To view the full press release go here

The new paradigm for native mobile application development now gives the ability for subject matter experts (SMEs) to create and manage native applications simultaneously for iOS and Android without the hassles and downfalls of external vendor relationships. SMEs know and understand their market and audience intimately and have the ability to pin point the engagement needed to meet their business goals. Giving subject matter experts this ability ensures that the mobile applications they build are focused on the audience intended to use that application.

The SmartOn Mobile™ platform allows you to do just this. Using the platform’s AppCycle™, in 3 steps you will be on your way to creating, managing and updating custom, rich mobile apps. In the AppCanvas™ you can upload your images & graphics, and customize your app’s layout using the split sections functionality.  Choose AppBlocks that you want to include in your app (social media, information page, push notifications, etc.) Then use the AppForge™ to configure, build, test and preview your app; once this is done you can publish to the 2 different app stores. The AppOffice™ then allows you to manage and update your app as needed. Whether it is to schedule regular push messages, change content in your About Us page or add new functionality, the AppOffice will help you get there quickly and easily. This makes the AppCycle a cyclical process where you can always keep your apps up-to-date and fresh.

Recently, one of the bulbs in my track lighting on my kitchen ceiling went out. The bulb was some sort of small bi-pin bulb that left the guys at two local hardware stores scratching their head when I brought in the specs of the bulb which were listed on the inside of the housing. I wrote down these details in my “Notes” app on my iPhone so that I could easily refer back to the details when I was in the store trying to locate these bulbs. After no luck at both hardware stores, I put this purchase on the back burner and forgot about it. A week or so later, I found myself in a crowded waiting room, bored and started going through my phone to clean out some old notes I had left myself. I came across this bulb that I needed. I quickly copied the details and opened up the Amazon app, hit paste and it found several different types with reviews, pricing and shipping details in a simple to read list view. I selected the one I needed, added to “my cart” and within a few clicks this bulb was on it’s way to my house. I left that doctor’s appointment feeling more productive than ever!

Without that downtime and my smartphone, I would have probably wasted an entire Saturday afternoon calling, searching or driving around to find this bulb. Smartphone devices really allow us to engage and shop in these little increments of downtime we all have in our lives. It could be the 10 minutes before bed, waiting rooms, bus stops, train rides, taxi rides… you get the point. It’s now up to brands to get in front of the user with their mobile website or their mobile app. Once you get in front of users it’s almost equally important to make the entire process simple for the user. You may be at the top of their mind and they may attempt to make a purchase but the second you confuse them or make something too complicated, the chance for them to get side-tracked or leave greatly increases. Adding features like “repeat last order” if you are a restaurant, pizza place or sub shop allows users to not only repeat a favorite order, but sometimes a user just wants something simple and this feature could be the reason why they order. This exact feature is the core reason I order from Jimmy Johns, because they have made it incredibly simple for me to open the app, tap 4 buttons and the sandwich arrives 10 minutes later.

It will be interesting to see how brands start enhancing their mobile strategy in 2012 and find new ways to engage with their customers as the mobile space starts to get more and more competitive. Brands will have to think of creative ways to gain new customers and stay engaged, giving them a reason to shop with you or better yet, a reason not to shop with anyone else!

End of 2010

• Smartphones passed PC shipments in global numbers
• Number of apps in the Apple app store – 300,000; number of apps in the Android store – 25,000

• 28% of US wireless users have Smartphones

• Market Share: Android – 29%, iPhone – 27%, Blackberry – 27%

Later in the same weekend I walked by the kitchen counter and came upon two Christmas gift lists from my kids.  They had presented them to my wife earlier and she’d left them for me to review.  Typically I have very little to do with the Christmas purchase process but in this case I was intrigued.  What peaked my interest was the fact that nearly 75% of the items on the list were Angry Birds items.  I was amused, but took the issue no further.  Later that same day my wife was diligently tapping away on her iPad and then said “Wow, I can’t believe the Mighty Eagle costs this much”.  For those of you who are not addicted to Angry Birds you may not realize what this is referring to.  I, being fully addicted, recognized this immediately.  I moved to sit beside my wife to realize that she was making a shopping cart full of Angry Birds items.  The Mighty Eagle, at a cost of $104, didn’t make it into the cart.  Many other items did, to the tune of about $250.  I began to dig a bit as I couldn’t understand how the kids had developed the list.  Did my wife walk them through the Angry Birds site?  She went on to show me on the kids’ iPad that you could connect directly to the store by using the Angry Birds app.  Each of our kids has an iPad and iTouch and had, independently, spent enough time on the Angry Birds site to develop their complete list.  These items, which apparently can’t be found anywhere else, comprised the bulk of the Christmas list and I couldn’t help but notice what was obviously a very profitable enterprise on the part of the “Angry Birds” organization.  They had managed to take a free game, originally developed to upsell you to a 99 cent purchase, and turned it into a lead generation prop for their online store (effectively).  Was it technology?  Was it their social media presence?  Was it the website?  Again it was an artful connection of customers to products through technology.  It was, yet again, creativity.

We here at Smart Online are very interested in connecting the creative people to their customers.  These scenarios are the kind that we have in mind – enabling the creative people to take control of their mobile destiny by breaking the paradigm of handing off good ideas to technologists and then hoping for the best.  If you have an app out there already and want to make a change that opens up a profitable business why not just go and do that yourself, and save yourself the work of trying to take your idea and put it in a list to hand off to external vendors or internal IT people. Simply pop into a SaaS environment, create the changes to the app, and immediately move them into testing.  I’m amazed every day by the ways that creative people are able to put those ideas into play with technology. That is what excites us here at Smart Online.

*Image courtesy pocket-lint.com

It’s very important to understand your user and get feedback from as many people as you can to enhance the application as needed. Different apps target different people, so there isn’t one rule that we can apply to every applications sign up process. Every idea or enhancement should be ran through “the user”. Whether your app is a game for kids, a grilling app for those who love to grill or a navigation app for those of us who tend to get lost too often; think about your user, why they are using your app, and where they are when they are using your app.

Once you make these changes, don’t jump to any conclusions just yet, you will want to have some analytic’s in place so that you can measure the success of the changes. While the data from the analytics and actual user feedback will be a great start, you must remember that every application is unique and additional tweaking may be necessary to achieve the results you are looking for.

Mashable posted a similar article a few days ago with some tips  to increase conversions after your app is downloaded which goes into more detail on this topic.

• Would you like to take your successful campaign app from last month and quickly build and deploy a new app for an upcoming campaign?
• Maybe recycle some of the same components as your previous app?
• Maybe don’t use any of the same components?  Use your own custom graphics, navigation, and look and feel?
• Wouldn’t it be great if you could pull up a nice web interface that gave you the power to remove a component with the simple un-checking of a box?
• Didn’t collect a valuable data point in your last mobile campaign? How about checking a box to add a field to your app sign-up form in your new campaign app?
• What if you could deploy your newly created app to just your Smartphone for reviewing internally?  Better yet, how about clicking “Publish” to have your newly created app submitted to the app stores for deployment?

This is what I will be discussing at Apps World.  I hope to see you there and if not stay tuned to SmartOnline.com or @bobdieterle on Twitter for more about this.

I’m tired of talking with customers about the high cost and long cycle time in building native smartphone apps.   I have been helping brand managers unlock the possibilities of how native smartphone applications can build consumer loyalty, target new demographics and create new engagement mechanisms.   They now have a better understanding that success does not mean building one uber-app for their brand that tries to do everything, but instead to focus their brand apps for specific purposes – that big yearly conference, support an innovative new marketing campaign, or product companion app to name a few.  But once they get that quote for $100k+ for that first app, similar quotes for the second and third apps, and then find out the expense to keep them updated and maintained the excitement fades.  And this is for just one platform like the iPhone, what about Android?  Or even Blackberry?

An example of a brand that “gets” mobile apps

Have you seen the US Weekly app on the iPhone?  I have to admit that I love it.  They have done a great job in exploiting the concept of information snacking on Smartphones. This app is fun and engaging during those short downtime intervals during the day.  When we have a few minutes free or any minimal downtime what do we do now?  We hammer away on our Smartphones – it doesn’t matter if we are waiting in line, in between anything like meetings, events, games, or now even during TV commercials.  We are all guilty of it.  Usually we do this under the guise of multitasking, that we are being super productive, especially if it is the company phone right?  No…  in more cases now we hammer away because we are bored or looking for that uplift to keep the day going.  Why do you think Angry Birds has taken over the world?  These are simple, mindless activities that are fun and maybe even addictive?  I have been advocating for brands to exploit info snacking to grow awareness and engagement of their brands.  Ok back to the Us Weekly app that has exploited info snacking well.  I didn’t plan it this way, to be honest I downloaded it for some app research that I do regularly and it hooked me.  I do not think that I am their target demographic either.  I find myself engaging with the app at some point everyday using up a few minutes of my downtime.  They leveraged the iPhone native app UI and the experience is fast and easy to flip through the daily celebrity pics.  Another cool feature of this app is the ability to tap on each picture to read a brief caption since many times I don’t recognize who these celebrities are.  Also, some of their galleries have you take quick polls like who is best dressed, etc. After each vote the app immediately displays the voting results (I vote with the majority 8 out of 10 times!!)  I started with just the pics and I am now finding myself reading the headlines more and more.  They have done a great job with providing short, 4-5 sentence headline stories so that I can get caught up with everything in Hollywood in just a few moments.  Unfortunately I don’t have an iPhone,  I have an iPad. But I have an Android smartphone, so  I went to the Android MarketPlace and downloaded the Us Weekly app expecting the same experience….  How wrong I was!  It was a major disappointment when I saw that it was the Us Weekly mobile website and nothing at all like the true native iPhone app.  Any content that I wanted to view had to be pulled from their website; even a simple navigation back to where I was took a website call and 5 seconds. In addition the stories are much longer and displayed in very small fonts on the Android screen.  Yuck!  They don’t have the photo galleries either.  So I am not using the Android app at all.  Why did they do this?  I am convinced this was not their strategy but instead they blew their entire budget on the iPhone app and didn’t have enough to do it right on the Android.

There is a better way for Wenner Media who publishes Us Weekly as well as their flagship, Rolling Stone magazine.  Smart Online’s SmartOn Mobile platform reuses native code and content to rapidly build and deploy cool apps on the leading smartphones.  The platform is designed for non-developer use so that brands like Us Weekly can break away from the reliance on external programmers and their high prices, as well as move the creation of these apps to where it should be – with the subject matter experts.  Wenner Media definitely knows how to develop an engaging mobile app. Now they just need the toolset to expand their reach.

Stay tuned to SmartOnline.com or @bobdieterle on Twitter for more about this.

It may be pretty obvious why a company should have a strong intellectual property strategy – invention protection, commercialization, royalty revenues, market exclusivity, deterrence, asset expansion, broadening innovation, etc.  But why is it Smart for an organization that is looking for a product or service to select a company that has a strong intellectual property strategy?

A company with a strong IP strategy:

a)      recognizes the value in being innovative,

b)     is willing to invest in innovation through development, patenting, etc., and

c)      is determined to implement strategies to try to ensure the continuity of operations for itself and its customers

Take for example – Apple v. Samsung, which is going on all over the world. Samsung doesn’t appear to have patents to counter-sue Apple with and, as a result, Apple has been somewhat successful in getting injunctions against the sale of Samsung’s phones and tablet.  In just the past several weeks, Verizon and T-Mobile have been trying to intervene in the U.S. case in order to prevent an injunction.  In this case, Samsung’s lack of patents could hurt Verizon’s and T-Mobile’s sales if Apple is successful in getting an injunction against the sale of Samsung’s devices.  Whether or not Verizon’s and T-Mobile’s help results in the avoidance of an injunction, lots of money and time will be spent by Samsung, Verizon and T-Mobile; and potential declining sales could result too as consumers may be unsure of the situation and might just want to avoid the issue altogether.

An injunction hearing was held on October 13^th and is shedding light on how customers might play a role in these scenarios and what results they might expect.  Because of the international ubiquity of technology and varying patent regulation around the globe, even a finding in favor of Samsung in this US court would not belittle the fact that significant negative effects are being felt by Samsung around the world from the more than 20 infringement cases in 10 countries

More than just patents in place – It isn’t just the lack of patents that can cause intellectual property issues that would result in potential interruption of business operations.  Take for example a small company or sole proprietorship that is developing a software solution for its customers.  Consider that it may or may not have patent protection and, as is often the case in small businesses, it does not have appropriate intellectual property agreements with its employees, contractors and customers.  That company could be exposed to many inventor and customer related IP ownership and assignment rights predicaments that could also result in litigation and injunctions on the use of technologies, again impacting not only themselves but also their customers.

To reiterate the point – An organization that does not get its products and services from a company that has a strong IP strategy may very well end up with an interruption in its ability to do business. What does this mean? If Company A doesn’t have patents applied for on the technologies it has developed and company B sues them for infringement, an injunction can be put on Company A.  This injunction easily trickles down to customers who are buying or licensing Company A’s technologies or services and thus can be restrained from using them.  If these technologies are important to the customers’ operations, revenues, donations, etc., then they could be negatively and significantly impacted by this restraint on their use of the technologies or services.

How would this relate in the mobile application market?

Possible scenario – an organization gets an app developer to build them an app.  That developer uses processes, methods, technologies etc. that they haven’t filed for patent protection on. This app developer is now sued for patent infringement by a company that is in the same space with a good patent portfolio or current or previous employees/contractors who want to claim their own rights to the IP.  The organization’s use of their app could be restricted by the courts and thus greatly impact the organization’s sales, services, operations, etc.

Smart Online, an innovative and leading mobile application solutions developer, with its volume of innovation and strong patent strategy, positions itself to be able to offer continuity of business and even to take offensive position to prevent others from infringing on Smart Online’s and its customers’ innovative solutions.

With enterprise, non-gaming, mobile application development still in its infancy, a few patent infringement cases have just begun to surface and injunctions could soon follow.  Business oriented mobile application development is an emerging market and these applications’ movement into the market could, in the not too distant future, be at Moore’s Law speed.  This sets the stage for large quantities of new intellectual property development.  A large majority of mobile application and solutions developers appear to have little to no strategy for protecting the intellectual property that is being created.  Smart Online, a leader and innovator in the mobile application development market, is proud of its intellectual property strategy, the protections and opportunities it gains, and the benefits it offers to its customers and clients.

You can feel confident in Smart Online – they continue to strive to provide strength through industry leading innovation and their intellectual property strategy!