Anyone Make A Mobile App In Five Easy Steps

Official press release:

Time, and cost to get an app to market gets faster and more affordable

Golden Gekko, a leading developer and technology provider for cross platform mobile applications, today unveils its new service Tino, that will allow anyone to build a mobile application and bring it to market much faster, and more affordably, than has previously been seen in the mobile app marketplace.

To build a mobile app, a customer can visit www.tinomobile.com and follow five easy steps to build an application of choice. Pricing for Golden Gekko’s Tino starts at as low as £100 which is significantly cheaper than the average £5-10,000 price tag of comparable applications.,
“We are offering Tino as a low cost entry to the mobile app marketplace, and can provide anyone with the tools to build a mobile app, with a process that takes less than an hour,” said Magnus Jern, Golden Gekko’s CEO. “Our Tino customers do not need to be technical experts, as they’ll get an easy step-by-step guide that allows them to self-develop a mobile app on the Web.”

Golden Gekko’s Tino invites everyone to create attractive, powerful mobile applications, that will support 90 per cent of the global mobile handset market,
using any content, external feeds, and rich media. The process is simple, requires no programming, and can be completed in as little as 30. Tino will automatically host and track the number of engagements.

Tino customers will get access to the wealth of experience Golden Gekko has in the mobile applications industry, of serving exciting mobile content on billions of phones worldwide, and developing content for 40 leading global brands including Absolut Vodka, Accenture, Bloomberg, Coca Cola, Disney, European Directories Novartis, Paramount, Perfetti, Sara Lee, Unilever, Universal Pictures and Vodafone.

For more visit http://www.tinomobile.com

NYT says cost of mobile app development going up and Mobile Marketing is the

"What Do All These Phone Apps Do? Mostly Marketing"

NYT had a some very interesting insights on mobile apps this month:

1. The demand for mobile apps is driving up cost from $5.000 8 months ago to about$40.000 or more today
   
2. Advertising apps are evolving from the early novelties like the zippo lighter to more advanced services such as the Kraft iFood Assistant
   
3. No single kind of phone holds a big enough audience to attract many mass-market national brands.
   
4. Utilities that people use repeatedly are the most effective.
   

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/technology/05apps.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss

Gartner's top 10 technologies include the cloud, mobile apps

"10) Mobile Applications. By year-end 2010, 1.2 billion people will carry handsets capable of rich, mobile commerce providing a rich environment for the convergence of mobility and the Web. There are already many thousands of applications for platforms such as the Apple iPhone, in spite of the limited market and need for unique coding. It may take a newer version that is designed to flexibly operate on both full PC and miniature systems, but if the operating system interface and processor architecture were identical, that enabling factor would create a huge turn upwards in mobile application availability."

Comments have ranged from "Mobile apps on the bottom of Gartner's top 10 list" and "Mobile apps going out of fashion" to "Mobile apps the next big thing". To our knowledge this is the first time Mobile applications have made it onto the list and the amount of attention mobile apps are getting this year despite only being used by about 5% of the population in Europe and US is amazing. Imagine what will happen when it hits 25%!

Read the full top 10 list on http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=530109

And read more comments

Advertising to women on the iphone

According to mobile marketing firm Brand in Hand, female iPhone users are the worst demographic in terms of responding to mobile ads on the iPhone. See article by ReadWriteWeb http://ow.ly/15Vlkn

Just like the article suggests we think the solution is to offer great apps that are relevant for women. We also think that advertisers should consider other mobile platforms to target women as approximately 75% of iPhone users are still male (Comscore June 2009).

Return to this blog next week for some great examples of mobile applications targeted towards women!

Tech Media Invest 2009

We presented at the Tech Media Invest 2009 today but also thought we should share some of the insights from the conference. A lot of the discussions were around mobile applications even though Golden Gekko was the only pure mobile development company present. See http://www.e-unlimited.com/events/view.aspx?events_pages_id=1 for more information about the conference.

1. Mobile platform choice is difficult
3-6 months ago everyone was going for the iPhone as the primary platform and then expended to other platforms. More recently developers have started to question the impact of iPhone apps versus other platforms due to increasing competition.

2. iTunes appstore storefront has become a barrier
The difficulty for customers to find the apps they want / relevant apps on iTunes appstore is becoming a barrier. Despite this Apple has reached over 2 Bn downloads so question is whether this is a consumer or publisher issue? We think that it is currently mainly an issue for publishers but that it will become a limited factor for increased consumer activity in the coming months.

3. Openness is key
Media, developers and investors all believe that openness will win. This is somewhat strange considering that
a) The success of the iPhone is much thanks to the fact that it is not an open platform and continues to get the most media attention
b) Android is still far behind other platforms such as iPhone and Blackberry
c) Feedback about Symbian open initiative has not been as positive as Android

4. Business models are uncertain
Rupert Murdoch has made it clear that the time of “free” is over. Therefore it would seem that focus should have shifted to premium revenues. Generally this seems to be the case but consensus points to freemium as the golden answer.

5. Mobile Marketing is going from one hit wonders to a strategic marketing channel
Brands such as BMW, Coca Cola, Barclay’s are now moving from one-off campaigns to developing mobile platforms for future growth.

6. Apps and browsers will become seamless but when?
One interesting point that was made is that the browser is getting more and more functionality and integration with the phone but development is slow. Google has repeatedly stated that they believe browsing and not apps is the future of mobile but at the same time they refer to several of their online services as Google Apps despite the fact that they are being delivered through the browser? The difference will become more and more grey.

7. Branded apps are performing amazingly well
Speakers and panel members referred several times to branded apps as the killer mobile advertising service at the moment. iPint, BMW Z4 app, Barclays app, etc.

All in all an interesting day with lots of great new contacts!

What is the cost of developing a mobile app (iPhone, Blackberry, Java, Android, etc)?

At Golden Gekko we often get into the debate with clients and partners about what the cost of a mobile app or game should be and even more so with the iPhone SDK. We know that it is possible for a freelance developer to develop a descent looking iPhone app in a couple of weeks for a minimal budget. At the same time developing a market leading app with great design, usability, content and interaction that doesn't crash is not an easy thing. Therefore it was interesting to read what other people have to say about the cost of implementing a mobile app.
"Although iPhone app development can cost as little as $12.000 a well-designed app can cost anywhere from $50,000 to $150,000, take six to eight weeks to develop, and a couple more weeks more to be approved by Apple"

Read more at:
http://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/05/12/madison-avenue-and-the-app-store/

Now this is still the easy part. Developing an app that works across hundreds or even thousands of devices with different operating systems, screen sizes, navigation input mechanisms and capabilities is a whole different sport. When I worked Vodafone Group a couple of years ago the estimated average cost of developing a mobile game was about 200.000 euro whereof 50% for development and the other 50% porting and testing. Since then life for developer has gotten harder and not easier with more operating systems, screen sizes, touch screens, etc. At the same time budgets for app development have not increased so the only viable solution to deliver great quality apps and games is to make the development process more efficient and this is where Golden Gekko is currently developing all our R&D resources. More to follow...

Friday: Mobile Applications - The Next Big Thing In Mobile Marketing?

Jim Cook at Mobiadnews interviewed Golden Gekko CEO Magnus Jern earlier this week about the mobile application trend. Here's the full article or http://www.mobiadnews.com/?p=3172

Other than giving a great overall overview of mobile applications in marketing the article also highlights the Lynx campaign as a great mobile application making it even more famous!

Brands Love Mobile Apps

Moconews has a great article about how "Brands Love Mobile Apps" but also how there is a risk that the application stores get cluttered with so many apps that it becomes a problem.

http://www.moconews.net/entry/419-Mobile-Applications-A-Hit-With-Brands

This article highlights two trends:
1. The major consumer brands already investing in mobile are now all interested in launching mobile applications, particularly on the iPhone app-stores but also in other places
2. There are already over 10.000 iPhone applications on iTunes and 30.000 applications on Getjar and it is getting more and more difficult to stand out and make your app a hit. Even driving viral video views on Youtube is easier because there are more tools to cross-promote and of course the audience is so much larger.



Over 90% of these applications are however badly designed, full of bugs, not working across most devices and not very relevant or useful which means that there is no abundance of great applications that stand out. Download 10 random applications from the iPhone app-store or Getjar and I can assure you that you will experience this yourself.

The implication is fairly simple. There is an enormous demand for great applications so deliver great applications and you will generate attention, downloads, active users and hopefully meet your objectives!

More about how you deliver great mobile applications tomorrow!