The latest figures from Canalys Research show that smartphones out-shipped desktop computers last year with a growth of over 62% year over year.  That’s not counting tablets (which Canalys categorized under the PC fold) which was 15% of the total PCs shipped. 

While the numbers are for shipments and not for sales, it would be safe to assume that smartphone sales are closing-in quickly with PCs.  It won’t be long before it surpasses PCs on sales as well.  This wouldn’t be surprising given the fairly affordable costs, portability and the growing power of smartphones compared to PCs.

What it means for 2012
Mobile will be one-step closer in becoming the world’s primary online content consumption medium.  This puts even larger stress on the importance for businesses to gear their online presence with mobile in mind.  We’ll start seeing a shift in thinking; mobile phones will no longer be the “third screen”, it will be the first.  Early adopters will start looking into mobile-first strategies and they will blaze the trails on rich mobile content that utilizes the best of this year’s web and mobile technologies. 

2011 saw mobile shopping grow as much as 30% during the holidays in the US.  People are not only using their mobile phones to make purchases, they are also using it to find further information or compare product prices while they are inside physical stores.  In fact, a study found that 52% of shoppers used their mobile devices inside stores last holiday season in the US for various reasons, from calling friends for advice, to comparing online prices. 

Amazon caused quite a stir last December with its Price Check app which allowed customers to scan barcodes using their mobile device and find the best prices from Amazon’s store.  What it did was essentially turn brick and mortar shops into Amazon’s showroom, where users can test and hold items and make purchases via their mobile.

What it means for 2012
Retailers were upset with Amazon’s app, calling it unfair that the online retail giant didn’t have to pay state taxes and could therefore offer much lower prices than actual physical stores.  But this is the future folks!  Mobile is here to stay and there are huge opportunities here for brick and mortar shops.

The era of setting up shop and waiting for customers to walk in is ending.  That much was apparent in 2011.  This year, we’ll start seeing more shops engaging their customers through the power of mobile.  Shops will not only be a showroom, it will be an avenue to provide a rich shopping experience for customers.  Social media will play an important role, with people sharing and receiving shop experiences via social networks through mobile.  Retail stores can provide something online shops cannot offer: an experience.  Mobile will play a huge role in that.

2011 saw a number of high-profile mobile payments solutions rolled-out, from Google’s tap-to-pay solution Google Wallet, to the mobile credit card processing firm Square.  Banks are starting to take notice with the likes of Visa and MasterCard either partnering to other tech firms or offering their own mobile payments solution.  Mobile phone manufacturers also started releasing NFC-equipped mobile devices.  Telcos are starting their own alliances such as Verizon’s and T-Mobile’s Isis solution.

All of these efforts are starting to pay-off.  By the end of 2011, PayPal reported processing almost US$4 billion in mobile payments.  Starbucks processed 26 million mobile transactions since launching its app a year before. 

What it means for 2012
2012 will be the year when these platforms will start taking off to the mainstream.  Payments providers and technology firms will be pushing to polish their payments solutions, ironing out kinks that would eventually make the experience as seamless as possible.

Again, the important factor here is the experience.  Convenience will be a major selling factor in getting the average consumer to embrace mobile payments.  Part of the large adoption for Starbucks was how their solution made it more convenient for their customers.  Their payments solution shortened lines and made payments as easy as possible.

Earning trust will be a hurdle in widespread adoption as well.  Traditional financial institutions will have the edge in this regard.  However, they will not necessarily have the resources to roll-out high-tech solutions on their own.  Thus, we will be seeing more partnerships between banks, technology firms and telecoms in rolling out mobile wallet solutions.

This year, mobile payments is expected to grow leaps and bounds.  PayPal’s parent company eBay expects its mobile payment revenues to nearly double to US$7 billion for 2012.  The global increase in uptake of smartphones will create a huge opportunity in mobile payments.

The Android and iOS battle has been gaining a lot of media attention, from their endless patent litigations to the huge market share they are enjoying.  At the end of 2011, Android had overtaken iOS to the top of the charts at the expense of Blackberry and Symbian.  App developers have been bouncing between the two operating systems.

But the bigger picture is this, there are still way more feature phones than smartphones in the market today.  The platform war is a long way from being over. 

What it means for 2012
The media coins the mobile race as a two-horse battle between Apple and Google.  In truth, it isn’t.  There is still a huge market for smartphones waiting to be tapped.  Android may be the first choice for first-time smartphone buyers by the end of 2011, but the volatile mobile platform race can make consumers swing from one way to the other.

The truth is, today’s consumers are more informed.  They like choices, and they like to have the best they can afford.  This year will see Microsoft’s partnership with Nokia start to pay-off (in products at least), Apple’s next iPhone will be out, RIM’s restructuring may bring better Blackberry devices and Google will respond with further improvements to Android.  All of these can shift market share to any of these players, and there is still a huge global market to exploit.

This industry-wide “fragmentation” of platforms will put more importance for developers to start to consider creating apps for multiple platforms.  Cross-platform development tools such as ours will flourish and HTML 5 web apps will continue to increase.

We hope to hear from you and we look forward to seeing you there!

Kung hei fat choi everyone!

致我们最尊敬的客户，合作伙伴，股东，员工还有你们的朋友和家人。谨此请允许我代表JMango的每一个成员，祝愿您和您的家人新年快乐，事业繁荣昌盛，身体健康。龙年大吉大利。

致我們最尊敬的客戶，合作夥伴，股東，員工還有你們的朋友和家人。謹此請允許我代表JMango的每一個成員，祝愿您和您的家人新年快樂，事業繁榮昌盛，身體健康。龍年大吉大利。

Kính gửi các bạn hàng, các bên đối tác, cổ đông, nhân viên, gia đình và bạn bè bốn phương,

Thay mặt toàn thể nhân viên của JMango, chúng tôi xin gửi lời Chúc Mừng Năm Mới Nhâm Thìn 2012 tới các bạn với mọi điều tốt lành.

Chúc các bạn một năm mới thịnh vượng và sức khỏe dồi dào!

2011 saw a huge growth in the advancement of the JMango platform.  In a span of a year, we’ve introduced enhancements that will allow the platform to stay at the cutting edge of mobile development:

• NFC support and QR codes enabled
• HTML 5 support
• A new UI system that automatically detects what device the application is being installed to. The UI of the app is automatically adjusted to create the best native application experience possible.
• A revamp of the development environment to increase ease of use and efficiency.
• Added new communications protocols to give app developers more choice
• New device hardware and local storage support
• Added compatibility to the latest mobile operating systems
• Toughened security protocols to comply with or exceed the Payment Card Industry standards

We aim to set the bar higher for 2012.  In order to speed up development of the platform, we’ve opened a new arm at The Netherlands.  Called the Global Centre of Excellence, the office will be dedicated solely to the research and development of new mobile technologies.  The new department will expand JMango’s IP portfolio and develop the company’s global technology strategy.

Slated to open in the coming months, we will be looking to hire the best programmers in the region, so keep a look out for job opportunities and announcements here on our blog, Twitter Feed and Facebook page.

2012 is set to be a very exciting year for mobile.  This year, we expect mobile commerce to boom, and mobile payments to explode.  The competition between the mobile operating systems will continue to push development into an even faster pace, bringing new exciting features for us to take advantage of.  Smartphone adoption will continue to rise, opening new opportunities for businesses, institutions and organizations.  This year will be big, and JMango will be at the head of it all.

We wish you and your family a wonderful holiday season and a prosperous new year!

The Asia CEO Awards is presented by American Express.  The award represents the grandest alliance of local and international business people ever created to promote the Philippines on the world stage. As one of the largest events of its kind in the Asia Pacific region, it is considered a must-attend occasion for business leaders active in Southeast Asia.

We’ll be posting photos of the event here at our blog so stay tuned!

What Steve has accomplished in his life is nothing short of legendary.  He was the first to make the computer – then a powerful tool only engineers could master, personal.  Every computer on our homes, offices and dorm rooms are testaments to his genius.  He changed how movies are made with Graphics Group, the company that later became Pixar.  And he did the same for the smartphone and tablet.  Now they are in almost every living room, pocket, purse and handbag out there.

His greatness doesn’t end with his creativity; Steve was also a true leader.  As CEO of Apple, he revived the company from the brink of obscurity in the tech world and made it one of today’s most valuable firms.  In his pursuit for perfection, he was obsessed in tiny details most CEOs would have missed, and it shows with Apple’s reputation for quality products.  His genius was respected by rivals such as Microsoft’s founder, Bill Gates, and influenced many of the most influential leaders of the tech world such as Google founder Larry Page and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Steve has had a remarkable effect on the industry.  His accomplishments cannot be overstated and his departure from this world will live a hole no-one can probably fill.  I agree with President Obama’s White House blog post.  We lost a visionary, and perhaps the greatest tribute to his success is that many of us learned about his death through devices that he created.  Farewell Mr. Jobs, and thank you for sharing with us your creative genius.  You’ve truly made this world a better place.

JMango’s line of mobile solutions is geared to do just that: serve your customers and improve the interactions between them and your company.  They were created out of a need, niches in the mobile industry where others have tried to serve but have fallen short.  All of our mobile services were built to complement each other, all the while working with any organization’s existing infrastructure.  Our suite covers all the bases, from purchases to payments, from basic SMS to advanced mobile features such as QR codes and NFC; a true 360-degree mobile solution indeed.

So as a Marketing Specialist for JMango, I had the nice challenge of letting the world know about how our technologies can be leveraged to improve the daily lives of ordinary people.  A video was the obvious way to go since it provided the best medium to explain something complex to everyday users without drowning them with too much information.

We decided to go a different approach and show our mobile solutions from the perspective of the end-user.  The premise was simple: follow Johnny Mango as he uses his mobile device to setup a nice movie date with his girlfriend Jane.  Everything in the video is real – they are either already deployed to our existing clients or inside our labs undergoing final testing.  It’s a nice entertaining story to watch and you’ll learn a lot about what we do too!

Now without further ado, here is the video.  We hope you enjoy it as much as our team did making it!

So, what is the difference between a native mobile application and a web application?

According to the Global Intelligence Alliance, a native mobile application is software written to run inside a device’s operating system and machine firmware to perform a specific task, whether it be a game, a mobile wallet or a calendar.  A web application on the other hand runs inside the device’s web browser and requires all or part of it to be downloaded from the web each time it is run.

So how are they different?  Well a mobile application is built specifically for your mobile device’s platform and it typically needs you to install it onto your device in order to use it.  This brings some key advantages, namely the ability to run even when you do not have internet access, and since they are tailored for specific devices they are usually able to use device-specific features such as cameras, sensors and GPS.

A web application on the other hand is usually coded in a browser specific language such as HTML and Java.  It is built to run in as many devices possible, provided that they have mobile browsers capable of running the site.  They are typically cheap to build but are limited by the programming languages used to build them so they may not be able to take advantage of device-specific features.

At this point, I think it is worth noting here that simply resizing your web site to fit a smartphone or tablet screen does not make it a mobile web application!  That’s called a mobile optimized website.  A mobile web application is much more than that.  The differences are usually subtle, hence the confusion around this topic of interest. 

To put things briefly, web apps are utility driven; they have a specific purpose beyond that of a mobile website.  They are interactive in nature, recognizing touches and taps on touchscreens and may have access to the device’s storage for quicker loading.  To illustrate, check out the Financial Times’ mobile site and compare it with its mobile web app (for iOS devices).

That said, with the increasing sales of data-connected mobile devices, and the increasing use of mobile devices to surf the net, there is no longer any excuse for any business not to have a mobile optimized website.

Why are apps important?

Mobile applications existed on your phones even before the age of smartphones.  Your phone book, SMS messenger and, for those of you that had mobile devices in the late 90’s, that game of Snake on Nokia handsets, were all mobile applications.

Back then, manufacturers dictated what apps phones came with and they served as fixed features that differentiated their offering from the rest.  However, Apple changed all that with the introduction of the iPhone and its App Store.  When Apple gave developers a Software Development Kit (SDK) for the iPhone, we started to see applications that we had only dreamed about.  What the phone came with in the box was no longer important, what now mattered was what functionalities users can add to it using applications.  The age of the smartphone was upon us.

The smartphone is now today’s Swiss Army knife; a tool that through mobile applications can do almost everything, from checking today’s news and weather or watching your favorite movies, to booking taxis and making online purchases.  Some apps can even check your heart rate, tell you how many calories you’ve burned during the day or when best to wake up based on your sleep patterns!

Now, mobile application development has become an industry in itself.  There are over 350,000 applications in Apple’s App Store, and over 250,000 apps in the Google Android Market.  These main players are closely followed by the independent app store GetJar (150,000), Nokia’s Ovi Store (50,000), Blackberry’s App World (38,000) and the newly launched Windows Phone Marketplace (25,000).  In the short time these markets were up, Apple’s App Store has accumulated around 10 billion downloads worldwide, while the much younger Android Market is catching up at 5 billion downloads!  Forecasts predict that by 2015, mobile applications will be a US $29 billion industry.  To put those figures into perspective, by the time you have finished reading this article, around 200,000 apps will have been downloaded at a cost of US $300,000.

Besides the consumer market, applications are a great opportunity for businesses to connect with their clients.  According to IDC, 100 million smartphones were shipped in the first 3 months of this year, compared to 55 million for the entire year of 2010.  Add to that Google’s research showing that 80% of smartphone owners use their mobile devices for shopping related activities of which just over half (53%) make a purchase and 68% visited a business online or in person following the mobile engagement.  These are great statistics, but as the research shows, this isn’t where it will stop.

Beyond connecting with customers, businesses are also finding the use of mobile applications an effective means of cutting operational costs.  Mobile devices, particularly smartphones and tablets are quickly replacing less portable and more expensive computers and laptops in the workplace, saving up to US $17.6 billion!

So, why the hype about web applications?

Good native mobile applications are not simple to build.  Their superior user-experience comes at a cost in terms of time and effort, which translates to high development costs.  Add to that the plethora of operating systems out there, each with their own development environments, and the cost of building an app for a wide range of devices, it adds up quickly.  This is where web applications come in.  They are simply cheaper to create.

Web applications never really saw mainstream interest until last year when Google developed their own HTML 5 applications.  The web has been with us for sometime now so there are a ton more web developers out there willing to roll-out a web application for you.  Since these apps only run within a device’s web browser, not much development effort will need to go into building a good UI and device-specific requirements. 

That aside, web applications are also cheaper to deploy.  All you need is a domain and web server and you’ll be in business.  Since you are running these apps on your server, you no longer need to pay entry fees or share your revenue with app stores such as Apple’s and Google’s.

However, there is a caveat.  Due to the connected nature of web applications, they come at a cost for users.  You need to be connected to the Internet for many of these apps to function, and data connections are an extra cost for your users.  This becomes an issue in both the developed world where data consumption is stressing already overworked networks and even more so in the developing world, where networks and connectivity are poor and large data plans cost prohibitive. Some mobile browsers now support offline browsing, but it can severely limit a web application’s functionality. 

If web apps are easier and cheaper to build, why do companies still go with native applications?

In a study by the Global Intelligence Alliance, companies that offered both web and native apps found that their users adopt and spend more time in the native app version.  30% of these companies actually saw 100% higher usage and volume in native applications than web applications.  The study also showed that native apps lead to higher click-through rates (CTR) than their web app counterparts for ad-serving firms.

Let’s look at Facebook’s recent mobile statistics as an example. Facebook recently released statistics that approximately 250 million users access the social network through their mobile devices. With some clever math, you can break that number down further into each mobile platform. The result? An estimated 222 million users access the site through a native app, while only 28 million are estimated to do so using the web variant.

Case and point, to all you iOS and Android users out there, how many of you open Google Maps in your device’s browser instead of firing up the pre-installed native application?  If you have an Android device, when was the last time you watched a YouTube video in your device’s browser instead of using the native YouTube app?  When was the last time you used Facebook or Twitter on your mobile browser instead of the native app?  Chances are, your answer is never.

In a separate study by Gomez, they found that a huge majority of mobile users are not satisfied by the performance of the mobile web.  74% want pages to take less than 5 seconds to load, and factoring network performances, 77% of mobile web apps and sites take longer than that to load.  57% of these unhappy users will not recommend those sites to their friends and a huge chunk (43%) will not return after their bad experience.

Why does this matter?  With the growing complexity of web apps, load times are getting longer.  Network performance is also outside the control of the app publisher, creating a potential for an increase in unsatisfied customers.

Right now, native apps hold a considerable lead over its web counterparts in terms of features, accessibility, user experience and speed.  Since they are installed in your device, native applications will always enjoy a speed advantage over a web application that has to be downloaded every time you need it.  In addition to that, native apps are also much slicker to use.

Another factor is security.  Native mobile applications are inherently more secure than web based applications.  While both native and web apps can be susceptible to malicious attacks, the need for web apps to connect to the internet makes the user vulnerable to phishing attacks that can expose sensitive information.  Native applications do not need to use mobile data as much as web applications do.  In fact, some native apps skip network connections altogether.  This basic feature of a mobile app gives it a huge advantage over a web app in terms of security. 

Of course, the safety of both web and native apps will rely heavily on the developer’s skill.  A poorly encrypted native app will be just as un-secure as a hastily developed web app created by a developer who does not understand the new security features introduced by HTML5.

Lastly, the operating system the app will run on will ultimately determine what security features can be utilized.  Some operating systems (like Android 2.3 and below, and WebOS) do not have encryption baked into the OS.  Developers will have to be familiar with the unique quirks of each OS and determine how to create apps that are as secure as the platform would allow.

Each has its strengths in specific niches

We’ve explored the individual strengths of each type of app, but what about the strengths of each app in different niches? Content providers for example, such as news companies will see web apps as the ideal choice, where content updates need to come at short intervals.  They can integrate their existing web content for quicker updates and at the same time bypass the revenue cuts from app stores on their subscriptions.

Games and social networks on the other hand will enjoy the greater power a native app provides them.  Close device integration allows native apps to take advantage of more hardware features of a device.  This is particularly useful for social networks, where location services coupled with media sharing services are important.  Games and tech companies will benefit from the smoother performance a native app brings.  Being integrated with the device’s OS allows for processes that need extra computing power. 

Financial institutions benefit from higher security with a native app.  Native apps do not need the device’s browser, so users won’t be that susceptible to phishing attacks from incorrectly typed URLs and since native apps do not need a data connection, packet sniffing from unsecured networks become less of an issue.

Merchants however, can benefit from both web and native apps.  With NFC paving the way for contact-less payments, the security and device integration of native apps will become more important.  However, the quick content updates and relatively low-cost of web apps will allow them to show-off their wares to an increasingly mobile consumer.

People in the net are heralding HTML 5 as the future of mobile applications. Is this the case?

Yes and no.  While more companies will eventually embrace mobile web apps, and as more users embrace mobile data, there will always be a place for native applications.  If the current trends are anything to go by, the future will be a blend of the two technologies. 

The line dividing native applications and web applications will eventually blur as native apps become more and more connected to the web, downloading new content from the web on demand.  More tools that allow developers to create native apps from HTML 5 are becoming more mainstream, and mobile development platforms such as ours are continuing to drive development costs down while allowing businesses to connect with more clients over a wide range of devices.

So where does JMango sit in all of this?

We aren’t leaning on either side, since we give our customers whatever they want, whether it is in the form of a native app, a web app or both.  Our patented mobile development platform allows us to build apps for all the major mobile operating systems using a single code-base, effectively lowering development costs, allowing our customers the freedom to choose what best suits their business and budgets.

Which one is for you?

Going mobile is a huge step that requires a considerable amount of resources to complete, and some effort to promote in order to reap the maximum benefits mobile can offer your business.  In the end, only the business owner can decide which route to go for.  There are advantages and disadvantages for each, and the business owner has to choose one or go for both depending on his client’s needs, geographic location, market specifics, resources, strategy and purpose for going mobile. 

To learn more about what best works for your business, be sure to contact us to discuss your needs and objectives.

Utilizing the Agile Framework along with our development strategy “Write Once, Run Anywhere”, significantly simplifies our over-all effort which in turn gives us the ability to deliver straight forward solutions across multiple mobile platforms with competitive project estimates. It’s beneficial to our clients since a working product with tangible functions is delivered in a span of weeks rather than months.

The Agile framework also gives us the opportunity to accommodate client-driven updates in the features of the product. It allows us to manage scope creeps effectively and minimize risks in project schedule. Performing sprint planning, daily scrums and retrospective meetings enables our project team to work out issues independently and continuously improve the way we deliver our products.

Applying the Agile Framework is never easy. As Walker Royce, VP IBM Software Services, states it in his May 2009 whitepaper titled “Improving Software Economics”:

Most organizations that depend on software are struggling to transform their lifecycle model from a development focus to a delivery focus. This subtle distinction in wording represents a dramatic change in the principles that are driving the management philosophy and the governance models. Namely, a “software development” orientation focuses on the various activities required in the development process, while a “software delivery” orientation focuses on the results of that process.

Although Agile is paradigm shift from an engineering driven software development to economics focused software delivery, we still value the best practices and tools from the traditional software development to cater to our client’s processes and compensate the gaps in the Agile framework.

JMango’s agility is brought about by three essential factors that are organic in our company. We have forward-thinking leaders who continue to challenge the status quo and give us the opportunity to grow and mature our delivery process.  We have always been in close collaboration with our clients and proactively sharing insights on making our delivered solutions better. Lastly, we have dynamic teams that are flexible and ready to take on the challenge of continuous learning and refining how we provide value added solutions to our clients.