It’s all good and it’s all mobile!
Carmen Hughes
It’s All Good and It’s All Mobile!
The mobile apps arena is hot - red hot. Here's a snapshot of the last 6 months to see how fast the landscape is changing and growing:
September 2009: Gartner sees PC shipments declining 2%, being outpaced by laptops, smartphones and other mobile devices, and in a similar vein, an RBC analyst estimates that smartphones are on rapid clip to outpace PCs by 2011. The biggest news comes out of Apple, announcing 2 billion apps downloaded from its iTunes app store.
October 2009: Verizon announces plans to carry Motorola’s Droid, bringing the total number of Google Android-powered mobile devices available on the market to more than a dozen. In lockstep, Gartner forecasts that Android will leapfrog Apple’s iPhone OS for the no. 2 spot by 2012.
November 2009: Apple counts more than 100,000 apps in its iTunes app store. Pizza Hut generates $1 million in sales with its iPhone app and eBay rakes in nearly $400 million from mobile buyers.
December 2009: Nearly 54 million smartphones were sold in Q4 2009, up over 40% from the same period in 2008. Wall Street Journal shares a survey finding that nearly 1/3 of consumers are using, or considering using, mobile financial services in 2010.
January 2010: Apple unveils the long awaited iPad, setting the stage to completely transform mobile computing, and to boot, announces 140,000 apps and 300 million downloads from the iTunes app store.
February 2010: 50,000 descend upon Barcelona for Mobile World Congress. Demand for mobile developers grows 180% with the hottest growth happening in mobile software and services.
In less than 6 months, consumers, business and power users alike downloaded more than 1 million mobile apps from the iTunes app store alone. The International Telecommunications Union reported the number of mobile phone subscriptions is on pace to pass 5 billion in 2010, representing a penetration rate of 67% worldwide (closer to 100% in developed countries).
It’s no wonder why developers and businesses are jumping at the opportunity to extend their web-based apps to mobile devices and cash in on this mobile Gold Rush. Some of Ignite’s clients are taking advantage of the emerging market opportunities in the mobile apps arena and are well positioned to become leaders in their spaces.
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Appcelerator is a growing player in the one of the hottest mobile areas of growth: application development. With Appcelerator’s Titanium platform, web developers, ad agencies, ISVs, and enterprises can take advantage of the explosive growth in mobile, desktop, and tablet applications. Appcelerator’s community of 25,000+ developers and growing are using Titanium to quickly build cross-platform desktop and mobile apps using standard technologies and by leveraging the open source developer community. Incidentally, since Appcelerator formally announced its support for Apple's iPad less than one month ago, more than 7,000 new developers have signed up to use its highly-regarded Titanium platform.
Last month, Appcelerator polled its developer community on the impact and implications of Apple’s iPad in a survey about how Apple iPad Developers will radically transform computing. Here’s just a smattering of news and blogger coverage that Ignite PR secured around Appcelerator’s report findings in business and trade press, as well as some of the most influential blogs:
Scobleizer and a 2nd follow on video with Scobleizer
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Another new Ignite client is a promising startup in the mobile apps arena named Urban Airship, an early mover in the emerging mobile app infrastructure services arena. Similar to when Amazon pioneered its EC2 cloud services to enable developers to scale with an affordable pay-per-use model, Urban Airship is the first to offer scalable, on-demand mobile app infrastructure services that reduce developers' costs for implementing advanced smartphone features such as push notifications and in-app purchases.
What's admirable about Urban Airship is that from Day 1 of business, this young upstart actually had secured their first paying customer! Now only 9 months old, Urban Airship has seen rapid adoption of its services, signing more than 1,600 customers and delivering over 130 million mobile messages across 10 million devices. The company recently announced a $1.1 million Series A round led by early stage venture firm True Ventures. Aside from their rapid growth and customer traction, True Ventures invested in Urban Airship as they see that while most of the focus to date has been on really cool mobile apps, what is equally pivotal is the underlying infrastructure required to enhance these mobile apps and enable them to run reliably and scale. Here’s just some highlights of recent news coverage that Ignite PR secured for Urban Airship:
So what can we expect in the coming year? A Gartner analyst commented: "Looking back at the announcements during Mobile World Congress 2010, we can expect 2010 to retain a strong focus around operating systems, services and applications while hardware takes a back seat.” It will be interesting to watch major mobile players make their next moves (Apple, Google, Microsoft, RIM, et al) in the highly dynamic mobile landscape. Be sure to check out the continued progress and leadership from innovative companies like an Appcelerator and Urban Airship that are delivering compelling and invaluable products and services to squarely address their customers' needs in the burgeoning mobile app market.