Mobile technology news for 20th August 2012:
Over 18 months ago, Twitter started advising developers that they should not build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream twitter consumer client experience and it now appears that they are starting to enforce these usage guidelines. Now that Twitter is developing its own proprietary apps the game has changed from the early days and Twitter is keen to see developers innovating with the Twitter API rather than just replicating existing functionality.
While Steve Jobs appears to have posthumously won the Adobe Flash Wars it appears that despite Adobe pulling the Flash Player plugin from Google Play on Wednesday last week there still remain some very valid security concerns around the lack of a "kill switch" to completely disable Flash. Once the company completely stops issuing security patches and updates, these vulnerabilities will potentially be open to hackers until Adobe Flash is eradicated completely.
The deal between Square and Starbucks has added a sense of urgency at PayPal to compete for mobile payment services in consumer apps although it appears that they may already have a lead now it has been advised that PayPal is testing mobile payment services in 30 French restaurants. On the back of existing deals already in place with 15 retailers including Home Dept and Office Depot, the test in France lets McDonalds customers order food on smartphones through the McDonalds app and pay with PayPal. A separate line has been setup in the test locations to streamline pickup of pre-ordered meals in the restaurants which can deliver a massive return on investment.
While Cost Per Install (CPI) has been the traditional measurement metric for mobile app developers there now appears to be a new golden metric, Profit Per Install (PPI) which aims to change the focus from pure install data (which doesn't necessarily reflect user retention and usage) over to a metric which is far more representative of the overall success of the app. While getting users to install an app is always a worthwhile exercise and the first step towards monetisation, measuring true profitability from users has always been difficult and it may now seem that there is a solution available.
While there are many apps that have attempted to bring traditional crossword puzzles to the mobile sphere, the New York Times has retained its place atop the Apple app puzzle pile until recently when Michael Crick's "Crickler" app hit the app stores and brought with it a new innovation in puzzles. The Crickler crosswords don't cross like traditional crosswords, they are single lines of pulsing tiles whose spaces on succeeding lines fill up with correctly guessed letters and determined by your skill level or handicap. Users can purchase additional Cricklers for 99cents or use the freemium app that displays ads within the app.
While entertaining apps like Angry Birds tend to get all the attention, Apple has been quietly pushing the virtues of mobile apps for business to help them streamline how they have traditionally worked. While suites like Apple iWork offer traditional business tools like word processing, presentations and spreadsheets, small businesses are increasingly turning to a combination of third-party apps to deliver all of the services they need. By streamlining their businesses with existing apps, small businesses can deliver an immediate return on investment (ROI) through efficiencies delivered from these apps and those that are big enough can then look at developing a bespoke mobile app for their business that combines all of the commonly used features found in the many third-party apps they are using. Furthermore, many developers are interested in discussing licence agreements for existing technology so it may even be feasible to licence an existing app which can be then customised to suit a particular business requirement without the need for developing the app from the ground up.
