Evolution of Mobile Technology and development platform over last decade

Mobile application has been the topic for all top stories for an entire decade. It has not only put the somewhat stagnant Internet world back on track, but has also fueled and even generated several new ecosystems around it. Cutting edge mobile development is also responsible for causing the dominance of social media over traditional Internet media because it has taken internet connectivity from people’s office, home and work to their hands where it is closer to their individual personality. It has opened a whole new world of innovative ways of user engagement.

If I look back 10 years, mobile device was this black miraculous but big device that allowed us to make calls without wires. At that time nobody would have thought that this device would change the world forever over the course of just 10 years. Mobile application development has evolved at an unprecedented rate and there is nothing in the entire digital or Internet realm that comes close to it.

In the beginning of the last decade mobile development was entirely controlled by mainly Telcos . Mobile devices were running on slow analog wireless services and user engagement was limited to only making calls.
Around early-mid decade a mobile chipmaker company named Qualcomm, created an application platform called BREW initially exclusively for CDMA and later on for GSM as well. This was considered the great break through because it led to a greater user engagement, creation of applications and games on the tiny mobile screen.
During the same time mobile devices itself were going through its own evolution where it was getting lighter and thinner. Transition was happening from grey and black screen to color screen. More and more manufacturers like Motorola, Nokia, Sony joined in the revolution and almost all of them created their own mobile application development platform. One such platform was Symbian started by Nokia and later adopted by many other manufacturers including Motorola and Sony. This platform took the whole eco system to new high. It dominated the space for more than 5 years and even now when it is on steep declining curve in terms of adoption, the numbers are big enough in some parts of the world to let it continue to be the largest for quite a while longer.

While the Symbian wave was on the rise, parallel a Canadian company, Research-In-Motion (RIM), launched its own platform with a catchy brand name Blackberry. RIM had given a whole new meaning to the term ‘Business Communication’ by merging it with mobile devices. That was quite a powerful platform that literally liberated the business community from the need of wired PC world for business communication.

This was actually the first assertive indication of how powerful a mobile device could be. However the problem was that all these platforms were more or less still within the controls of OEM/ Telcos or were the closed IP of companies like RIM. So creativity was always limited to few people and each one of them were trying to solve one problem at a time so there was never a complete solution.

Within same time frame in Apple launched a compact music player called iPod. That instantly became a phenomenon. It was almost a flawless device with outstanding usability, game-changing looks, all in a compact size. The only thing was missing from this device was that it couldn’t make calls. But the iPod gave the world enough evidence where Apple was heading and raised all kinds of speculations around the mysterious device hoping that it will be a game changed when it comes to mobile devices. This was proved right in 2007, when Apple finally unveiled iPhone. It became an instant rage all over the world once again because of its simple yet powerful usability, impeccable looks and compact size. It had everything that one could want in a mobile device and more.
It was also built on a powerful mobile development platform that almost eradicated the gap between any traditional web development platform and mobile platform that existed at that time. After the launch of iPhone, within a year Apple launched iOS and opened up its platform for mobile developers. In just a few weeks, Apple app store was flooded with as many as 227 apps per week and every app was trying to out do each other in term of usability and engagement.

After seeing this success it was just a matter of time for others to follow suit and join the Mobile Application Development platform bandwagon. Google followed it soon by launching open source mobile development OS and platform called Android. Since it was open source, several mainstream manufacturers who were lacking their own platform that could rival iOS quickly adopted it. Manufacturer like Nokia, RIM and Samsung have also created their own mobile development platform like MeMe, Blackberry and BADA . Microsoft also showed its intention to participate in highly crowded and competitive battle of mobile application ecosystem dominance by launching new mobile development platform Windows Mobile OS7.

It is evident that we are living in the time when entire mobile application development ecosystem is thriving and growing at enormous rate and like every other business opportunity it also posses a question around its feasibility and sustainability in such a fierce competitive market. There are two ways for mobile application developers to generate revenue from these mobile platforms. First option is a one-time revenue generation through downloads cost but it is not enough to sustain the growth. Second option is to generate constant stream of revenue by creating in-app opportunities either by in-app advertising or in-app direct transactions.

In-app advertising is the area where companies like InMobi have a large part to play. To help maintain the growth and success of the application development platform, it is very important for ad networks to be able to help with higher monetization as well as to promote these apps.


Excerpt:
Mobile in the last decade
Mobile application has been the topic for all top stories for an entire decade. It has not only put the somewhat stagnant Internet world back on track, but has also fueled and even generated several new ecosystems around it. From a big black bulky device to make calls without the use of a wire, mobile today has become a device that has made a lot of other devices redundant. If we look back in time, how exactly has this device evolved? What was the growth trajectory? What caused this boom? And how do we sustain this size?

What Database is the best Database?

Quite often I see blogs that compares couple of databases and in the end they end up selecting a best database. I always wonder about the objective of such blogs because to me database is nothing but a solution to facilitate storing and retrieval of data in a structure manner. I am not going in to the details of structure data because that is a science in itself. The scope of this blog is limited to the fact that databases are used to store and retrieve information. So in my opinion the real question is not a blanket statement asking for what is the best database but the real question is about what database is best for particular kind of environment/application?
We all know database is just the part of an entire solution and it has to fulfill the very specific requirements of an application and this statement alone can guide us to the answer. We are living in a very evolved database era there are so many options to choose from and many companies are focusing/including various feature in their database solution. Take example of Mysql it has multiple database engine and it will be unfair to say it is best or worst database without going into the details of very specific need of it. It all depends on what is the expectation and how it is going to be used. Its default engine is MyISAM that is a good candidate for read only non transactional data but for anything else it could be the worst choice. So it just highlights the need of little more contextual diligence and purpose while choosing the best database. Similarly another open source database postgres focuses more on data integrity and transactional consistency. Many expensive database solution like oracle are taking the challenge to a completely different level they are not only investing in the RDBMS solution in fact they have started to manage each aspect of data right from storage to its performance. Their Automatic storage management and Auto tuning DB is very popular for quite some time. Even postgres offer such functionality to some extent and Mysql’s InnoDB has evolved quite a bit too. So the point is there are so many choices and so many specific feature that one really needs to drill down to the actual intent of the application in defining and selecting a best database. I would also like to mention that in the end even choosing a best database for your application is not enough. One also can’t ignore the investment in the engineering resource needed for it. It is becoming increasingly important with lots of available open source option. Since its open source so how well it works will pretty much depends on engineers who designed it and it’s not such a bad thing. Who else can do more justice to your application other than them? At InMobi we are using multiple databases and they being used because of their merit and specific contribution to solve a particular application problem.So we don't have a best database at InMobi but every application in InMobi has a database that makes most sense for it. I hope my blog will help people to solve the epic database selection problem in more contextual way and by asking right questions.

SMS – Old is still gold.

At the time of Mobile revolution SMS was created just as a very simple VAS offering where user can interact with simple exchange of text messages. Many other format of interaction came and gone but SMS is still standing tall. Despite of enormous technological advancement in the mobile VAS area SMS is still the most widely used VAS offering across the world no doubt about it. So the question arises what makes it so popular over much advance interactive mobile channels like WAP chats and IMs. The answer is easy it’s the sheer simplicity of use, Freedom from device, calling plan or service parameters and low cost factor. These are the few well qualified attributes that make SMS a force to recon with and provide it unfair advantage over any other interactive VAS offering.
We at mKhoj (India’s first interactive mobile advertising and deal platform) recognize the power of SMS and that’s why we chose SMS as our preferred medium for mobile advertising and publishing great deals . mKhoj service is available on all other platforms also like WEB or WAP but we are expecting a big chunk of traffic to come via SMS. In order to keep our SMS interaction with customer simple and useful mKhoj has deployed a very unique platform. mKhoj platform derives the most accurate interpretation of user’s request by using technology to correct spelling mistakes and use synonyms to return the best possible results . mKhoj is committed to provide excellent user experience and value for our services by deploying the best technology available .I truly believe that in future mKhoj would to able to bring some more innovation in mobile VAS industry but for now here is one for the power of mighty SMS!!!

Signing off from Mumbai
Mohit Saxena

My First Blog

Mobile industry has come a long way in India from 15-10 years ago when having a phone was considered as a status symbol now mobile revolution has changed the face of Indian society forever. In contrast a mobile phone is now a must have commodity among young and the restless population of India.With almost half a billion untapped population and around 6 Million new mobile subscriber additions every month Indian Telco are experiencing unprecedented industry growth. But this enormous growth is purely circumstantial .Indian telecommunication companies are still way behind their international peers in term of quality and service commitments. They are making money because there is no real outside competition and people don't have better choice. They are providing the service on their terms and there is huge bureaucracy and delays involve whenever someone tries to bring any innovation into the system.In rest of the world where voice margins are either evaporating very fast or they have already dried up due to saturation.So all those companies are turning their head to VAS and willing to try anything new that can compensate their drying voice margin.

Indian Telcos should learn from their international peers and work on multi stream revenue generation before its too late. They should create a environment to promote new innovations in VAS and WAP area.Incubation and support of small VAS/WAP oriented start up will have very good long terms effect for these companies. These small company can make their offering very strong and work as a boost shot in their arm when voice margin will reach to a saturation level.With the hope that it will happen soon and telcos will act as a mentor and provide much needed support to all small VAS/WAP startup signing off from Mumbai.
-M