Critical.
Authoritative.
Strategic.
Subscribe to CIO Magazine »

What's Stopping Mobile Apps From Taking Next Step?

Lackluster coverage is a threat to smartphones everywhere

With the arrival of the Motorola Droid and the Apple App Store milestone of surpassing 100,000 apps, the buzz around mobile apps has never been louder. All of this, mind you, in a little more than a year since the App Store launch.

But will mobile apps reach even greater heights? The popular answer is "yes," although significant hurdles lie ahead.

[ Microsoft software chief Ray Ozzie says smartphone apps are overrated, CIO.com reports. | Tell that to Apple fans and their 10 great iPhone hobby apps. ]

Currently, Apple dominates the nascent mobile app market with 115,000 apps, according to Mobclix, which tracks mobile trends and operates a mobile ad marketplace. iPhone owners collectively download 100 million apps per month, whereas Android and RIM owners download 20 million and 300,000 per month, respectively, according to Mobclix data. Put another way, the average iPhone user (amazingly) downloads 11 apps per month.

The onslaught of mobile app downloads shows no signs of slowing, either. The recently released Motorola Droid already has 10,000 apps that run on it. Hot Droid apps include Twidroid for twittering, Meebo for Android for instant messaging, Google Voice for Mobile (which was banned from the App Store), among others.

The iPhone's many game apps has made the smartphone a serious competitor to standalone game devices like the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS. Android is also emerging as a strong mobile gaming platform, even outperforming Apple, according to Mobclix. Apple has shown market-leading strength in social, entertainment, utility and navigation apps.

According to market research firm Gartner, the top 10 consumer app areas for 2012 will be: money transfer, location-based services, mobile search, mobile browsing, mobile health monitoring, mobile payment, near-field communication services, mobile advertising, mobile instant messaging, and mobile music.

Nevertheless, mobile apps face a few giant obstacles on their path to stardom. One hang up has nothing to do with smartphone innovations and killer apps-rather it's the wireless coverage that many mobile apps depend on to deliver great customer experience.

One of the most popular iPhone regions is the San Francisco Bay Area, which is also home to a majority of iPhone app developers and, of course, Apple itself. But try tapping into AT&T's 3G coverage while shuffling down Market Street in San Francisco. It's almost impossible, rendering critical mobile apps that need the Internet to perform their functions practically useless.

What's the problem? Verizon advertisements aside, AT&T does have 3G coverage in the San Francisco Bay Area. But the 3G network is as gridlocked as the Bay Bridge during commute hours. Consider this freakish stat: Since 2008, AT&T's network in the San Francisco area has experienced a 3G data traffic increase of 2,000 percent. "Californians' appetite for mobile broadband is unprecedented," said Loretta Walker, AT&T's vice president of external affairs for the Bay Area.

Hoping to get a handle on the problem, AT&aT has invested nearly $65 million since 2008 to upgrade some 850 cell sites and improve its 3G wireless network in the San Francisco Bay Area. It's a race of sorts to help iPhone customers gain better 3G wireless connectivity, improve performance and enhance in-building coverage.

Lackluster coverage is a threat to smartphones everywhere, and so AT&T plans to upgrade its 3G network nationwide with HSPA 7.2 technology, which should deliver considerably faster mobile broadband speeds. The upgrades are planned to begin in the fourth quarter, with completion expected in 2011, AT&T says. In the hot zone that is the San Francisco Bay Area, AT&T plans to roll out HSPA 7.2 next year.

Another hurdle: the mobile apps themselves. While iPhone apps are all the rage today, there's the risk that they will burn out like so many tech fads. Or maybe they'll simply carve out a niche in the great computing universe-far from the prophesized paradigm shift.

"Yes, iPhone has a lot of momentum, unquestionably," Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's chief software architect, told CNET at Microsoft's Professional Developer's Conference earlier this week.

"But I think the phenomenon we're in right now is the app phone. And if you look at the depth of apps that are on these phones, they're not very deep. It's not like Office or AutoCAD, where there are just thousands of man years that have gone into developing these apps. They're relatively thin apps that are companions to some service."

Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.

More about: Apple, CNET, etwork, Gartner, Google, Microsoft, Motorola, Nintendo, RIM, Sony, Verizon, Verizon
References show all

Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
Users posting comments agree to the CIO comments policy.
Login or register to link comments to your user profile, or you may also post a comment without being logged in.
Related Coverage
Related Whitepapers
Latest Stories
Community Comments
Tags: Android, iPhone, mobile applications, Motorola Droid, smartphones
Latest Blog Posts
Whitepapers
  • Oracle SOA vs. IBM SOA - Customer Perspectives on Evaluating Complexity and Business Value
    The Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) model has become the cornerstone of business computing. Its ability to greatly accelerate the development of business-critical applications promotes business agility, decreases time-to-value and total cost of ownership (TCO), and greatly increases the efficiency and strategic value of IT. SOA implementations tend to be complex, IT decision makers should carefully consider their choice of a SOA platform in terms of its ability to simplify the fundamental development, deployment, and management tasks involved. Read on.
    Learn more »
  • Consolidated Storage for Virtualised Server Environments
    This research brief is based on a recent Tech Target survey with more than 200 storage administrators and IT professionals in mid-sized and enterprise-class companies, and focuses on how these decision-makers view the storage-related challenges that result from server virtualisation. See the results.
    Learn more »
  • Endpoint Buyers Guide
    It takes more than antivirus to stop today’s advanced threats. Protecting corporate assets requires a complete security solution that includes anti-malware, host-based intrusion prevention (HIPS), web protection, patch assessment, application and device control, network access control, data loss prevention, firewall and other capabilities. In short, you need an endpoint protection solution. We examine the top vendors according to market share and industry analysis: Kaspersky Lab, McAfee, Sophos, Symantec and Trend Micro. Each vendor’s solutions are evaluated according to: Product features and capabilities, Effectiveness, Performance, Usability, Data protection, and Technical support.
    Learn more »
All whitepapers
rhs_login_lockGet exclusive access to Invitation only events CIO, reports & analysis.
Recent comments