We were at London’s Microsoft Conference Centre last Monday for June’s Mobile Monday London, the subject under discussion: are numerous OS’s a problem or an opportunity for developers?
The proceedings were kicked off with a statement by the director of Mobile at Microsoft, Alex Reeve: Microsoft is back in the mobile industry and they intend not only to stay, but to be successful – adding that it was a shame that the mobile industry has been totally focused on apps and the hype that surrounds them for the last 2 years, whilst completely forgetting about the platforms the apps run on.
Marek Pawlowski, MEX Forum organiser and chairman of this month’s panel, reminded the audience that most handset manufacturers work with their own OS and that some – like Nokia – are working with two (Symbian and MeeGo). As a consequence, developers, customers and advertisers are struggling with this multitude of choices without knowing which platform best suits their needs.
The panel was made up of a very interesting and varied bunch of mobile specialists from across the industry:
- Oded Ran, Head of Consumer Marketing at Windows Phone UK
- Tom Hume, Managing Director of Future Platforms mobile development firm
- Jerry Ennis from Flirtomatic, recently ranked as the top mobile only social network in terms of audience according to ComScore
- Ilia Uvarov, Creative director at digital agency RG/A
- Tesco’s RD Director Nick Lansley who published his thoughts on the evening straight after the discussion
So, how to choose the right platform?
On this subject, Nick highlighted an interesting point: most of Tesco’s customers have phones that don’t support apps and the majority of their customers don’t even know or care what their phone’s OS is. Jerry supported this view by saying that Flirtomatic’s first application was based on Java but it was far too difficult for people to get their heads around, so they shifted to a mobile website, from where most of Flirtomatic’s users still log-on.
Before choosing a platform, Ilia suggested that developers and advertisers should define their target as such: “iPhone for hipsters” (trendy but tech savvy people), Android for tech savvy people and Blackberry for professionals and teenagers (see Financial Time’s video by Sarah O’Connor about Blackberry being a new teenage phenomenon – a view also shared by friend of the blog Ewan McLeod).
Reaching the right audience is about choosing the most relevant platform. Ilia went on to point out the same issue that was previously discussed during the last MoMoLo: iPhone is massively hyped but only a minority of people actually has one.
The conversation then moved on to app updates, where Helen Keagan pointed out that regularly having to download updates for the 60 or so apps she runs is incredibly tedious – prompting her to ask the question: how can developers best deal with this issue? Nick pointed out that when Tesco launches a bug fix of their app, they also made sure they deliver new features. The key point is to communicate how important the update is and the difference it will make to the users experience wherever possible (more often than not in the app description!).
Multiple OS’s; could there be only one survivor?
On this subject, Tom gave us an insight into a developer’s point of view by stating he was not intimidated by the number of platforms, as most of them are more cost effective to develop for than web applications.
Oded felt there wouldn’t be any consolidation movement in the next few years and that the multi-platform world should simply be viewed as an opportunity and not as a threat. Moreover, he went on to point out that an app’s commercial success generally has little to no link with its supporting platform.
Nick emphasized the fact that people complained for years about Microsoft’s dominance, and now they’re complaining about having too much choice.
To recap on the general mood of the conversation on the night: when providing a platform the goal should always be to provide an enjoyable user experience and not limit to ones self to by delivering something that could simply be considered as ‘good enough’. Good user experience will always be the best way to meet success in mobile media; a statement that all the panelists agreed on. To paraphrase Ilia’s words on the night: there are increasingly fewer and fewer limits to mobile app development as mobile software and hardware technology continue to evolve ever more rapidly.
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