School
Professor
Date
Mobile Computing Applications
Purpose statement
We live in a world of technology. Therefore, mobile devices have gained a multimedia communication legacy that will be hard to replace in the future. The mobile devices range from smartphones with a wide range of OS applications including Android, iPhone, BlackBerry and Windows among others of which there are some that are under development today. This study aims at exploring the diversity of mobile applications and preferred mobile operating system and economics among consumers. Are they enhancing lifestyle, more to business or killing business? The term app is a short form of software applications that have been popular listed as word of the year in 2010, by the American Dialect Society. Nowadays, the mobile devices can be purchased with several applications which are pre-installed like the web browser, and e-mail client among others. There are many options for mobile apps. The use depends on personal preference. For example, if consumers do not want to use pre-installed applications they can be removed by the use of a simple uninstall process to create space for more applications.
A mobile device user can get apps that are not pre-installed through the platforms like app stores where they are readily available. In the year 2008, these apps began to appear and are being operated typically by the Apple app store, and Google Play store which is the owner of the mobile operating systems. Most apps are downloaded from the platform to the mobile device that is targeted (Joorabchi, Mesbah, & Kruchten, 2013). The mobile apps were first offered to give general productivity and retrieve information that may include the calendar or e-mails. But due to the public demand and the ready availability of the tools, they brought about rapid expansion to various categories like those that are handled by the desktop application software packages.
Statement problem
The mobile apps are innovations that increase communication freedom. Consumers have over-relied on these apps hence disadvantaging small businesses in favor of large companies who can afford to pay for several mobile developments. The government regulatory agencies in the year 2014 began to regulate and curate apps for fair usage (Khalid, Shihab, Nagappan, & Hassan, 2015). Mobile phone users have opted to using the mobile apps and according to a comScore study carried out on May 2012, the study results reported that in the previous year, many mobile subscribers were using mobile apps than they did in browsing the web in their mobile devices.
Significance of the study
It requires one to consider the constraints and the features of the mobile devices when developing apps for a particular mobile device (Henricksen, & Indulska, 2006). Most mobile devices use a battery, therefore they use processors that are less powerful as compared to the personal computers but they have many more features like location detectors and cameras. In this case the developers must consider a wide array of sizes of the screen on the mobile device, the mobile hardware specifications and its configuration since there is an intense competition when it comes to mobile software and the changes within each platform. The mobile devices apps are tested first by the use of emulators within the development environment, then it is later subjected to field testing.
There is also the mobile user interface (UI) which is an essential design. This design considers the use of constraints and context, mobility and the screen input as an outline for the design. The mobile user more often focuses on the interaction with the device and the interface that is entailed with components of both the hardware and the software. The user in-let enables the users to manipulate a system whereas the user output allows the system to show the effects of the user’s manipulation. The developer must increasingly value engagement metrics as they continue to adopt a model that is ad-supported. They can use some minutes to measure the app engagement by the users and, the number of times the app has been referred to by a friend. Hence the developer must understand the expectations of the users and their wants so that they can exceed their expectations.
Reference
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