You might think that in a perfect world, application developers would write code just once and it would run everywhere. But that mobile utopia doesn’t exist. Instead, developers practice their craft in a digital universe that includes multiple versions of competing operating systems and thousands of devices in various screen sizes.
This fragmentation forces developers and the companies that hire them to answer tough questions every time they imagine the next big thing: Should they build for one operating system over another? Should they develop only for the big two, Android and iOS? If so, should they build the apps simultaneously, and should they design one app for both or two different apps for the two platforms? Should they use tools designed to streamline cross-platform development? How should they test the app for the hundreds of Android options? Or should they go to the Web via HTML5?
All of those questions and more are behind the mobile industry’s pursuit of interoperability, the term that describes the ability of apps to work on numerous devices and platforms. “Right now it’s frustrating,” said Peter Braxton, the founder and CEO of Jump Rope Inc. “For someone who’s trying to build a business and presence on different platforms, it’s really hard because it's additional investment in resources, both time and capital, each time you encounter a new platform.”
In a recent survey by Telerik, more developers are moving away from purely native development for multiple platforms. The survey of 3,5000 developers, CIOs and CTOs found the following trends:
Source: VentureBeat
Pure interoperability is not technically possible. It also doesn’t consider the cultural, regional and language differences of customers, or their preferred user experiences or devices. Every market has its own peculiarities (try asking a Finnish person to fill in the “State” field in an address form); every device has its own style. In short, there are many reasons to have different versions of an app for different devices, markets and groups of users.
That being said, app makers have sound business reasons to maximize the available market for an app without technical constraints. This white paper defines the challenge, explains why it matters and discusses the options available to developers, including tools to help both developers and non-developers build interoperable products more quickly. The paper concludes with case studies based on the efforts of several experts in the app industry to achieve interoperability or help others do so.
The challenge defined In the development community, interoperability involves three distinct divides -- those that exist within operating systems, across operating systems and across devices.
The gaps are the result of a diverse marketplace combined with consumer demand. People “want to play the content or the application anywhere, any place, any platform,” App Promo CEO and founder Gary Yentin said, “I think the trend is that you follow users seamlessly throughout their day.” To do that, app makers must decide which of the three divides they want to bridge -- or realistically can bridge -- in order to maximize their sales.
Source: Google’s New Multi-Screen World Study
The first big decision developers face is which platforms best suit their needs. The decision was easier when Apple was the sole dominant player, but app makers can reach consumers through multiple operating systems these days. At a combined 1.5 billion devices, Apple’s iOS (600 million) and Google’s Android (900 million) are the dominant forces by far.
“We still hear a lot of people say there is a little bit more cache being in the Apple store,” Rocket Farm Studios founder and CEO Daniel Katcher said. “But now that the market is literally billions of phones, that seems to be less the concern.”
The market also includes players like BlackBerry and Microsoft with smaller market shares. Although their devices are in far fewer hands, the count still reaches into the millions. And new players continue to enter the field. Samsung owns a large share of the smartphone market thanks to sales of Android-based devices but also has invested in the Tizen operating system as an alternative. Mozilla created Firefox OS, a Web-based option for apps that only allows app development in the universal HTML5 standard.
Some app makers solve (or ignore) the interoperability challenge by choosing to build exclusively for iOS or Android. Others target the two big operating systems but avoid the smaller ones, while the most ambitious companies and publishers build for as many platforms as they can and closely monitor the marketplace for new opportunities.
The reasons vary from developer to developer but typically include the time, skills and money it takes to make the same app two or more times and which platforms best serve the demographics of the app’s intended audience. A game app catered to children, for instance, might generate more sales via Android because parents are more likely to buy lower-priced phones for their children. Michael Griffith, the creative director of Bottle Rocket, added that “Blackberry still has a little bit of hold in enterprise” because of its popularity with business professionals.
“It's come to the point where pretty much the biggest driving force is how much market share these devices have and who the target audience is,” said Arun Venkatesan, the director of iOS engineering at Applico.
As the co-owner of a small family company, Kevin Hamilton of Binary Formations only develops for the Mac and iPhone App Stores. “We have to be very careful on where we allocate our resources, and it seems like report after report after report shows that Android sales ... are still a fraction of what they are on iOS,” he said. But Michael Prichard, the founder and chief technology officer of the larger development shop WillowTree Apps, said his team recommends that clients give more weight to which platforms work best for their apps than to factors like cost and development time.
Developers who see value in getting their apps on multiple platforms face another strategic decision -- whether to build for all of them at once to saturate the market quickly or to pick one for launching their products and develop for the others later. If they opt for staggered releases, then they most often choose between iOS and Android as the best starting point. This choice is both commercial and technical because Android apps (Java) are typically free with embedded advertising and Apple apps (Objective C) are typically paid for upfront.
AppPromo’s Yentin recommends iOS first because it offers a proven business model to developers who are looking to prove their products have market traction. He said Apple has the most user credit cards on file, and the buying process is frictionless. Kishore A K, co-founder and CEO of Shufflr.tv, added that the app ecosystem and developer tools at Apple are more advanced, and product testing and validation take less time because iPad, iPhone and iPod devices are the only ones that run on iOS.
“I would go to Android only after iOS was a success,” said Drew Ramsey, product manager for the development platform MobileSmith. “I certainly would not spend the time and money to go out to the Android side if the iOS version was not a success.”
Other developers prefer Android as a test market. More people own devices built on that operating system; the devices are more affordable and thus more likely to be purchased for children who play mobile games; and it’s easier to get apps into the Google Play store. When Hunter Peress developed HiFiCorder in 2009, he thought the Apple Store was too saturated and focused on Android -- a start that made him a stronger developer for Android than iOS.
Developing for Android poses another interoperability challenge: fragmentation within the operating system. Fragmentation is an issue on all platforms, forcing developers to code both for different devices that use the operating system and for different versions of the operating system. But the challenge is more pronounced in Android.
OpenSignal, a company that maps wireless coverage, created a series of graphics to illustrate the extent of Android fragmentation. The company identified 11,868 Android devices on the market as of this July -- up from about 4,000 a year before. It also identified eight Android versions that are still being used. “What this means is that developing apps that work across the whole range of Android devices can be extremely challenging and time-consuming,” OpenSignal concluded.
Shufflr.tv co-founder and CEO Kishore A K mentioned one specific challenge that could have affected perceptions of his company’s video app. Videos played through the app used Flash on some Android devices, and on one device in particular, the phone only loaded the audio. Shufflr users with that phone might have reacted by giving the app a low rating in Google Play store, thus hurting the app’s reputation. Although Kishore said that particular problem was unusual, it shows how Android fragmentation can impact development.
Some device manufacturers ship pure Android without introducing any changes to the operating system to address that concern. Google also shares monthly data about the most popular Android versions, information that can steer app makers in the right development direction, and the company can deliver new features to most Android devices via Google Play Services, which includes a gaming platform. Tools like Apkudo for Developers, which works with more than 260 Android devices, further help address device fragmentation through testing.
Android is the platform of choice for some game publishers despite the diversity of Android- based operating systems and devices. The mobile-computing company Nvidia is so confident in Android’s future that it built a portable gaming device just for it.
“Shield is our initiative to cultivate the gaming marketplace for Android,” CEO and co-founder Jen Hsun-Huang told ZDNet. “We believe that Android is going to be a very important platform for gaming in the future, and to do so we have to create devices that enable great gaming to happen on Android.” He called Android “the most versatile operating system that we've ever known.”
But fragmentation within any operating system still impacts development. “Just as the number of devices expand, even on iOS side, it’s definitely gotten more complicated to keep up with the changes,” said Sam Tannen, founder of the children’s app developer Corky Portwine. He said the addition of the iPhone 5 to the marketplace forced him to rework all of his old apps so they would work on that device and all earlier iPhone models. Dealing with operating system (OS) updates is another issue that developers have to consider with native approaches.
Another obstacle to interoperability is the abundance of devices in today’s digital age. One consumer may want to access an app on her smartphone; another may prefer the same app on his tablet; and don’t forget computer and television screens. Then there are the people who own several devices and want to use them all in different circumstances.
Source: Google’s New Multi-Screen World Study
Google illustrated that cultural reality last year in a paper titled “The New Multi-screen World: Understanding Cross-platform Consumer Behavior.” It explained how people’s lives revolve around the screens they own.
The report found that: ● Most media consumers are “multi-screeners” who choose which device to use based on their circumstances at the moment and how much time they have. ● Smartphones are currently the primary screen, while television is less important. ● Consumers jump from one device to another (sequential screening) but also use multiple screens at once (simultaneous screening). ● The existence of multiple screens divides people’s attention -- yet they believe access to so many screens also makes them more efficient. ● Search functionality creates a bridge between devices.
Developers have to consider all of those variables -- and be prepared to adjust as digital behavior changes -- to reach the widest audience. WillowTree’s Pritchard said the takeaway for app makers is that their products should be available on all screens through which people want to access content, whether that’s on a TV, handset, tablet or desktop. “It's about knowing which ones to use and how to use them,” he said.
Tannen echoed that point. “It’s so difficult to earn a living just making apps independently that it’s necessary to get your apps into as many places as possible,” he said.
Going native: The app road oft traveled Developers with the capital to invest in cross-platform development do have options, mainly native, HTML5 and hybrid. The question is which approach is the best for them, their customers and their type of app. That topic has been fiercely debated in the development community for years, with no end in sight.
The default option is to “go native” -- in other words, code separately for each operating system. Developers can optimize their apps to the specifications of the platform that way. Native development also gives them an incentive to specialize and gain expertise, and it arguably results in a superior user experience. “Native apps are just a lot cleaner,” Jump Rope’s Braxton said. “There’s a lot less hiccups if you design it right. ... It’s not as clunky.”
Investor Relations touted the benefits of native over HTML5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TbGelX8bbI
Borys Senik, a senior developer for Social Driver, said it’s easier to map apps when developing for each specific operating system. “Even something as simple as scrolling through a long list of things, you find native to be markedly better,” he said.
Braxton cited the importing of contacts into apps as another example. Both Android and iOS have tools to smooth that process, but because the tools work differently, users have an easier time moving their contacts into apps if they are designed to fit the platform. “It just makes that experience that much richer, with a lot less friction points,” he said.
User experience is paramount to an app’s success in Braxton’s eyes, but he also said developers can build better security features into their apps by developing for each platform separately. “Native apps have a lot more security features that you can build as far as logout timing and confirming credentials,” he said.
Sanjib Sahoo, tradeMONSTER’s chief technology officer, has a different view of interoperability and security from Braxton and others. Security is a key component of tradeMONSTER’s business as an online platform for stock and options traders, and Sahoo does not believe it is safe to entrust an app with sensitive data. TradeMONSTER used HTML5 to keep customer data and security aspects of the app on the backend.
Sam Feuer, founder and CEO of MindSmack Games, said his team sampled third-party tools for building apps but concluded that native development works better, at least for Android, because his team knows the platform so well. “We can build and adapt and be on top of all the different elements that are needed,” he said. “We’re in a really good place in terms of the people we have, the talent we have to be able to roll with whatever comes.”
While app makers may develop their products separately for multiple operating systems, they still weigh the pros and cons of each platform. Rocket Farm’s Katcher said developing on iOS typically gets his firm’s clients to market more quickly, although others believe the App Store’s approval process can cause delays and should be considered in development. Shufflr’s Kishore attributed Apple’s speed to a more advanced app ecosystem and application programming interfaces. “If my [user experience] designers come up with design,” he said, “I think my iOS developers can complete it significantly ahead of my Android developers.”
The iOS platform also offers a greater concentration of and consistency in versions of the operating system, Katcher said. And Drew Ramsey, a product manager for MobileSmith, said iOS is a more app-centric platform. The proof is in the download numbers: iPhone users tend to have more apps on their phones even though Android has the edge in devices sold.
OS fragmentation is a factor to consider. To stay relevant, platforms need to update their systems to maximize user experience, new technology and devices. Although updates are critical for platforms to stay relevant, they can cause angst in both users and developers.
Users become accustomed to particular features and processes that are sometimes disrupted by updates. Although their angst is short-lived, users can be extremely aggravated and annoyed by changes. Facebook, which often catches heat for changes to the social network, likely understands this better than any company.
On the development side, updates can disrupt how the app functions with the device or the design of the app, as seen with changes from iOS6 to iOS7. Developers may have to re-code portions of an app, which of course means more time and money. This necessary evil is something that all native developers overcome.
Although android’s OS fragmentation is more significant than iOS, developer Cameron Henneke does not believe it is overly cumbersome. “I found the Android community has made great strides in addressing this issue by providing libraries that back-port many of the newest features. By using Android's official Support Library and Jake Wharton’s ActionBarSherlock library I was able to use nearly every feature desired in Jelly Bean (4.2) while still supporting devices running Android 2.2. With iOS, support for older versions of the OS is pretty much non-existent, though not nearly as crucial.”
Neal Ormsbee, a co-founder of Feathr and one of its programmers, believes iOS offers more tools to help developers, including the data management framework Core Data. By contrast, he said, “you have to build a lot of stuff yourself with pretty much your tools when you’re doing Android.”
However, other developers note that Android has added more tools as it has matured, and Kishore said everything is open on the Android platform. That means developers or their clients control the app release dates and can decide whether to recall them from Google Play. It’s also easier to train people to code for the Java-based Android, Kishore said. “We are able to find more developers.” Ramsey added that Android phones are getting faster, which makes them great for applications with full photo galleries.
In an ever-expanding mobile market, app makers aren’t limited to building for Android and iOS. Other options include the legacy mobile platform BlackBerry and emerging platforms like Windows Phone and Tizen.
Applico’s Venkatesan, who started developing on BlackBerry, said that when both Android and BlackBerry used Java, developers could port about 40 percent of the code from BlackBerry into Android. While BlackBerry is no longer Java-based, he said the company actually improved interoperability with its release of the BlackBerry 10 phone and BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 operating system.
BlackBerry users now can run most Android apps on BlackBerry devices. “You don’t have to do any work at all; they just repackage the Android app for a BlackBerry,” Venkatesan said, adding that the tactic put BlackBerry into the marketplace quickly with a lot of apps. BES 10 also delivers multiplatform device management for iOS.
Windows Phone is currently an appealing option to developers, according to Forrester’s Development Landscape 2013 report. Ten percent of developers consider Windows a first priority when building apps, putting it slightly ahead of BlackBerry. And now that Microsoft has announced plans to buy Nokia’s smartphone business, Windows may gain stronger traction in the market. Unity’s Windows Store add-on has brought over 1,000 games to the Windows Store and Windows Phone Store. Alex Wilhelm writes, “Microsoft remains grimly determined to grow the number and quality of applications on its twin platforms. It’s doing so by integrating them, lowering the price of entry, and working with folks like Unity to open as many doors as possible, and stay that way.”
Samsung and Intel, meanwhile, have found three dozen partners for the Tizen operating system, which will be featured on Samsung’s Tizen phones that are set for release next year. They include Appbackr, eBay, Panasonic and The Weather Channel. The phones are expected to be less expensive than competitors, giving them a potential foothold in developing markets like Asia, and the operating system is open source.
Facebook has become a popular platform for many top game developers. Although Facebook is a platform, it offers great versatility so developers can reach multiple platforms. Whether on a Mac, PC or iPad, users can access the same app.
Publishers also use Facebook in multiple ways. Kishore said Shufflr used Facebook and Twitter to tie users across the two isolated platforms to give users a better feel of the app. The app is not only used on Facebook but shared through Facebook so that one friend on an Android tablet can share a video with someone on an iPad. Facebook continues to look at new ways for publishers to engage with users across platforms.
Platforms with smaller market shares regularly feature incentive programs aimed at luring more developers, though they change quickly. The most recent BlackBerry rewards program, which ended in October, invited developers to compete in the “Built for BlackBerry” program. The 250 winners selected to join the program will receive limited edition phones.
In the summer, Windows launched its App Builder Rewards program. It gives developers points for completing tasks, and they can exchange the points for products such as Windows 8 licenses and the Xbox 360. “This program is designed to help you get acquainted with the tools and resources for building a Windows app and have fun while you code to your heart's content,” PreApps founder and CEO Sean Casto said in November when his company partnered with Microsoft in the program.
Microsoft’s latest update to the Windows Phone system also may encourage app makers to try it by offering advance developer access to device updates so they can test their apps.
But there are downsides to native development. Brandon Satrom, the lead project manager for cross-platform tools and services at Telerik, noted that native developers “really can't target multiple devices with one code base, with one app, with one experience.” He added that the flip side of having developers who are experts in one platform or another is that app publishers have to recruit and retain those experts for every new operating system – or remain on one platform.
“With every single one of these new platforms, you now have a new set of skills and a new store to worry about,” Satrom said. “You start to get to this point where now you are supporting five different languages, five different apps and five different app stores, five different sets of programming paradigm.”
Web apps: Back to the Internet future One way some app makers address that concern is by turning their development attention to the Web. Their products run through Web browsers and require an Internet connection to work, whereas native apps are downloaded onto mobile devices and run on them. Independent of platforms, publishers can get to market faster and connect with more devices while incurring lower maintenance time and costs.
Floport described the benefits of Web apps this way, albeit simplified: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8vr2LeAJr8
That’s the best path to greater interoperability, if you ask Satrom. “The Web is really quite ubiquitous, quite interoperable, quite accessible for a lot of developers as well, which is why we see so many new folks flocking to the Web as their place to plant their flag as a developer,” he said.
Despite the differences among browsers and deficiencies in them, Satrom said the Web platform offers stability to developers. Modern browsers also share features and functionality that are more similar than ever, alleviating the challenge of fragmentation. Fragmentation is not absent in Web apps, as there are many different browsers, but the differences are not as critical and therefore, do not affect development as much. Testing still should be a critical part of development. And the Web is a compelling platform because so many major players in the mobile era have stakes online.
Apple, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla all own Internet browsers, Satrom noted, while Telerik and rival companies like Appcelerator and AppVenture built tools to help developers create Web apps. “We are all very interested in the Web winning,” he said of the companies that have invested in the Internet as an alternative to apps downloaded onto devices.
Like their software-based competitors, the companies behind HTML5 platforms also have incentive programs. Mozilla began the second phase of its “Phones for Apps” program this fall, offering devices with Firefox OS to developers who have built and shipped HTML5 apps or native Android and iOS apps with HTML5 wrappers. Mozilla developer Brian Bondy took it upon himself to start an online curriculum for those interested in coding for Firefox OS. “I won’t make any money from this site, I’m just doing it because I think it will help on-board new contributors,” Bondy explained via email. “Firefox is a great product, and the only browser out there that puts users, and their privacy first. I want to help others, help make it even better.”
Big technology companies are looking at the HTML5 space as well. Oracle unveiled a tool called BI Mobile App Designer for building Web apps that will run on Android, iOS and Windows devices. SAP is getting behind HTML5 for the latest version of its mobile platform. And this past summer, senior architect Michael Richmond of Intel, whose Intel XDK tool is used for app development, touted HTML5 for its ability to offer more screen size for apps. “For us, the developer economics are compelling,” he said.
Some people in the gaming world even see potential for HTML5 to cut into the market share of Android and iOS. The topic arose at GamesBeat 2013 in October, with experts from Nvidia, Goo Technologies, Ludei and Stealth sharing their thoughts. “While native development is still king for mobile games,” GamesBeat reported, “tools such as Web GL and so-called ‘wrappers’ that help make HTML5 games look and feel like native apps are making the language more attractive to developers.”
While Google is clearly invested in the native space via Android, it also has good reason to encourage Web-based app development because of the company’s Chrome browser. That helps explain why Google is now offering backend support to developers for Chrome Apps.
Rocket Farm’s Katcher said HTML5 is an excellent option for enterprise and workflow apps that businesses use internally. It’s not as strong for consumer-facing apps. That’s especially true for games. Although Rovio built a Chrome version of its popular Angry Birds app, Satrom said apps that require frequent interaction do not work as well in a Web environment.
“Some of the games that I have on my iPhone or that I have in my iPad,” he said, “are ones that I wouldn't even know where to begin to try to replicate inside of a browser, as they are very rich graphically, they are very interactive, they do a lot.” Arun Venkatesan, the director of iOS engineering at Applico, agreed. “Unless the game is extremely simple, it's going to be pretty sluggish on the mobile devices,” he said.
Corky Portwine’s Tannen has tried his development hand on iOS, Android and the Web, and the Web increasingly appeals to him as the fragmentation of the mobile market continues. “It’s definitely gotten more complicated to keep up with the changes,” he said. “I don’t see it getting simpler right now. I hope it does.”
When he started using HTML5, he was frustrated and confused by the limited information available on coding apps for the Web but he taught himself and has been pleased with the results. After developing apps for Windows, he created versions for the Chrome Web Store with few changes, and it was “pretty simple” to package the apps for the store. Tannen sees the Web as the future, especially for individual developers who don’t have the time or skills to build for multiple platforms.
Peress echoed that view. “It all comes down to resources,” he said. “If you want to start something now with limited resources, then HTML5 is a very viable way to go about it.” But he added that app makers “lose a little bit of polish” by going strictly HTML5 and skirting native development.
Developers need to pay close attention to performance when building for the Web, according to Satrom, because app users may experience time delays, lousy connections and intermediate switching within the online environment. “The Web developer's mindset has to be wholly different” than it is for native builds, he said.
Borys Senik, a senior developer for the Social Driver development shop, warned that apps with high data needs are not ideal for the Web. “If you have a large list and you're trying to scroll that, smooth scrolling is actually very difficult to achieve in an HTML-based app,” he said. “It's because you don't have the benefit of hardware acceleration a lot of times.”
Source: Tech2
Hybrid apps: The best of both worlds?
The third potential route to interoperability is to build apps so they largely run on internal device software but connect to the Web for tasks that are similar across platforms. The goal of these hybrid apps is to save time and resources where possible while still optimizing the products as much as possible for the different operating systems. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDnNEKtBkBE
“It’s really about reaching people where they are instead of expecting them to come to a platform because we are available there,” said Kjersti Kyle, UI/UX developer for the MobileSmith development framework.
Eric Vargas, a software architect at Avantica Technologies, outlined six factors to consider when weighing hybrid development: speed and cost, developer knowledge, user experience, data storage, the quality of hybrid development tools, and the availability of cross-platform support for the native portions of the apps.
Because only a portion of the code is written for each mobile platform, he said it takes less time, and thus money, to develop hybrid apps. It’s also easier to find developers who code for the Web. By contrast, Vargas said hybrid apps may impact user experience negatively, data storage is limited, and hybrid development tools are still relatively immature.
Bottle Rocket’s Griffith imagined a scenario where native development would be completely impractical and a hybrid app would work well -- an insurance company with a global target audience. The app maker in that scenario would need to reach people using potentially thousands of devices on multiple operating systems. “Building a native experience for an insurance company might be a total mistake,” Griffith said, “and I would strategically suggest that they'd go to an HTML5-type solution.”
TradeMONSTER opted for hybrid when the company decided it needed to transition from being a desktop service exclusively to one available on mobile devices. The company, which one TechCrunch writer referenced when trying to debunk myths about hybrid development, saved time and money by going that route.
Sahoo described the alternative this way: “You will build an IOS team; you will build an Android team; you will build a Windows team; you will build a BlackBerry team. So you're adding staffing costs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM48tjJw9S8 Please note that Facebook has moved away from hybrid apps and gone native.
He acknowledged that HTML5 has drawbacks when used for hybrid apps, including the lack of a standard framework guideline and inconsistent functionality on Android devices because of the fragmentation in that market. But he predicted that 99 percent of apps could be built in HTML5 and still function at 90 percent of what they would if the apps were built separately for each platform. “HTML5 is the future,” Sahoo said.
App Promo CEO and founder Gary Yentin has a different view. He warned that choosing the hybrid route could have negative business consequences. “We've had clients who have been rejected from Apple,” he said. “In fact, Apple really pushed to use the native features of iOS, and if it's just an HTML5 wrapped around to put it into the store, they actually may reject it.”
The possibility of having a hybrid app rejected by Apple is one that small app shops can’t afford, according to Hamilton of Binary Formations. Apple eventually backed off its targeting of games built using the Unity engine, he said, but we don’t have the resources to take that kind of risk. “Even though personally we may disagree with a lot of their policies, we can’t afford to fight those battles.”
Ormsbee of Feathr said hybrid is undeniably the way to go “if you’re trying to reach as many platforms as possible as quickly as possible.” But he thinks it makes better business sense to get the best app on one platform as quickly as possible to test it and expand from there.
He also said it is not easy to build a fast and productive hybrid app. “The amount of work and focus that was put into figuring out how to get things that have millions of data points to be smooth and working well [would have been] much easier to achieve on each native platform if you knew the native language well,” Ormsbee said.
The primary concern that Applico’s Venkatesan has with hybrid apps is that they add a layer to the final product. “No matter what we do,” he said, “the HTML5 is always going to be one level above the native, so the native app is always going to be one step faster and one step better integrated.”
Sahoo believes tradeMONSTER’s app shows hybrid development can produce fast and effective apps. Although tradeMONSTER has been happy with the results of its HTML5 build, he said it does have drawbacks. “[I]t’s not magic and it's not a silver bullet, so we have to prepare to do a lot of custom programming,” he said, adding that testing is a crucial part of ensuring you have created a cohesive product that works across platforms.
The interoperability toolbox Forrester’s Development Landscape 2013 report found that app makers currently dedicate 41 percent of their time to native development. That compares with 24 percent for HTML5 development and 22 percent for hybrid apps. Regardless of which approaches app makers and publishers take to overcome the obstacles to interoperability, they have tools at their disposal. The market includes basic options for developers who don’t have much experience and high- end tools for experts.
Apache Cordova, Appcelerator, PhoneGap and Unity are among the best-known tools. Bulgaria-based Telerik also offers Kendo UI for Web development and Icenium for hybrid mobile development. AppMobi’s Mobile Cloud is another cross-platform tool that allows developers to have push notification, in-app purchases and more across multiple platforms – generally thought to be native features. EachScape and MobileSmith cater to non-developers who need more direction to implement their vision across platforms. (See the case studies on EachScape, MobileSmith and Telerik later in this white paper.) Android specialists can test their apps on emulators to see how they will work on that platform’s array of devices.
One concern with such hybrid tools is what happens when a platform updates the operating system. Many providers of these tools claim that is cause for concern. Appcelerator updated its Titanium development platform in preparation for the release of iOS7. The upgrade was designed to help developers take advantage of app icons, translucent objects and other features of the operating system. The PhoneGap Build tool, meanwhile, gained a plug-in to foster upgrades related to the iOS status bar.
Telerik ships new themes and enhancements, Satrom said, “so it’s simply a matter of updating the Kendo UI sources in the app and retesting.” Although iOS7 included a few quirks because Apple introduced system-wide gestures, Telerik documented those changes and worked with developers to explain the minor impact.
EachScape’s system offers similar assistance to clients. When prompted by an app maker, the system automatically changes the software component of the app that needs to be upgraded. Some manual follow-up work may be necessary to address visual changes and code stability, but CEO and co-founder Ludovic Collin said “the benefit of the platform is that it is 'magically' ready. We have done all the tests, and OS upgrades are about switching one component version by another.”
Mobile platforms have plenty of tools of their own. Applico’s Venkatesan said Android, Apple and Windows all offer resources, and more help is available online. “If you were starting on any of these three platforms, there is a lot of help out there,” he said. Software companies, device manufacturers and third parties also regularly release new options as they try to lure developers to their products or make them more appealing for cross-platform development. Here’s a list of recent developments:
● Google launched or updated a series of tools aimed at improving interoperability. Portable Native Client is designed to bring native code to more platforms; Mobile Backend Starter for iOS connects iOS developers to cloud-based services such as data, notifications and authentication for iPhones and iPads; and the latest version of Google Chrome for iOS incorporated key changes. ● Amazon Web Services unveiled the program AWS Activate to help even more startups take advantage of Amazon’s cloud services. AWS Activate’s offerings include developer support, Web-based training and software testing. In a separate move, Amazon opened the door for developers to submit HTML5-based apps to the Amazon Appstore alongside their Android-based apps. ● The game-publishing platform GameSalad joined forces with Amazon to offer tools for building games for the latest Kindle Fire. ● Firefox announced that Firefox OS App Manager will be part of the upgraded Web browser the company is set to release in December. The app manager is designed to make it easier to build and debug apps for Firefox’s Web-based operating system. ● Parallels released a product called Parallels Access so consumers can put their Mac and PC apps on their iPads. An annual subscription is $79.99.
The tools available to app makers extend to the backend of the development process for delivering content and rich functionality. Backend as a service, or BaaS for short, is a category of companies geared toward simplifying a time-consuming and expensive process, often for cross-platform development. They create a bridge from the app’s frontend to a cloud-based backend, according to a white paper by the BaaS platform Kinvey.
Kinvey’s platform offers third-party data integration, multiplatform support, push notifications and custom business logic to clients. Options for cross-platform development include client libraries for iOS, Android and HTML5. The white paper explained the BaaS value proposition this way: “By removing the need to build and maintain a backend, developers, dev agencies and enterprises can deliver better apps in less time – no matter how many operating systems the app must run on.”
Henry Oh, Animoca’s director of strategic initiatives, praised the BaaS available through Amazon. “Amazon's cloud computing services are useful for games that are server-side or require more server interaction,” he said. “Since Amazon has been around for a while, there is a good ecosystem in place that provides tools and info to devs.”
Telerik’s Satrom said the right framework makes all the difference in cross-platform development. “There are lots of cases where you can actually get the same level of interaction, the same level of performance, the same crispness of animations and transitions between views and apps on mobile, Web or hybrid just as you do with native,” he said.
Although Rocket Farm focuses primarily on native apps, the company created a cloud-based architecture that allows it to develop a sizeable portion of each app for cross-platform use, with 20 percent to 25 percent of the code being applied to multiple platforms. Katcher said that approach became possible through experience, and a beginning developer could not create such a framework. Rocket Farm can train young, skilled developers to be well-versed in using the technology in three to six months.
Animoca has several different internal studios, and the shop uses various tools to develop apps. Unity is one of them. The decision about which tool to use to make an app often is based on a given studio’s comfort level with the tool. “Using third-party services like Unity makes it easier to port the apps over to different platforms,” said Sunny Cha, the senior manager of marketing and corporate development.
Developer tools are not without critics. Venkatesan said Applico explored tools like PhoneGap but found the performance and user experience of the new apps lacking. Applico urges its clients to build natively if they want to be on both Android and iOS. “I've never used cross- platform toolkits,” Jump Rope’s Braxton said, “but as soon as one emerges that makes it as easy as changing channels on a TV, we'll consider it.”
One concern with toolkits involves in-app purchases, a business model that developers pursue to monetize their apps. Oh said the number of cross-platform tools that address in-app purchases is “a moving target.” He noted, for example, that GameSalad is trying to expand in that area even though in-app purchases on its platform used to be limited. Developers who use Appcelerator can download its StoreKit module for testing in-app purchases. The company also offers an in-app billing mechanism for Android products. Ultimately, while some toolkits enable in-app purchases, the process requires plug-ins.
Over at MindSmack, Feuer concluded that building native Android apps “is a much better move” than using third-party tools that struggle to keep pace with Android as it changes. Douglas Ferguson, the chief technology officer at Famigo, suggested that Appcelerator and PhoneGap have built tools that won’t last long because they are closed systems.
Oh cautioned developers against using tools unless they intend to stick with them. The reason: “If you take a project that you built in Unity and then decide [you are] not going to use Unity anymore, it could cause major problems in future updates.”
Solo developer Tannen of Corky Portwine also sees room for improvement in the developers’ toolkit. He would love to have a tool that could take the animation he develops for desktop computers and move it onto mobile devices without the performance being choppy. But he expects the quality of the tools to improve over time.
“Right now it seems like it’s a wild west,” Tannen said. “There are a lot of people trying a lot of different things, but [there are] a whole lot of possibilities with it. And I’m really excited for the day that all people write an app once and get it onto as many devices as possible without too much work to put it in different platforms.”
Beyond platforms Some developers are looking toward an even more connected world, where people can control their wrist watches, televisions, cars, security systems or even vending machines from their phones. Roku allows users to stream directly to their TVs, and Google’s Chromecast can connect TVs to printers. A quick Google search identifies several companies that let people not only monitor their houses, but actually lock their doors, turn on their lights and manage their thermostats from their phones.
Source: Google’s New Multi-Screen World Study
Samsung Electronics co-CEO J.K. Shin is trying to position the company’s Tizen operating system for such a world. He told CNET the long-term vision for Tizen is moving it beyond the smartphone market, which it dominates with the Galaxy S line, to vehicles and other industries. Tizen could be used in car apps as soon as 2015.
Apple is working toward deploying iOS in cars next year, and last year The Washington Post called the QNX technology behind BlackBerry 10 “the near future of in-car technology.” In his interview with ZDNET, Nvidia’s Huang said Android also has great potential to foster connected living in automotive systems, set-top boxes, data centers, all-in-one computers and more. He called it “the most disruptive operating system that we’ve seen in a few decades.”
"There are many convergences not only among IT gadgets, including smartphones, tablets, PCs and cameras, but also among different industries like cars, bio, or banks," added Shin, who has adopted “cross category” as a part of Samsung’s strategy. "Cross-convergence is the one [area] Samsung can do best since we do have various parts and finished products."
The utopia of one app working on all devices is not realistic because of differences in technology, culture and user preferences. But the digital world also is clearly moving toward the kind of convergence Shin described, in part because consumers want it. As that happens, developers may begin to clamor for tools that close the interoperability gap.
“That is where we have a lot of work to do” to make development easier and faster, said Michael Prichard of WillowTree. “Every TV manufacturer has its own [software development kits], and we can't spend the time learning every one.”
Case Studies To illustrate the different ways of developing apps that work across platforms and devices, the Application Developers Alliance interviewed various players in the development community -- publishers, developer shops, individual developers and the makers of development tools.
The interviews revealed that the choice between building on Android and/or iOS requires a careful assessment of the in-house development team -- its strengths and weaknesses, and the potential time commitment and costs involved with either platform. Client expectations also can play a significant role in the decision, with the developer acting as a consultant who offers real- world advice and timely market research.
Some experts emphasize the need to focus first on the people who will use an app and their expectations. Others check “all of the above” options and attempt to at least experiment on every platform, even those with smaller audiences like BlackBerry and Windows Phone, and they use time-saving development tools to reach across those platforms.
These case studies explore why some developers choose to build their products from scratch on each platform, why others see HTML5 development via the Web as the future, and how tools for both developers and non-developers help them achieve their goals of interoperability. We interviewed people from the following companies:
Publishers ● Animoca ● Binary Formations ● Corky Portwine ● Famigo ● Feathr ● Jump Rope Inc. ● Mindsmack Games ● Shufflr.tv ● TradeMONSTER
Developer shops ● Applico ● Bottle Rocket ● Rocket Farm Studios ● WillowTree Apps
Developer/Consultant ● Hunter Peress ● Borys Sendik (Social Driver)
Developer tools ● Telerik
Non-developer tools ● EachScape ● MobileSmith
App Marketing ● App Promo
Publishers
Animoca Founded: 2011 Founders: David Kim, Yat Siu Headquarters: Hong Kong Products: Pretty Pet Salon (and more than 350 other apps)
Animoca’s first big seller, Pretty Pet Salon, rewards players for timely grooming of virtual pets and has spawned the “Pretty Pet” app series, with 200 million downloads. The company initially released Pretty Pet Salon in iOS, though Android soon followed in a play for the global mobile gaming market.
With headquarters in Hong Kong and offices in the Philippines and San Francisco, Animoca was primed to take competitive advantage of Android’s popularity in Asia, said Henry Oh, director of strategic initiatives. “Competitors there were focusing on iOS, and it was getting expensive to compete,” he said. Apple’s iOS required “significantly higher” user acquisition costs and marketing, he added.
Animoca saw the benefits of being the first app publisher in Asia to use the Unity engine to port games from iOS to Android. In May 2011, “nobody knew what Unity was because games during that time were built differently,” Oh said. “Now everybody in the states knows what Unity is.”
Asia accounts for one-third of Animoca’s user traffic, with the United States and Europe also each comprising one-third.
Binary Formations Founded: 2005 Founders: Kevin and Diane Hamilton Headquarters: Mechanicsville, VA Products: Home Inventory, Looky, Adam Learns Shapes & Colors
After years of software development in the Windows realm, Kevin Hamilton jumped at the chance to enter the Apple arena in 2005. He couldn’t find any apps that let him track home inventory for insurance purposes, so he learned how to code for a new platform and built one himself. The app, simply named Home Inventory, did so well in the Mac App Store that Hamilton and his wife founded their own development shop five years later.
Binary Formations has created other products since then, including companion Home Inventory apps. Hamilton built all of them exclusively for Apple products. Hamilton said he chose that path “largely because at the time Apple was the only one that seemed to be pushing technology forward.” He has stuck with the platform because he has seen the benefits of developing exclusively for Apple.
Hamilton learned, for instance, that by incorporating the features that Apple wants to promote into an app, developers can increase the odds of getting the product featured in the App Store and the Mac App Store. Binary Formations developed a strategy with that in mind for its latest release of Home Inventory, developing what Hamilton called a full-feature, flexible app.
“We are not the Notepad of the home-inventory market; we’re the Word,” he said.
Although it’s a Mac-based product, Home Inventory now has a mobile aspect as well. Users can sync to their mobile devices and back up their inventory lists on them. They can use their iPhones to take pictures of their belongings and even scan the barcodes on them.
Apple featured the app, and sales soared as a result. Hamilton credits that to the company’s decision to focus on getting the most out of what Apple has to offer. He said native apps have a better feel on the platform, and they can take advantage of features that aren’t available on other platforms. The end result is pleasing to both the app user and the platform.
“Unless you are a really big name in and of yourself,” he said, “you might not get some of that Apple love [with cross-platform development] that you would if you targeted the platform natively.”
He said the key to success in native development is to be different. Binary Formations even decided not to move forward with one project because it didn’t seem original enough. “A lot of times we will kill those projects even if they are midway through,” Hamilton said.
Corky Portwine Founded: 2011 Founder: Sam Tannen Headquarters: Los Angeles, CA Products: Digital storybook apps
For Sam Tannen, the one-man development band behind Corky Portwine, consistency of user experience is more important than debates about platforms.
“I feel that if my apps are made to work one particular way, and it’s the same whether it’s iOS or Android or whatever, I’m glad that it’s the same,” Tannen said. “That’s more important to me than having one platform that’s necessarily better than another.”
Tannen credits the Corona SDK development framework with helping his multi-pronged approach to the digital children’s storybooks he builds, drawing on music and video. “It really broke things down for me in a much easier way than someone who hadn’t made an app before would have initially been able to do,” he said.
Tannen said his curiosity is leading him to branch out further, conducting native app experiments, trying new tools and creating a few apps in HTML5. “I really like HTML5 because I find the tools I’ve been using for that are better for the type of apps I want to make... They’re at least easier for me to create these types of animations and presentations.”
For his recent experiments with HTML5, Tannen has drawn on an Adobe product, Edge Animate, to help him create two-dimensional animation with a familiar interface. “As someone who studied film and went to film school, having a tool that’s more like film editing is really best for me,” he said.
In addition to marketing through the App Store and Google Play, he has published apps in the Windows Store and the Chrome Web Store. HTML5 made it easy for him to create and get apps in the Windows store, he said.
The transition to HTML5 has not been without roadblocks, but he’s moving forward because “I like the idea of being able to make it once and put it on the Web.”
Famigo Founded: 2010 Founders: Cody Powell, Q Beck Headquarters: Austin, Texas Product: Sandbox
Famigo has versions of its Sandbox app in both Google Play and the App Store, but the apps are not identical because of the nature of the two platforms. The Android app has been around longer and actually locks the devices, almost like a child operating system. The app also rates and gives recommendations for age-appropriate applications. The iOS app is more focused on content delivery with a few other tools such as recommendations.
Android’s open platform created a greater need for Famigo’s app. Because Google Play is an open marketplace, parents’ desire for an extra level of security reinforced the need for the app. Famigo has not launched the full version in the App Store because of concerns that its curation and recommendation of apps may not get past Apple’s screening process. Apple also could change its rules.
The openness of Google Play gave the app a greater opportunity to succeed on Android, chief technology officer Douglas Ferguson said. “It’s more of a Wild West out there on Google,” he said. “The richness of the API also allowed us to do some really interesting things around blocking devices.”
Famigo always intended to launch Sandbox on iOS, but concerns about its limitations and the company’s finite development resources prevented parallel development work. Eventually, the small development team built tools such as recommendations into a hybrid platform.
“In order to call something hybrid ... there should be a substantial portion that’s not native,” Ferguson said. “We have a couple of forms and stuff that are Web forms. But by and large, all the actual screens that someone’s going to use day-to-day would be native.”
Development for Windows doesn’t appear to be on the horizon, he said. “When we’re talking to [original equipment manufacturers] and looking at the affordable tablets that people seem to be buying for children, they’re all Androids.”
Feathr Founded: 2011 Founders: Aidan Augustin, Neal Ormsbee Headquarters: Gainesville, Fla. Product: Feathr
Feathr is in the second iteration of its conference networking app, which it developed simultaneously on Android and iOS. “The first iteration we did, we actually [used] PhoneGap,” but the second is native, co-founder Neal Ormsbee said.
PhoneGap is “definitely good for prototyping something very quickly, especially if your experience is in Web development previously and you don't have the time to learn native,” he said. “But I’m definitely biased toward native coding. I think it makes [development] a lot simpler and a lot easier,” especially for products with any degree of complexity.
He added that developers often “end up wanting to match [the] style guidelines of the platform that you’re on, especially with Apple because it is actually required within certain constraints to get in the store.”
Initially marketed at individual smartphone users, Feathr also is targeted now at event planners who can include it in conference registration as a way for attendees to “check-in” at the event’s location and network in real time.
While the Feathr team started development in parallel, the iOS developers finished their version two weeks earlier to give themselves cushion time for getting it through the App Store, Ormsbee said. Google Play doesn’t have that lag time for review, so in this instance, the company focused on testing for Android’s many devices.
Feathr paired with another startup that does extensive Android quality assurance testing and tried the prototype on more than 20 devices.
Jump Rope Inc. Founded: 2011 Founder: Peter Braxton Headquarters: Chicago, IL Product: Jump Rope The App
The target audience for the app JumpRope is clubgoers who want to get quickly past the bouncers and inside the party. Users download the app, and then they pay a fee to skip the line and walk right in to participating establishments.
The app is available via the App Store and Google Play, a decision that founder Peter Braxton attributed in large part to market share. “If you built it on both of those platforms, as far as smartphone coverage, you automatically had the majority.” The company also considered what language its developers knew best and how easily the code would translate into different operating systems.
Jump Rope built the prototype on Android in 2011 as “a minimally viable product that worked,” Braxton said. But for commercial deployment, the company built it on iOS and then went back and expanded the tools and and performance for Android.
Braxton plans to start with iOS first in his next app. Called Marker, it is essentially a peer-to-peer payment system for any event where money needs to be moved from one person or group to another. The app is being built only for iOS7 and optimized for iPhone 5 and 4, though Android may follow. “We'll certainly take advantage of any tools out there that really fit the development and deployment of the app onto Android,” Braxton said.
Braxton said his development team is trying to make the app as interoperable as possible. “We do build HTML hybrid access to certain functions of the app,” he said. “You might not be able to create an event on the Web, but you can certainly pay for one.” The app also aims to be “as platform-agnostic as possible” by communicating with users via text.
MindSmack Games Founded: 1999 Founder: Sam Feuer Headquarters: North Brunswick, NJ Products: FastMall, Pixies, Singing City, Toy Store Delivery Truck and seven other apps Customers: Citigroup, HBO, History Channel, NBC, Nickelodeon, truTV, USA Network
MindSmack leaned toward iOS for its first foray into app development simply because “we’re all big fanboys of Apple, and it was only one device that we had to build for instead of a lot of devices from Android,” said Sam Feuer, founder and CEO of the multimedia ad agency.
That initial app, called FastMall, launched about four years ago and helped users navigate around shopping malls without paper maps. MindSmack made it available on Android, Nokia and Windows, but the company typically looks for traction before venturing off the iOS platform with its app and game development.
Android is “just not a place where we felt comfortable starting, but we are moving to Android for some of our apps that do well on iPhones,” Feuer said. “We get a lot of requests from users that don't have iPhones or iOS devices, so they want us to build on Android.”
A case in point: Pixies, a free photo-editing app that lets users customize their images with text and illustrations, then share them socially or print them on mugs and T-shirts. As the app gained popularity on the iPhone, Feuer said its users complained: “Hey, this is a great app, but my brother can’t use it or my sister can’t use it because they're on Android.”
As a result, MindSmack is looking to offer Pixies on Android. “But it has to make sense from a financial standpoint,” he said, “because it’s a lot of money to build a game,” especially an app like Pixies, which has 600-plus illustrations from high-level designers.”
Feuer said the case for focusing on iOS as the preferred operating system is strengthened by one fact: Apple has 500 million credit cards on file -- well behind Facebook’s 1 billion but ahead of Amazon’s 200 million. Apple’s total is expected to rise to 600 million by year’s end, Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Hubert predicted in June.
Shufflr.tv Founded: 2009 Founders: Kishore A K, Rajnish R Headquarters: Bangalore, India Product: Shufflr.tv
Shufflr.tv co-founder Rajnish R has described his video aggregator app as a cross between Flipboard and Pandora -- it pulls in content (video) from the user’s social networks and then recommends what else he or she might like to view.
Out of the gate in 2009, the company envisioned a platform-independent play, co-founder Kishore A K said. The company wanted to be seen as a value provider like Facebook or Twitter rather than as an app publisher, he said. Shufflr looked to Netflix, with its aggressive cross- platform push into Roku, Xbox and PlayStation, as the role model.
In a sense, Shufflr developed an API where the infrastructure could be applied to multiple platforms through an anchor. “We believe that video is going to be one of the key drivers all across platforms ... and we wanted to architect our solutions so that we were able to go to all these platforms,” Kishore said.
Shufflr now has about 5 million users across platforms and devices, including iPhone, iPad, Android, Facebook and Windows 8. It intends to launch an HTML5 app to work on any stream, including from the phone to the television.
The app is built around an anchored “Daily Fix” playlist that users check like an email inbox. “We architected the concept of ‘Daily Fix’ in such a way that once [it] was developed and ready on the platform, it could be delivered seamlessly on any of these devices,” Kishore said.
Shufflr also used cross-platform activity as a business development tool. Facebook and Twitter tie Shufflr users across the platforms, with social serving as “one of the integral components of our application,” he added. When a user downloads the iPhone app and shares a video on Facebook, non-iPhone users experience it there and then are pushed to download the app relevant to their devices.
Shufflr published iOS first. “The reason is that to get an app out on iOS is much easier and much faster,” Kishore said. tradeMONSTER Founded: 2008 Founders: Jon Najarian, Pete Najarian, Dirk Mueller Headquarters: Chicago, IL Product: tradeMONSTER
The online brokerage TradeMONSTER looked at mobile trends, listened to customer feedback and factored in its need for speed to identify the best solution for going mobile. The firm settled on a hybrid app as the best approach.
“Ultimately, we’re going to launch a mobile website,” chief technology officer Sanjib Sahoo said. But the HTML5 hybrid solution helped TradeMONSTER avoid issues with different browsers for now. It also allowed the company to launch in four to six weeks versus six to eight months with a native app, he said.
“I was looking for something which is cross-platform, looking for something which will save us time, effort and money and [that we] can do with the programming skill set which we already have because we were Web-based,” Sahoo said.
The hybrid is available on Android and iOS, with the latter having two versions. One is an elite version for the smartphone with a single screen; a newer version for the iPad offers a multiscreen, multi-widget, multi-layout format. An Android tablet version is coming soon, and the company expects to expand into Windows, BlackBerry and other platforms, Sahoo said.
Performance and security were two key issues when choosing hybrid. Regardless of the client or platform, the architecture is the same for all of tradeMONSTER’s apps – whether desktop, phone or tablet. “The backend takes care of servicing the data, security, reliability [and] performance.”
The company is happy with HTML5 and does not plan a purely native app. “We haven't had any performance complaints,” he said. “I am getting pinged by a lot of people [to see] if we will be willing to license our framework because it seems like tradeMONSTER has set the standard for what can be done with HTML5.”
Sanjib believes HTML5 will continue to mature. As fragmentation in the mobile market increases, he said it will force companies to adopt a more Web-oriented model. In addition to maximizing the reach of their products, HTML5 will let companies make real-time changes to those apps without waiting five to seven days for upgrades to be approved.
Developer Shops
Applico Founded: 2009 Founders: Alex Moazed Headquarters: New York, NY Customers: AT&T, DirecTV, GM, Google, Mayo Clinic, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Ryder, Toshiba, Verizon
Arun Venkatesan started developing for BlackBerry and then moved to Android because of the coding similarities between the platforms. But now he is the director of iOS engineering at Applico, where iOS is the preferred starting point for app development.
“Unless the client specifically says ‘I want an app in all the platforms,’ we always recommend just doing one platform at a time,” Venkatesan said. “We recommend you do iOS first.”
One reason is that developing for iOS is simple. “It's basically fixed width, fixed height, so you can position things exactly where you want and you know that’s going to work on every iPhone they have,” Venkatesan said. That was true even once high-resolution displays and the iPad Mini were introduced because Apple did a good job of scaling.
While Android has a larger market share than Apple, Venkatesan noted that “more people spend money on iOS apps.” Android might work better for clients focused on building audience, but building for Apple could generate revenue more quickly.
Applico typically discourages clients from building for Android and iOS simultaneously. The shop does not use cross-platform tools, and native development on two platforms requires more investment without any assurance that the app will interest consumers. But when Applico builds an iOS app, it applies the lessons learned from that effort to improve the app experience during subsequent Android development.
Although Applico recommends iOS as a starting point, the shop develops apps for various platforms. Venkatesan even developed one for Windows Phone, which he noted followed Apple’s lead by imposing strict screen sizes and other rules for manufacturers.
The Android platform is more open and the devices are in greater demand, he said. Android also is “very easy to pick up in terms of the language. ... It is very matured.”
Bottle Rocket Founded: 2008 Founder: Calvin Carter Headquarters: Dallas, TX Customers: AARP, BMW, Food Network, The History Channel, NPR, TNT
As a custom application developer, Bottle Rocket aims to build “brand experiences,” creative director Michael Griffith said. “It’s less about the platform or the device and more about thinking about how this fits into the larger picture.”
Bottle Rocket’s business is about 65 to 70 percent iOS work, with the balance in Android. “We haven’t seen enough traction outside of Android and iOS to really dedicate any serious kind of development resources against,” he said.
If a client wants to develop on both Android and iOS, Bottle Rocket typically builds about 80 percent on one platform first, then pauses to re-examine the project from the perspective of the other platform.
“We all say around here there's no such thing as a port,” Griffith said. “So if we finish or have 80 percent of that iOS experience now, we just don’t hand it over to the Android developers to then build the Android side of it. The strategist takes that experience that is the iOS experience and extracts the features, functionality and content that makes sense with the platform, and then they redesign the experience to that device.”
Bottle Rocket has created a TV Everywhere platform called the Anywhere Watch Experience that leverages best-in-class code, development, design and a fully featured backend administrative system across iOS and Android. “These platforms are very valuable, but we also look at it as a very different side of our business because it’s a combination of custom development and a leveraged platform,” Griffith explains.
Bottle Rocket currently uses AWE in the broadcast industry, where the firm does significant development. It is exploring whether similar platforms could be used in other areas.
Doing custom development means building natively and utilizing little HTML5. Although many clients want a “develop once, deliver many” approach, Bottle Rocket’s custom approach is to “develop once, deliver once,” Griffith said. He said it is the only way to deliver a highly crafted brand experience for his clients.
While the company has focused strictly on apps, it sees other opportunities on the horizon. “We have multiple clients right now where the apps we’re building are interacting with all kinds of devices,” Griffith said. One ongoing app project “takes the television to new space [where] the television can be used to interact with all kinds of things in your home.”
He added, “It’s exciting, and I think as we start to go in that space, the talk will be less about a very specific platform and more about how all these things work together.”
Rocket Farm Studios Founded: 2008 Founder: Dan Katcher Headquarters: Boston, MA Customers: Admeld, American Academy of Poets, LocaModa, Motally, Someecards, TargetSpot, VideoIQ, Yamaha
Rocket Farm Studios founder Dan Katcher admits to an iOS bias, but when it comes to quick app turnaround for clients, he said the development strategy is their call to make.
“If we feel the design was mature enough and made enough sense and was clear enough, we would absolutely” develop on both Android and iOS, said Katcher, whose firm has developed 40 apps in multiple categories on those two platforms as well as Windows.
For dual launches, the firm runs parallel development teams, with an Android lead and an iOS lead. The company also might assign an overall architect to make sure “the APIs are defined consistently and correctly [so] that everyone’s got a great understanding of the data, interchange and the format,” Katcher said.
Rocket Farm has done a handful of Web apps with HTML5, he said, but the focus is increasingly native development with every native app having Web components built into them. For Notestar, a sheet-music app Rocket Farm developed for Yamaha, the store function runs in HTML5 wrapped in a native iOS app.
“We always want to do really polished, sleek-looking stuff with the right kind of effects,” Katcher said in explaining the preference for native development.
The company has hired a Windows developer but not yet seen much demand for building on that platform. As for BlackBerry, which in September agreed to be sold to Canadian financiers, he said “everyone has pretty much given up on that.”
Katcher is struck by the passion of iOS developers. He recently asked one to develop on another platform. “His answer was, ‘I like writing for iOS.’ ... I don’t ever hear that from Android people. ... Apple people are so loyal to the stuff that it's hard to budge them off of it.”
WillowTree Apps Founded: 2007 Founder: Michael Prichard Headquarters: Charlottesville, VA Customers: BabyCenter, Philadelphia Eagles, SB Nation, University of Virginia
WillowTree founder Michael Prichard said his mobile development company advises clients to take a “holistic approach” as they evaluate platforms. The choice can evolve and reflect how users are interacting with the clients’ content.
WillowTree built a native app for SB Nation, the sports fan network, but “then they found that people [who were] searching for sports were actually coming through the Web, so we actually shifted models and built their mobile Web property and let go [of] the native [app].”
The company has four separate teams developing for Android, iOS and Windows, as well as Web-based apps in HTML5. The work is split in thirds among Android, iOS and the Web.
Prichard basically defines “hybrid” as a native app that uses the Web to display HTML pages. “Some people are also using the word ‘hybrid’ for cross-platform tools like Accelerator and PhoneGap,” he said. “We have done a lot of [hybrid] work where we build an infrastructure that you can leverage across multiple devices.”
Developers/Consultants
Borys Senyk Headquarters: Washington, DC Customers/Products: Social Driver, BlueShift Local, Cambridge Associates, Amentra
Borys Senyk’s experience on two projects before working as a senior developer at Social Driver illustrates how client goals shape decisions about development.
On one project that created an app targeting Georgetown University students, the developer shop and its startup partner surveyed students about their mobile platform preferences. The responses overwhelmingly favored building the app for the iPhone.
Senyk said the startup initially thought it could prove the app’s concept with iOS development but then considered other factors, including the simplicity of the app and the abilities of the technical team working on the project. The overall analysis pointed them toward developing an HTML-based app with a wrapper.
In another startup partnership, Senyk went into the project knowing the team wanted to place the app on as many platforms as possible, including Android and iOS. The team started the project with the Appcelerator development tool because a team member had experience with it. “Our audience [for the app] was pretty wide, so we were looking at targeting people who weren’t necessarily the most savvy,” he said.
After building the prototype with Appcelerator, they decided to go native instead and built the end experience in-house on mobile, drawing on a vendor with strong iOS experience.
“We looked at the tools available,” Senyk said. “We looked at the prototype we made with Appcelerator, and we looked at the end product in terms of functionality and it being quite a bit larger than it was at the time when we created the prototype.”
Both clients had cross-platform publication of the apps as an ultimate goal, he said, so the decision about building native or hybrid apps “really came down to functionality.”
Hunter Peress Headquarters: New York, NY Customers/Products: SoundTracking, HiFiCorder, Big Camera Button, FastOCR
Developer Hunter Peress said his Java skills and faith in Google led him to develop his first app, an audio recorder called HiFiCorder, for Android in 2009. Since then he has developed for iOS and expanded his consulting company, Ennovation, to clients in games, fashion and health.
Peress consulted on SoundTracking to execute its native Android app from launch. As the iOS app had a year’s head start, it was a moving target that took months to hit.
The Android version of SoundTracking, launched at Le Web, has been featured at No. 1 multiple times in Google Play and generated 1 million downloads in the first month. To date, SoundTracking has raised more than $5 million in venture capital funding.
Developer Tools
Telerik Founded: 2002 Founders: Svetozar Georgiev, Boyko Iaramov, Hristo Kosev, Vassil Terziev Headquarters: Bulgaria Products: Kendo UI, Icenium Customers: Boeing, Kodak, Microsoft, NASA, Reuters, Vodafone
Telerik built a successful business upon a foundation of products that are designed to simplify software development. Its suite of tools include two, Icenium and Kendo UI, that are particularly relevant to the debate about interoperability. Both tools were built upon the premise that the Web is the ideal platform for creating interoperable apps.
“We feel like it's appropriate to focus our energy for interoperability and cross-platform on that space” because the Internet is the most ubiquitous content platform, said Brandon Satrom, the lead project manager for cross-platform tools and services. “That base of the Web gets us to a starting point, and then we build the tools on top of that and services on top of that.”
The Kendo UI framework has three basic pieces: 1) Kendo UI Web, a set of widgets for desktop and mobile development; 2) a data visualization suite for rich charts and graphs; and 3) Kendo UI Mobile, an HTML Javascript and CSS framework that can either be used to target Web browsers or be packaged with Apache Cordova to build hybrid mobile apps.
Icenium is an integrated development environment available in both desktop- and Web-based versions. The product helps developers manage the various lifecycles of building hybrid mobile apps with HTML, Javascript and CSS -- from template, to development, to debugging and testing, to publication on Android and iOS.
“We handle the build process for you and deliver the package so you can actually go and submit it to the app store,” Satrom said. “We take a lot of the guesswork out of deploying to the iOS and Android app stores and unify that approach inside of Icenium.”
He added that using Icenium and Kendo UI empowers developers to target the two big app stores simultaneously instead of staggering their app releases.
Telerik has more than 100,000 customers in 94 countries. Its products have been used to create apps for the Circuit Court of Cook County, Ill., and the University of Wisconsin sports department, among others.
Telerik is looking at incorporating other operating systems into the mix it offers developers. Windows Phone is the next likely addition. Satrom said overall market realities and the current customer base shape those decisions. “A lot of our existing customers are Windows Phone users and building Windows Phone apps, so they are very keen to have support for Windows Phone on Icenium,” he said.
Non-developer Tools
EachScape Founded: 2009 Founders: Ludovic Collin, Bob Fitterman Headquarters: New York, NY Product: EachScape
EachScape chief operating officer Marci Weisler said most app development platforms suffer from the same challenge -- ultimately, customers do need developers in order to use the products because they are more toolkit than total solution.
That’s not the case with EachScape, she said. “You don’t need to be a native developer or hire native developers in order to use it, which is pretty critical to our clients.” The platform doesn’t cater to game-building or see itself as a competitor to the Unity engine.
EachScape “doesn’t have a strong feeling either way” about which platform customers use initially on the Web-based, drag-and-drop platform. Whether Android or iOS, “we really, for the most part, leave it up to the customer,” Weisler said.
To help inform that decision, EachScape will share information it has acquired on operating systems if the company has worked in that customer’s market segment. But she said “it’s really much more of a business decision than a development decision.”
Weisler said EachScape can help developers and agencies ramp up when more resources are needed. “If you’ve got limited native developers on staff -- but have particularly niche developers that have evolved out of Web-building -- we become a nice complement and a way for them to get into mobile without having to do too much native developer hiring.”
MobileSmith Founded: 1993 Headquarters: Durham, NC Product: MobileSmith Platform
The MobileSmith development platform allows non-developers to quickly create and manage customized apps for Android or iOS applications without templates or coding. But before helping a client decide which platform to choose, product manager Drew Ramsey tries to identify exactly what the app maker wants to accomplish.
Each company or developer likely has a website that already provides standard contact and address information, so he presses them for what the app functionality can specifically deliver. “The key differentiation for me is what we can do that cannot be handled through Web,” he said. “If you can do it on a Web page, you might as well make a mobile website or go the direction of HTML5.”
Early on, MobileSmith took deliberate steps to not pigeonhole itself as a platform for just Apple or Android, he said. “We made it so that if the time came that Windows and BlackBerry started going crazy, we would be able to quickly integrate that into our platform.”
The iOS and Android development teams work in parallel, with a focus on flexibility, said Sujatha Muthuswamy, MobileSmith’s senior software engineer. “They design it one time. And the code is split into both devices, but it’s up to the customer if they want to use the features on both devices or just one device.”
The main challenge comes when the developers try to fit client-requested features into both platforms without affecting the native app, he said. As an example, he said iOS users incorporate the tab bar functionality, but with Android, it’s not used in many apps. “You have to decide whether customers prefer the same tab bar functionality on both devices,” he said.
Ramsey said the dual development path poses a risk in finding dual talent competencies. “You could get an awesome iOS developer who just knows everything about iOS, has lot of user experience, design the application, and then you can hire an Android person who is not as advanced,” he said.
About three years ago, the company decided not to move forward with BlackBerry or HTML5. But Ramsey keeps his ears to the ground. “I’m the keeper of the roadmap for our platform, so whether it’s something small or something big that’s coming up, I’m going to start writing things down,” he said. “The more you hear it, the more you consider it.”
App Marketing
App Promo Founded: 2010 Founder: Gary Yentin Headquarters: Toronto, Ontario, Canada Customers: ChaCha, EveryThink, Instant Cash, Swashbuckler, Sympatico, Travel+Escape
App Promo’s mission is to help developers and publishers navigate the vast app marketplace to build successful businesses, and deciding where to market apps is part of that process.
For CEO and founder Gary Yentin, that typically means looking at iOS first. Apple users tend to make more in-app purchases and despite the 30 percent fee it charges per sale, Apple has the most credit cards on file for monetizing apps. “The process is frictionless,” Yentin said.
Android has the larger reach, but not all app makers and publishers have the resources to capitalize on it. With that in mind, Yentin recommends starting with iOS, the model that has the longest and strongest track record for generating revenue. That’s especially true for game apps, he said. “Make a really good game, [and] start to monetize as quickly as possible.”
He added, however, that Android is quickly gaining ground, and if an app is successful in iOS, it makes good business sense to quickly build and launch a complementary Android app.
Yentin also recommends native development for games instead of using tools like Unity to publish to multiple platforms. “Coming out with a game experience that leverages the platform and the native features really makes the game a better game,” he said.
The consequences of not following that path may include being rejected by the Apple Store, which has rebuffed some App Promo clients. “Apple really pushed to use the native features of iOS,” Yentin said, “and if it's just an HTML5 wrapped around to put it into the store, they actually may reject it.”
He said BlackBerry’s decision to build an operating system that works with Android apps hasn’t succeeded for the same reason because “the true value of an app is really taking advantage of the best features” of each operating system.