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A Review of the Mobile Market in 2011

Monday, December 5th, 2011

Overall Mobile Trends in 2011

Mobile in 2011 has been very much a case of hurry up and wait. Immature is maybe a better way to put it. The market remains consumer focused. Business’ have largely sat on the sidelines. Mobile software innovation has been somewhat limited, with too many copycat ideas; “I want to build a site like Foursquare”. Games continue to dominate. On the hardware front, things are evolving. Tablets were the most hyped item in 2011. Things have been hit and miss here. Notable misses include: the Blackberry Playbook (great platform but the screen is too small), the various split screen releases, and the lack of 3G on many tablets. The IPad2 and Galaxy stand out as hits. Smartphones have evolved. Releases like the Samsung Infuse with large 4.5″ high resolution screens, have vastly improved the user experience.

To summarise our overall thoughts:

1) Mobile is still a consumer focused market, with social networking etc
2) As in the early days of the Internet, business adoption has been slow.
3) Mobile remains a confusing marketplace; hardware and software/platform wars continue.
4) Key business applications of mobile include improving mobile worker productivity, improved real time decision making, email, inventory/warehouse management, field sales force, asset management.
5) Mobile devices remain physically fragile. Rugged cases and more rugged actual devices will reduce concerns.
6) Overall 2011 usage survey – According to a Guardian survey, 84% of tablet owners play games, ahead of even searching for information (78%), emailing (74%) and reading the news (61%). Tablets are predominantly domestic devices, with 82% of people primarily using their tablets at home, versus 11% who say they are used primarily on the go, and 7% who said at work. 28% of respondents said their tablet is now their primary computer, while 43% said they spend more time using their tablet than they do their desktop or laptop computer. The most popular smartphones apps are games, weather, maps, social networking, music, and news.

Businesses are looking at portions of enterprise apps being mobilized. Much of this is focused on 2012, and a maturing mobile market. B2C enablers will flourish as mobile web continues to gain importance as a channel. B2B will remain challenging.

Mobile GIS, LBS & Map Development Tools in 2011

Adobe have been one of the key development tool providers to get behind the mobile revolution. With their increasing focus on mobile AIR for installed mobile applications, and support for HTML5 for mobile web apps. Adobe are one of the companies leading the mobile charge. Many of the major mapping, spatial and location focused companies have turned their attention to mobile. ESRI have launched a number of mobile products to support their ArcGIS flagship. The free mobile app released to the Apple and Android markets, allows users to leverage ArcGIS online to visualize their spatial data. MapQuest have made some very interesting recent announcements, with a new mobile web release (m.mapquest.com), their MQVibe product (mqvibe.com) and release of their mobile Flash api. They provide a comprehensive array of mobile solutions. In the open source world Openlayers is turning its attention to mobile (http://trac.osgeo.org/openlayers/wiki/mobile). Mobile web tools are proliferating. It will be interesting to to test OpenLayers mobile as an installed application using Phonegap. A number of the newer location based service companies, such as Foursquare and SimpleGeo, have opend their apis. Making it possible, for example, to pass a lat/long or current location, and get back a list of venues nearby.

Mobile Software Trends in 2011

The year started with the dominance of the Apple IOS mobile platform. This maintained the demand for Objective-C developers; the native language of IOS. The steady growth in popularity of devices running the Android platform over the year, has seen more demand for Java mobile apps. Apple have continued to throw their weight around, maintaining their stance on preventing third party plug ins to be included in any IOS browser. Effectively stymieing Adobes Flash Player and Microsoft’s Silverlight. The growth of mobile cross browser solutions has been one of the biggest changes this year. For installed applications, Adobe have put their weight behind mobile Adobe AIR. On the Web HTML5/Javascript seems the emerging favored choice. Indeed at their end of year MAX show, Adobe threw in the towel on Flex and Flash (one can speculate in large part due to the Apple plug-in decision). Pushing HTML5 and mobile Adobe AIR. They even went as far as to buy PhoneGap, a technology to convert a web HTML5 mobile app to one which is installable. Then to open source the product, under the Apache license. We are a long way from seeing the end of PC’s, but should that day come so ends the Flash Player. Some of Adobes end of year decisions, makes one wonder whether they have seen the writing on the wall.

Mobile App Development in 2011 – Many Challenges

For developers there have been both opportunities and challenges. The maturing of HTML5, release of Adobe AIR for mobile, and opening of Android market (considerably reducing the pain of distributing mobile apps) have improved the life of mobile developers. Listing some of the challenges:

1) Project issues – changes in spec/scope creep, incomplete specs, and app complexity,
2) Distribution & update issues – multiple markets (Apple. Android, Blackberry), submission policy too long (particularly Apple’s), painful certificate process (again particularly applicable to Apple), expensive and long distribution.
3) Other issues – security, back-end integration, mobile web is a different beast to PC web must design accordingly (UI/work flow)

How are the Public and Private sectors using Mobiles?

Looking back on our year as a company we have had many mobile application development conversations. Ambitious entrepreneurs have formed at least half of these inquiries. Those with good ideas, and limited budgets, looking to better understand how to make these ideas a reality. We expected more media driven ideas; social media apps for example. Certainly there were plenty, but fewer then we expected. Which was a relief. Our real interest is larger scale enterprise mobile application development. Looking for better ways to improve enterprise efficiency using mobile. Both replacing and extending existing software processes. Long term mobile has the potential to change many of the processes within the enterprise. But, as was the case with the Internet, currently only small steps are being taken. We did notice a trend over the year, with more inquiries from larger enterprises. Many of these conversations were informational. But the trend was encouraging and bodes well for 2012. Key application discussions have been around data collection in the field and linking that to GPS location, dynamic data visualisation (GIS layers, routes, traffic), data editing, local search (what is near me). Below is a list of some of the industries/sectors we were approached by in 2011:

a) Forest service – Looking into use of mobile email and testing for GPS accuracy
b) Political campaigns
c) Engineering
d) Agriculture
e) Facility management
f) Outdoor recreation
g) Medicine – self diagnosis and referral
h) Car dealerships
i) Police & Parking meters officer IT providers
j) Surveying
k) Forest management
l) Pipeline, water, transportation

Reflections on WebMapSolutions 2011 Mobile Business Strategy

Just as an aside from general discussions. We thought readers might be interested in how mobile application development companies like ours fared in 2011.

The PC based Web continues to dominate our activities. We’ve put much emphasis on mobile, since we feel this is where much of application development will be focused. But, as we have indicated above, we have found enterprise adoption slower than expected. From a business perspective our mobile strategy has been as follows:

1) Position the company as a mobile application development company focused on location; GIS, maps and location based services (LBS).
2) Write an very active blog on mobile apps and mobile app development.
3) Publish articles. We have has a number of articles published in leading geo and industry specific magazines, in the US and Europe.
4) Build partnerships with key companies – MapQuest, ESRI, Adobe.
5) Write a plethora of demo apps (with supporting videos for marketing) which show the capabilities of online and offline location based mobile apps.
6) Launch GeoMobile for ArcGIS, a free mobile app into the Apple and Android app stores.
7) Provide free application code.
8) Making available free mobile and development planning guides.

It is still hard to gauge the success of this strategy. Our blog has caused a noticeable uptick in Web traffic. Our Web site traffic has changed from 20 daily visits to over 150. Positioning ourselves as a location focused mobile app development company is in may ways redundant. Since most if not all mobile apps will take advantage of GPS and location. But we have had comments from potential clients that they were looking specifically for mobile location app experts. We have mixed feelings about the effectiveness of the free mobile app. The fact it is free and user configurable maybe problematic. But in each mobile store the mobile app gets a 4 star rating which we take a positive. Its purpose was simply to demonstrate the potential capabilities of a cross platform mobile GIS application. The demos have proven very powerful. Every mobile contract we have signed this year has been a direct result of a demo. Our partnerships we see as long term relations. We are particularly excited about our MapQuest and ESRI partnerships. Article writing we hope helps raises our profile as industry experts in mobile application development. We are now writing regular columns in two high circulation magazines.

With a core group, within the company, who can advise and consult with clients on their mobile strategy. And a network of highly skilled developers. We feel well positioned for what we expect to be a busy 2012.

Mobile GIS Demos – Endless Possibilties

Monday, November 21st, 2011


Custom cross platform ArcGIS mobile application are relatively new, but offer exciting possibilities. Using one application and running it on Apple, Android and Blackberry devices. ESRI have released their own ArcGIS mobile app which allows access to ArcGISOnline. We have been investigating custom ArcGIS mobile solutions which allow users to access existing ArcGIS layers not currently within ArcGISOnline.

Recently WebMapSolutions launched GeoMobile for ArcGIS; a free ArcGIS mobile viewer. The app is highly customizable, and allows analysis and visualization of spatial data in ArcGIS. GeoMobile for ArcGIS includes:

  1. The application reads a config file, hosted on any Web server, allowing users to add their own layers.
  2. Viewer loads dynamic, tiled and feature ArcGIS layers.
  3. Routing Widget included.
  4. Query Widget included
  5. Geocoder Widget included.
  6. Measure Widget included.
  7. Layer Widget included
  8. Overview Widget included
  9. Geolocator included

The following video in the link below shows a demo of GeoMobile for ArcGIS running on the IPad:

IPad GeoMobile for ArcGIS

This new release is available in the Apple and Android stores from these links:

Free Mobile ArcGIS Viewer in Apple Store

Free Mobile ArcGIS Viewer in Android Market

Offline Mobile ArcGIS

Offline GIS is an important mobile app requirement. The ability to store and access spatial data where Wi-Fi is not available. The video in the link below shows an app being used in online and offline mode. You will see both base map tiles and a shapefile stored on the mobile device and loaded in offline mode:

Offline Mobile ArcGIS Demo

Offline Mobile GIS Shapefile Editing

Another important application of mobile ArcGIS is editing. In offline mode this would mean editing shapefiles. The video in the link below shows an offline mobile GIS application which allows both querying of shapefile feature attributes, and the editing of these attributes:

Offline Mobile ArcGIS Shapefile Editing Demo

Online Mobile ArcGIS Editing

How about editing features on a mobile device while online? The video in the link below shows editing feature attributes in a mobile ArcGIS application. It also demonstrates adding new features to the layer:

Online Mobile ArcGIS Editing demo

Free Mobile ArcGIS Apps

Monday, October 10th, 2011


There are increasingly more ArcGIS apps in the various app stores. ESRI have their ArcGIS Mobile viewer in the Apple store. This renders data published to ArcGISOnline. A number of nice tools have been included in the app to allow data interaction. It is available here:

ESRI ArcGIS Mobile Viewer in Apple Store

Our company have also just released a cross platform ArcGIS mobile map viewer to the Apple, Android and BlackBerry app stores. Based on the popular Web based ESRI Flex ArcGIS viewer, it was released as a free download.

We have just updated this initial version. A key addition to this new version is the ability of users to host their own configuration file, which controls the layers loaded by the viewer. Users can now add their own ArcGIS Dynamic, Tiled and Feature layers to the viewer.

Here is a full list of changes:

1. Application now reads a config file, hosted on any Web server, allowing users to add multiple layers.
2. Routing Widget added.
3. Query Widget added.
4. Minimize button added to all widgets.
5. Viewer can now load Feature Layers.
6. Fix for Geocoder Widget.
7. Fixes for Measure Widget.
8. Fixes for Layer Widget

The following video shows a demo of the new version running on the IPad:

GeoMobile for ArcGIS Demo

The app is a free download. At present it is the only cross platform custom ArcGIS viewer in any of the app stores. This new release is available in the Apple and Android stores from these links:

Free Mobile ArcGIS Viewer in Apple Store

Free Mobile ArcGIS Viewer in Android Market

The viewer should give users a feel for the possibilities presented by ArcGIS on mobile devices. The reason for releasing this as a free app is to encourage user feedback; general reactions, things that work well or badly, what else users would like to see.

Let me know your thoughts on these applications, and any other cool free mobile GIS apps. rory@webmapsolutions.com.

GeoSpatial Mobile Development: Flex or HTML5?

Sunday, October 2nd, 2011


I came across two interesting posts today. From James Fee on his excellent Spatially Adjusted blog:

“JavaScript not Flex/Silverlight — Yeah, it isn’t much of a surprise, open source users aren’t big Flex or Silverlight users, but JavaScript HTML5 web apps are everywhere and doing everything Flex/Silverlight can do, but work everywhere …. At this point it is safe to call every Flex/Silverlight location app as legacy as nobody in their right mind would be coding with those tools in 2012.”

and this on the Slideshare Blog:

“Ditching Flash for HTML5 feels like the right choice for us for a number of engineering reasons.

1. The exact same HTML5 documents work on the iPhone / iPad, Android phones/tablets, and modern desktop browsers. This is great from an operations perspective. This saves us from extra storage costs, and maximizes the cache hit ration on our CDN (since a desktop request fills the cache for a mobile request, and vice-versa). It’s also great from a software engineering perspective, because we can put all our energy into supporting one format and making it really great.

2. Documents load 30% faster and are 40% smaller. ‘Nuff said on that front, faster is ALWAYS better.

3. The documents are semantic and accessible. Google can parse it and index the documents, and so can any other bot, scraper, spider, or screen-reader. This means that you can write code that does interesting things with the text on the slideshare pages. You can even copy and paste text from a SlideShare document, something that was always a pain with Flash.”

These types of discussions have been going on since the dawn of the Web. New technologies replacing old. The advent of mobile certainly presents new challenges, and may well alter the landscape. But the end of Flash or Flex has been called wrongly so many times.

Adobe are an innovative company. There are ever more developers moving over to learn and use their Flex and Air products. And frankly, as somebody who has worked with these technologies since their inception, they are just fantastic for building the next generation of Web and mobile apps.

But will the decision by both Apple and now Windows, to not allow plug-ins on their mobile browsers end Flex as we know it? Remember Flex needs the Flash plug-in installed to run in any Web browser. At the moment Flex development continues strongly on the the PC based Web, where the Apple and Windows restrictions do not apply. HTML5 development continues in parallel. But, as many of us continue to believe, if mobile devices do take over from the PC, the mobile Web may well be all about HTML5.

Adobe Air started out life named Apollo. When it was launched, many in the development community could see the thinking behind the release, but never a good place to build Air apps in the PC world. That has all now changed. Air is an installed application, not relying on any browser plug-ins. Mobile Air offers the only cross platform mobile (installed) solution on the market today. No more building mobile apps in 3 different languages or more for each mobile platform. One code base runs on Apple IOS, Android and Blackberry. No need for third party conversions as provided by the likes of PhoneGap for HTML5. Adobe mobile Air apps are both fast and able to interact directly with native code.

Adobe Air and Flex are nearly identical. So looking forward, if Flex becomes less popular due to business decisions made by Apple and Windows; Adobe Air is about to see enormous growth. So maybe there is some truth in those who say its the end of Flex. But its just the beginning of Adobe mobile Air!

GeoSpatial Mobile Developers

Thursday, September 22nd, 2011


As a company, we sometimes wonder who are our competition. Fundamentally we build mobile location based solutions, both mobile GIS and location based services. Turning to Google I tried some searches. A number of variation on a theme so; mobile gis application developers, geo-spatial mobile developers, mobile location based application developers, mobile location services, location cross platform mobile development. To my amazement the searches came back with very few companies. Very strange. It seems an obvious fit; mobile applications which take advantage of, and utilize mobile data.

Is geo-spatial or location based mobile application development just a niche? Maybe most application development companies are focused on general mobile app development? Perhaps its because mobile is so new, that both clients and software development companies are still trying to fit mobile into their overall plan.

Mobile Location Services

The mobile location sector is very fragmented at the moment. On one side we have ESRI, the worlds biggest GIS company. They were slow in entering the Web, they are moving quicker with mobile, but their world remains GIS focused. And that is a niche no doubt. They have yet to broaden their appeal beyond their core, mostly public, GIS community.

Mobile Application Development IPad

Figure 1: ESRI ArcGIS running on the IPad

The location based sector is more dynamic. Its somewhat a bubble at the minute, with tonnes of VC money pouring into some frankly daft ideas. But there are some gems within that world. Like the dot com boom and bust, many will fall but some real innovation will come from this sector. There are huge opportunities to build location based applications, classed as location based services (LBS), to use in marketing, advertising and beyond on mobile devices. At present this sector is narrowly focused on consumers. Broadening solutions to the enterprise offers mouth watering possibilities. Figure 2 below shows a mobile check-in and data collection application which allows field service techs, surveyors, water utility workers, indeed any workers in the field to utilize mobile in their daily work routines.

MapQuest have an interesting offering. They were one of the the earliest companies to put maps on the Web. Initially focused on routing/directions, and traffic, they have broadened their offering to to include local search, marker and map overlays. In October they announce their Flash mobile API release. This is a big deal. More about Flash in a minute. But the MapQuest offering is in many ways made for mobile. Imagine being able to access routing and up to date traffic information while on the road. Look ahead and see accidents on your route and avoid them. Conduct local searches; find venues near you. Overlay KML and GeoRSS markers on the map to see points of interest (POI). Tonnes of possibilities.

Mobile Application Development MapQuest Flash API

Figure 2: MapQuest Enterprise Check-In and Data Collection App

Location Based Cross Platform Mobile Development

Objective C has become one of the most in demand programming languages. This relates to the popularity of Apple mobile devices. Most of the apps in the Apple App Store are written in Objective C. Successful mobile application development shops are filled with Objective C developers. But the game is changing. Android, and other mobile platforms are becoming increasingly more popular. Where does that leave your beautiful Objective C application? Only running on Apple products that’s where! You’ll need to rewrite it for Android, BlackBerry, Windows!

Now, thankfully there are cross platform solutions. Two of the most notable are Adobe AIR and PhoneGap. With AIR you can take your existing Flex or Flash apps and convert it to a mobile applications. Or build your AIR mobile app from scratch. But, most importantly, run the app on all mobile platforms. With PhoneGap take your Javascript application and do the same. That is one code base, which runs across mobile platforms. Simple.

Geo-Spatial Cross Platform Mobile Development

We have digressed slightly from our original topic. The future of mobile is very interesting, and filled with opportunities. Location will be at the core of many, if not most mobile applications. One day it might be pointless for companies such as us to target location based cross platform application development. But at the minute it seems to make tonnes of sense. Mobiles devices are computers with ever changing locations. Taking advantage of location to provide dynamic data – traffic ahead, what or who is near me, analysis by current location – has endless possibilities. Cross platform too. Who has the money or time to build multiple versions of the same application to run across each mobile platform? Build it once and deploy it to all would seem to be the future.

We might be wrong. But we are going to stay focused on cross platform location based mobile application solutions.

ArcGIS on the IPhone

Saturday, July 2nd, 2011

IPhone Application Development & Location Based Services
The IPhone and IPad remain intriguing platforms for spatial applications. Both popular and easy to use for consumers. They have remained a frustration for some mobile programmers. Notably those writing AIR and Flex applications for mobile. With the release of Flash Builder 4.5.1 life just became easier. Now a single application can be developed and installed on a range of different mobile platforms. That includes AIR apps running on Apples IOS.

IPhone Check-In App
The video in the link below shows an IPhone check-in app. Its written in Adobe AIR and is running on an IPhone 3. When the ‘Load Venues’ button is selected, the mobile app passes the GPS location of the phone to the SimpleGeo api. This then returns a list of venues within a given distance of the location. Which the application then lists.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/EJnihL1lm2E

ArcGIS on the IPhone
An interactive map has been added to the application. This uses the ArcGIS Flex API. The device location is added to the ArcGIS map.  This we will likely develop further and add some true mobile GIS functionality to compliment the geolocation portion of the application.

ArcGIS on the IPad
For mapping and GIS development the IPad remains the mobile platform with the most current potential. Its large screen size and user friendly design, makes it the most popular of the tablets. The BlackBerry Playbook has been a nice addition to the tablets market, with its less restrictive environment for software development. Discussed in the following article:

http://www.webmapsolutions.com/playbook-ipad-mobile-application-development

Now that it is possible to build sophisticated Adobe AIR apps on the IPad. The possibility of porting the ESRI Flex viewer to the IPad is exciting, particularly when combined with geolocation. This will be the focus of the next post.
 




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