**What does it take to make a successful iPhone application? **
Before answering what does it take to make a successful iPhone application we have to define what makes an application successful. Sapient always asks why are we building something, what are we trying to achieve, and how are we going to measure it; so starting from top down, what are the business objectives, the key performance indicators, and all metrics. iPhone applications usually serve one of two purposes: drive brand or drive revenue.
**Objective: Drive brand
**Applications that drive brand most likely are free since they have to target a broad reach. Objective is usually increase awareness, brand recall, or word of mouth, and is traditionally measured based on simple downloads, usage, and extended with how many share with friends, stickiness, and engagement levels. A good way to take it one step further is tie in social media monitoring and analyze share and velocity of voice, general sentiment, and overall impact of the application within social conversations.
Now that we understand how to measure it, what will the application do? Nowadays brands cannot push messages to the consumers, they have to provide value and we generally call it brand as an enabler. Applications that drive brand usually fall under one of two categories: be entertaining or be useful. Entertaining applications usually have a wider adoption, more downloads, but less engagement as users open it just a few times before they get bored. Useful applications have a smaller reach but higher engagement; less users will download the application, but they will use it much more than simple entertainment applications. However the key for both types is simplicity.
I had the pleasure to moderate a panel for Omma mobile in October with a nice talented group of experts:
Panelist | Jeannette Kocsis, SVP Digital Marketing, Harte-Hanks, Inc. Jeannette_Kocsis@harte-hanks.com Panelist | Ujjal Kohli, CEO, Rhythm Media lisa@rhythmnewmedia.com Panelist | Kyle Outlaw, UX lead, Razorfish kyle.outlaw@razorfish.com Panelist | Ken Willner, CEO of Zumobi ken.willner@zumobi.com Panelist | Jamie Wells, Director, Global Trade Marketing, Microsoft Mobile Advertising jawells@microsoft.com Moderator | Rob Gonda, Director of Digital Strategy & Innovation, Sapient rgonda@sapient.
Finally, AT&T’s long-awaited MMS update for the iPhone is finally ready. Just plug your iPhone into iTunes and hit the “Check for Update” button.
You should get the dialog message above, saying: “An update to your carrier settings for your iPhone is available. Would you like to download it now?”
Hit “Download and Update” and wait a few seconds, then go to your iPhone and launch the Messages app. There should be a little camera icon to the left of the text input box at the bottom.
Adobe demoed Flash 10 runtime for mobile
back at Adobe Max 2008 on the Android
platform, the Windows mobile
and the Symbian
platform. During the keynote, I remember that Kevin Lynch mentioned that Adobe has been working on Flash for the iPhone without much Apple support …
The ongoing debate over Flash on the iPhone appears to be over after Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen announced last week at the World Economic Forum
that Adobe
and Apple
are working together in an effort to bring Flash to the iPhone.
While Narayen didn’t answer the question of whether Apple had strengthened its commitment to putting Flash on the iPhone he did point out that the ball was now in Adobe’s court. “We have the developer kit and the onus is now on us,” he said.
During the Bloomberg interview, Narayen said that Adobe plans to have over a million devices shipped by the end of the year that have Flash and he’s not just talking iPhone; the company is working on the Android
platform, the Windows mobile
and the Symbian
platform.
Consumers want information everywhere and at all times: from access to their service accounts on phone IVRs, main portals, social networks, and mobile devices, to identifying music with programs such as Verizon’s V Cast Song ID, or iPhone apps such as midomi and shazam. The latest trend is to allow the consumer to easily retrieve additional information on anything they want, lately commercialized using Matrix codes, also known as two-dimensional bar codes.
The most popular matrix code is a QR Code
, created by Japanese corporation Denso-Wave in 1994. The “QR” is derived from “Quick Response”, as the creator intended the code to allow its contents to be decoded at high speed. QR Codes are common in Japan, where they are currently the most popular type of two dimensional codes.
QR Codes are used in a broad context, including both commercial tracking applications and convenience-oriented applications aimed at mobile phone users (known as mobile tagging). QR Codes storing addresses and URLs may appear in magazines, on signs, buses, business cards or just about any object that users might need information about. Users with a camera phone equipped with the correct reader software can scan the image of the QR Code causing the phone’s browser to launch and redirect to the programmed URL. This act of linking from physical world objects is known as a hardlink or physical world hyperlinks. Users can also generate and print their own QR Code for others to scan and use by visiting one of several free QR Code generating sites.
The iPhone obviously had a huge impact on the smartphone market selling over 1MM phones on its opening weekend, but on top of that it also created buzz on the smartphone market and all those people who also wanted a smartphone but not necessarily an iPhone or switching to AT&T are looking around for alternatives… Blackberry stock doubled, Verizon came out with the Voyager, and now T-Mobile with the G1. So would the G1 compete with the iPhone? Experts say that the G1 will sell 400,000 phones before the end of the year … not an impressive number, but then again, t mobile is tiny compared to AT&T. The main difference with Android and the iPhone, and that Android has all its numbers combined – all carriers, all brands, all models – and the iPhone is just one.
Adobe 
