in a sleep-deprived shopping frenzy while crossing a lot of things off your Christmas shopping list. It can also be frustrating if you don’t plan well.
I always check out all the ads and see what I want and plan all my stops around that, but you still have to put up with crowds and hope to get in on the deals before they’re sold out. The app pictured above is called Black FlyDay. It looks like it could help streamline probably the most hectic shopping outing you’ll have all year, but I haven’t tried it myself, so I’ll just share the details from the press release below.
From The Press Release
Iconosys, Inc., developer of safety enhancing mobile apps for the Smartphone that help curb Distracted Driving (Texting While Driving/Mobile Phone Talking While Driving) and Cyberbullying, among other dangerous societal problems, has created Black Flyday™ so that shoppers can expeditiously keep up with their friends and activities on the most coveted shopping day of the year. Black Flyday™ is free of charge through Black Friday (it does expire afterwards), or can be purchased for $9.99 thereafter for full lifetime coverage. The app can also be used to send hot deal alerts to your Facebook friends and Team members all year long.
“Black Friday is by all accounts the biggest (and most important) shopping day of the year. As fun as it is, there is always someone who gets a deal that the rest of us wish we had the opportunity to get in on,” said Wayne Irving II, inventor of Black Flyday™ and Iconosys CEO and Founder.
Perfect for our technologically advanced, but time sensitive, consumer marketplace, Iconosys now unveils its new Android app that enables shoppers and bargain hunters to know the exact whereabouts of those “Black Friday” loss leaders and special deals within a certain radius and, most importantly, in real time. Black Flyday™ will serve the users by helping them maintain communication with their Facebook friends and deal hunting team members, while at the same time providing them with a comprehensive and global view setting of the particular shopping deals within a pre-set perimeter.
Some Useful Features
• Black Flyday™ can locate the hottest loss-leading deals within a certain radius with a touch of a single button on the user’s Smartphone for ultimate convenience.
• The Black Flyday™ App is available in English as well as Spanish.
• Teams of shoppers can collaborate to set this app up together, as a GPS-enabled, real-time bulletin board to share locations and deals that their other team members may be sad to have missed otherwise.
• Facebook friends are integrated into the application, so the users, if they wish, can share the deals they are “buzzing” about in real-time and with a potentially global reach.
• A “deal scroller” scrolls all deals within your desired radius or friend network that may have otherwise been missed.
• By clicking on the map at the location of other “Black Fly’ers,” you can see the deals they are buzzing about and which are presented for you to take advantage of.
• The App stores the historical posts that the user’s teammates and/or Facebook friends previously posted, and allows them to search thru those posts for specific items and deals that may be of interest.
Black Flyday™ is available for download on Saturday November 13, from the Android Market, Iconosys.com, BlackFlyday.com, Payloadz.com. Don’t wait until the last second, though. It looks like there’s added benefit to collaborating with friends using the app, so if you’re going to try it out, set it up early and be prepared. I don’t have an Android phone, so if you try it out, come back and let us all know your thoughts.
A couple weeks ago, Robert Scoble tweeted out a link to an interview with a couple entrepreneurs who did something I haven’t seen others perfect. They came up with a way to let anyone create an iPhone application without developer knowledge or a lot of cash. Of course, I was thrilled about the idea and a little apprehensive about the results, but I just had to try it out.
Their company, Genwi, recently launched iSites.us, a site that enables people to easily create an application for the iPhone and Android platforms with little effort, and little cash outlay. The whole process involves $25 (or $99 – see below), some image preparation, and about 10 to 15 minutes of your day. This is followed by a week or two of waiting, depending on demand.
Preparation and Planning
iSites offers a couple different pricing options. The more expensive option gives you full control over advertising, allowing you to have your own ads embedded in your app or none at all. The cheaper option (the one I chose) is $25 and includes their own ads in your application. The ads really aren’t in the way, so for me, this was not a problem. If you want your own ads, you’ll need to make sure you have an account with the ad network you choose, but either way, give it a little thought and determine what will work best for you and your budget.
Another thing you need to worry about is your brand management. Before starting, think about your application’s title and description as well as keywords. Additionally, there are a few images you have to have ahead of time. You need an icon, an iTunes display image, a banner and a splash screen image (see the iSites Learn More page to get a peek of the image size and file type requirements. It’s best to have these images all ready to go to streamline the creation process.
Finally, you should grab the category feeds for your blog or site so you can have categories in place when the app launches. The more frequent your content, the more categories you may want to have set up.
Creation and Approval
The creation process and completed application is better seen than described, so I’ve included a video showing the process. For the most part, it’s about 10 minutes of filling out web forms and uploading some images. After that, it’s just a game of waiting for an email announcing the completion of your application.
There may be the rare case in which your application is not approved. In this case, you’ll need to revise text, images, title, etc until it’s approved. When the whole process has been completed, you can just search for your app and download it.
Completed Application
Once completed, the application doesn’t have a lot of features, but it does have some of the important ones. When you start up the application, the first thing you see is the splash screen. I saw at least one other company creating iPhone apps while inserting their own brand here, so I really liked that iSites helps you insert your own branded spash screen here. The app then loads up to the Home screen which shows a listing of your recent posts with thumbnails where available. Each post can be selected to view and read. While reading a post, you can jump up or down a post, favorite it or share it via email, Facebook, or Twitter. The sharing options are a must for an application like this.
Over all, the application is really smooth and brings my blog to a whole new audience pretty seamlessly. Better still is the ability to manage it from the iSites web site control panel. From the control panel, I can change my images, description, etc. Additionally, I can add or change categories and other feeds. This really does feel like a pretty decent blend of control and simplicity.
Application Analytics
I love numbers. More than just any numbers, I love numbers that tell me people are reading what I write. Even before purchasing my app creation, I was a little excited about the prospect of seeing how many people downloaded my iJoeTech iPhone application. Once the app has hit the app store, you have analytics at your fingertips via the iSites web site control panel.
Amazingly, I had a nice bunch of downloads of my app before I even knew it was in the App Store. Pretty exciting. While it’s fun to watch, the numbers are important as a barometer for how your keywords and other criteria work to get someone to look at your app and then to download it.
What’s Missing?
I’m not sure if the analytics pages cover just the iPhone downloads or both iPhone and Android. I’d love to see analytics for both on the same graph. It would also be nice if the application had an option to open a post in Safari. Most of all, though, I’d love if there was some way for the application to hook into my WordPress and let the user submit a comment right from the app.
Conclusions
I’ve been wanting to create a JoeTech.com app for the iPhone for a while now and although I had seen other offerings, this one resonated with my mostly due to the ease of setup and the low cost. It truly is pretty amazing that I can give JoeTech.com readers a customized iPhone application so easily for only $25. I think every blog should have such an app and iSites.us is the place to get it done.
