The Flywheel Effect

The link to this blog / study nicely sums up the relationship that mobile Apps have with market share and the viability of different smartphone platforms:

http://www.visionmobile.com/blog/2011/09/the-flywheel-effect-of-android-and-ios-and-why-their-rivals-are-grinding-to-a-halt/

LINK:

This blog post was planned to be a nice concluding commentary on the App and previous blogs.

.... [ note this blog post is a though, the research into these questions has not fully been completed ]

Businessman, BlackBerry and BBm

RIM's blackberry in the visual culture view has long held the dominant View as the smartphone choice of businessmen, however BlackBerry over the past year has been slowly losing ground in the smartphone market. Why is this? What role has RIM's inability to substantiate and expand on its mobile App platform had in its demise of market share? And where does BlackBerry look to stand in the larger smartphone consumption communities of practice?

.... [ note this blog post is a though, the research into these questions has not fully been completed ]

Idealic idyllic angry birds and Apples Apps

Typically when one talks of the App within the larger context of visual culture the image one almost always brings to mind that of the Apple iPhone App. As we have explored in previous posts, the Apple App- although ubiquitous as an icon for representing the app in visual - is in fact not the most ubiquitous platform for representing the App. That title falls squarely to the Android App. Given this flip on our popular notion of what visually defines the app, why does the cultural icon of the Apple iPhone app dominat and persist in visual and popular culture? What systems of infrastructure and agency prop up this imagery? And how does this false idalic notion of the app re-enforce our popular perceptions of the smartphone App?

.... [ note this blog post is a though, the research into these questions has not fully been completed ]

"A Robot with a Human appearance"

Websters dictionary defines "Android" as "a mobile robot with a human form." Maybe in my quest to discover more about the Android mobile operating platform I stumbled off onto a tangent? Maybe I was, or maybe I was looking to explain something else.

Presuming I didn't, what does that definition say about how we perceive and interact with a mobile smartphone operating system that currently holds 11% of the cellular telephone market? (40% of the smartphone market) What can this tell us about the users who engage and interact with this platform and its surrounding infrastructures and articulations? What can this definition tell us about how we as a society perceive and interact with our mobile telecommunications devices?

.... [ note this blog post is a though, the research into these questions has not fully been completed ]

Socioeconomics of the App Market - The Haves, and the Have Mores

In my previous post we looked at a report that put in context the percentage that smartphones have within the larger trope of the cellular phone market. What was shocking about that market was not the percentage of smartphones, but the sheer size of the cellular phone market on a global level. According to a 2010 study, 77% of the worlds population ( roughly 5.3 billion people) were projected to be mobile service subscribers by the end of 2010. Thats crazy! Crazy in a world that has 7 billion people. In a world where the richest mobile users can afford to play crazy birds on their iPhone 4S, or BBM their socialites on their Blackberrys, where on the socioeconomic bell curve are the rest of us? If mobile telecommunications companies are extending their systems of infrastructure the most remote corners of Nepal, where then do we find our poorest mobile telephone users? What does it mean to have membership in the mobile App community? What communities of practice are found around mobile App users? How do these communities relate to the larger paradigm of cellular phone users? (non-App but cellularly enabled users)

To answer these questions we must first look at what is the average cost of membership within the smartphone community? That number is particularly difficult to parse due to the myrade of smoke and mirror schemes that North American cellphone companies play with their clients, often hiding the true cost of the devise within the costs of the two year, sometimes three year contracts that clients must sign. From browsing through several cellular providers websites (ATT, Rogers, Fido, Bell & Version) , it was quite apparent that the general cost of membership started at $50.00 and topped out at around $300.00 for the most expensive devises. However those costs were masked within the sub-structure of the packaging plan. A smartphone needs to have access to the internet, and in order to access all of its features one must purchase both a data plan as well as a minutes plan. These plans many of them starting at $15 per month, separately for data and minutes. $15 a month may not seem like a huge cost of membership, but keep in mind that these plans often force the consumer into a two or three year contract with the service provider. A $15 a month minutes fee over the span of a year is $180. Combine that with the average cost of a smartphone which is around $150 and the cost of the cheapest per month data plan, and you are looking at roughly $450.00 in service alone per year, this does not take into account overages, taxes, and service provider fees associated with owning the devise.

CBC News recently released a piece that analyzes the cost of owning a cellphone in Canada with the cost of 19 other nations around the world. Their average estimate for owning a cellphone ( presumably smartphone) in Canada was $572.86 annually. Comparatively globally the price of cellphone ownership is between $149.00 in Denmark, to a high of $693.63 in Japan. The relative average was around $400. However, this survey only compared 19 countries, almost all of them were developed countries with relatively high GDPs, presumably memberships in these communities of practice are more or less tied in with smartphone ownership (the 27%), what about the other 73% of the worlds 5.3 billion cellphone users? Where do they fall in on the curve?

To explore this question further The New York Times ran an article titled "Can the Cellphone Help End Global Poverty?" that examines the relationship that the other 73% of cellphone users have with their devises. It is interesting to point out that cellphone use in the developing world functions much more heavily on text msgs, and communication as a vital tool for small businesses, and independent farmers. The article points to the huge advantage that sellers can have by being connected to the world via cellphone, and the advantage of the SMS msg as a mode of communication in lieu of placing actual telephone calls on a cellular phone. In the developing world the ability to access communication infrastructures is seen as a "just in time" aspect, where having access to the communication articulations can literally mean the difference between life or death if you are, for example: a mother in Sub Saharan Africa needing to transport your sick child to a doctor 3 hours walk away. Being able to SSM msg the doctor to see if he is even in town can be a huge life saving advantage. This is in huge contrast to the modes of practice that developed world users of cellphones and smartphone infrastructures interact and engage with the devices. Where in the developed world "just in time" might mean you accessed on your smartphone the "Google Maps" App and quickly searched your transit itinerary for your 3pm business meeting, instantaneously plotting the most efficient way of travel, which told you that a metro was leaving in 3 minutes from a transit station a few blocks away from your current GPS plotted location that you were able to run to "just in time" to catch the train.

Of course, this article was written in spring of 2008, roughly four years later, one must wonder how has the proliferation of smartphone Apps that specifically target productivity and business penetrate into the developing world markets? With the cost of membership within the broader trope of the smartphone community of practice becoming more and more affordable, how does this expanding accessibility effect those in the developing world? For smartphone companies, and App developers at what price point do smartphones have to reach in order to be accessible by the 'other 73%' of cellular phone users? Is this accessibility actually desired by the agents involved in the production and marketing of smartphones and Apps? Is the exclusivity of the smartphone membership and its associated Apps a desired trait of this community of practice? As well as what does this dichotomy of smartphone / feature phone (non smart phone) usage and membership tell us about the globalization of humanity as a whole?

The Smartphone Players: The Big 5, the Little 5, and the Quandary of the Mobile App.

According to a recent study, as of this publication smartphones have currently penetrated 27% of the mobile telephone market. In a market that a 2010 pole estimates at roughly 5.6 billion people world wide, this is a huge percentage of people who on a daily basis interact with, and are mediated by Apps. With such a huge percentage of the global population in the mix, who are the agents that make up the mobile App market? How best does one parse the smartphone App market?

To better analyze this, Wired Magazine posted a chart that more clearly shows these agents. The chart both indicates the market percentage that each agent currently controls as well as the mobile operating system that each smartphone runs and it's percentage in the market.

In terms of smartphone percentage (Handset OEMs), Apple and Noika hold the lead with 5% of the market, Samsung (Galaxy) holds second with 4%, followed closely by RIM's BlackBerry and HTC at 3%. These players make up the big 5 in the mobile smartphone market. The little players maker up roughly 5% of the market and are represented by players such as LG, Motorola, Huawei, Sony Ericsson and ZTE.

For our intents and purposes what is interesting to look at is the percentage of operating systems that these mobile devices run on. Contrary to the percentage of mobile smartphone ownership that has Apple (iOS) in tie for the leading market share, on the operating system platform, Android reigns supreme with 11% of the market. Apple's iOS and Nokia's Symbian OS - again tied - with 5% of the market.

Apple's iOS and RIM's BlackBerry OS - which are seen as the two predominant iconisised "smart phones" in popular media, play a much lesser role in the operating system game. RIM's BlackBerry holding out with roughly 3% of the OS market.

So what do these numbers mean for Apps, and the larger App developers market? What does this information do to our understanding of the mobile ubiquity of Apps? For our intents and purposes it is interesting to parse the dichotomies of agency surrounding mobile Apps and their associated mobile OS platforms. In particular the perceived dominance of Apple and Nokia in the mobile smartphone market. From an outward point of view one would assume that because Apple and Nokia lead the market share of smartphones that they would also have the most people using Apps on their smartphone devices.

For an App developer it would make sense to target the Apple market for developing your app on their iOS platform? Right? Yes, but for the random torque within the system that leads this notion astray. As Wired's circular diagram points out, Apple does not hold the lead in operating system because of its singularity as an operating system. iOS only runs on Apple devices, iOS Apps therefore only run on Apple devices. When it comes to the larger trope of Mobile smartphone platforms, Android takes a dramatic lead because of its multiplicitous ability to cross platforms.

On the operating systems level, it is a completely different ball game. Players that were prominent on the Handset OEM's trope completely disappear at the Operating Systems trope (Such as Nokia, HTC, and Samsung). Likewise on the Operating Systems level, new agents emerge that are not present on the Handset OEM level. New agents that dramatically change the game such as Symbian OS (Nokia OS) BlackBerry OS (RIM) and more importantly Android. What we have here is a re-catagorization of Smart phones based on Operating System. Android here takes the lead because of its ability to run on different mobile devices (Handset OEMs) Androids multiplicity in this context is smart because it enables an App developer to reach a broader spectrum of the Smartphone market with a single coding designed for the Android platform.

The App in the Android market becomes rather like a boundary object for App developers and App users alike, permitting them to cross between different tropes: that of the Handheld OEM. For a developer having an App on the Android OS permits him/her to disseminate their App across a multitude of devises: HTS, Motorola, LG, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, ZTE ..etc. By teaming together and choosing a common smartphone mobile operating system, the agents infrastructure associated with the mobile smartphone created a viable competitor to deal with RIM's BlackBerry and Apple's iPhone who dominate the idea of a "smartphone" in popular visual culture.

By parsing this dichotomy between Handsets and Operating Systems and the respective agents involved, this allows us -the App interested- to have a better insight into how each of these different mobile platforms effects the App on a multitude of levels. How do Apps differ on different OS platforms? What is the user experience like? Who uses Apps on different mobile platforms and devises? Why might one choose one devise /mobile OS platform over another? etc etc.

Now that the gears in the proverbial "clock" App are ticking, I'll leave you to ponder while I charge my iphone. These questions and more will be explored in later blog posts.

Finding meaning by digging through cyber history

The question of where to start has plagued me these past few days. The first and seemingly easiest thought is to ask "What is the "app"? followed by "what is the history / origins of the "App"? When did this term get coined? ..etc etc. Sounds simple enough, nothing a quick google search query of "App" cant do to get the shovels digging. Right? Not exactly.

With a topic such as "the app" which is as ubiquitous in our every day contemporary lexicon as "dot com" was at the peak of the internet bubble, it is difficult to find relevant search query by simply typing in "app" into a google search. Similarly because the term "app" has only existed since slightly after the release of Apples "iPhone" during the summer of 2007, it is a term that is almost exclusively limited to online, and tech computer savvy literary publication sources. What your simple google search for "App" turns up is a myriad of articles having everything and nothing to do with our intended query.

A google search query of "App" returned "About 1,880,000,000 results (0.17 seconds)" Among which, after the first four paid query's the search returned the Association of Professional Piercers, The Asia Pulp & Paper Co. which happens to be

Canada's largest producer of paper, as well as Molson Dry – Association des pros du party (APP). Clearly the parameters of the search must be narrowed for anything fruitful to show up.

What did come up was Wikipedia's entry page for "App" which is a start. Wikipedia has two relevant pages for our topic, one on "APP (file format) "and the other on "Application Software" or "app" for short. Half way down the page for application software you run across a link to something called "mobile application development." Most of the page deals with application software relating to a traditional computer, but “mobile” caught my attention. Clicking on that link takes you down a rabbit hole of tech geek lingo. What is interesting here are the various types of “developing environments” upon which mobile “Apps” can be developed. At the current date of viewing the wikipedia lists over 50 different types of developing environments that span across mobile platforms from Android to IOS, Palm to Blackberry. These developing environments we will come back to later on in our research, but for now for better understanding what “Apps” are we need to continue our search.