According to Microsoft, their Windows Phone Store now features more than 300,000 apps and games as of late last week. Two months ago, that number stood at 255,000 apps. A month later, 270,000. The interesting aspect of this milestone, as Softpedia also notes, is not so much the number of apps, but the rate in which they were added:
Windows Phone apps generally received much higher ratings.
This milestone is much more important...
What works in one market will fail miserably in others. Not only is this true for physical consumer products – it’s also true with regard to mobile apps. Hence the dramatic uptick in localization testing over the last decade.
Of course, localization testing often highlights issues after the fact, once the app has already been developed, and in some cases, launched. So how can you ensure that your app’s international success equals (or exceeds) its domestic success before launch?
Answers can be found by taking a closer...
It’s one thing to trust an app that counts your steps throughout the day. It’s another thing to trust an app that helps to diagnose you with a serious illness. As the number of healthcare apps continues to grow, the questions remains: Can healthcare apps be trusted?
This is becoming a key question lately for consumers, healthcare professionals, app developers and the media – and it’s one that we wanted to briefly address in...
Mobile apps are no longer a novelty; they are an essential component for almost all businesses in all industries. Of course, some have arrived at this conclusion years ago, while others have experienced a bit of a delay. Namely, airlines.
While most airlines now offer an enhanced user experience via mobile apps, not everyone has followed suit. NDTV recently covered a story highlighting the app development...
Staying connected with your target audience means being easily accessible. How is this accomplished? Hint: It’s not always through a native app. Sometimes, as BetaNews recently pointed out, a mobile website is the better option.
The author reminds us that, “there are now more than one million apps in the Apple app store but a study by Deloitte’s showed that 80 percent of apps get less than 1,000 downloads each.”
What does...
Like any business entering into a new market for the first time, it is of vital importance for mobile app testers to understand the temperament of that market. As Silicon India recently discussed, the China mobile market represents an intriguing landscape with a high ceiling, but it is not without its own set of challenges and nuances.
The People’s Republic of China has a population...
Isn’t it a pain when you have to buy or download an app 2 or 3 times if you want the different versions created for your PC, your tablet and your mobile device? Isn’t it a much BIGGER pain to be the one that has to develop or test 3 separate versions of that application?
Microsoft thinks so, and they may be just the first platform to dive into the idea of unifying their...
One of the other-worldly features of mobile devices is their ability to track your exact location. Can you imagine the sordid stories throughout history that may have been re-written had this technology been invented sooner? You can almost imagine the courtroom; “Where were you on the night of…”
Anyway, there are two main ways to collect and distribute this type of information in the present day – Beacons and Geofencing – and both have their advantages. More on this in a...
At what speed do you read? In fact, time yourself and see how long it takes you to read this 600 word post. Ready….go!
According to a speed-reading test sponsored by
Necessity is the mother of invention – and despite our advocacy – it’s how many brands are introduced to the benefits and mechanics of in-the-wild testing.
A great example of this can be found with, well, just about any app that leverages location-based...
Let’s face it, there are apps these days that are always in the news… for good or for bad. You know some of the ones I’m talking about – Snapchat, Tinder, Instagram, Angry Birds, Shazam, and the list goes on. So why are these apps always in the news? Because the businesses that created them are app-centric…meaning the apps are the business. These businesses were born in the mobile-era, so they revolve around their mobile apps and invest heavily in them. While these apps may be...
According to Forrester research, native mobile apps outperform their HTML5 counterparts.
HTML5 apps are a one size fits all approach where just one set of code is created for every platform. Native apps are designed specifically for a certain operating system. One of the major points of differentiation in the performance of each type of app...
By the end of last year, Apple’s App Store had brought in $10 billion, 3 billion iOS apps had been downloaded in December alone and Gartner was predicting that 1 billion mobile devices running Android would shop in 2014. Both the Apple App Store and Google Play reached the 1 million apps mark and web use via mobile devices made a dent in traditional web’s traffic. What else happened in the mobile world last...
Of all the apps in your life, the one you hope is most secure is your banking app. Unfortunately, those responsible for many banking apps are making some major security missteps, leaving the apps – and their users – vulnerable. Research done by Ariel Sanchez of IOActive found that...
Games are one of the most popular mobile app categories and now some people are betting that they can help launch wearable tech into the mainstream – or at least that games could be really cool on wearables.
So far, the public hasn’t latched onto any one wearable model. Google Glass isn’t widely available yet and the few smartwatches haven’t made much of a splash. The biggest hit in wearables right now are fitness trackers, but most of those rely on a companion mobile app to let users...
BlackBerry is going back to its roots. The handset maker is reportedly re-embracing physical keyboards and focusing on corporate clients rather than woo everyday consumers with sleek, touchscreen phones.
RIM took a cue from other mobile manufactures and introduced touchscreen phones with the launch of
The Federal Communications Commission is the latest organization to leverage the power of in-the-wild testing to obtain user feedback under real-world conditions.
Last week the FCC announced that it will be using ordinary folks like you and I...
Mobile app security is a growing concern, but most companies are still struggling to keep up. Android has traditionally been the operating system associated with mobile security issues, but recent stats released by HP prove that iOS developers are also fighting an uphill battle.
From
Get ready for another Android OS version … and less fragmentation. Wait, what?
Google – whose Android operating system is famous for openness but also for being incredibly fragmented – has officially released details about its next sweet OS version! And with this version (4.4 aka Kit Kat), Google is...
As consumers continue to flock to mobile for different needs, well-established companies are re-thinking their customer engagement approaches. This rethinking almost always includes a larger emphasis on mobile and a unified omni-channel brand presence.
Staples...