Everything about Mobile Apps that you want to know!

What are Mobile Apps?

Mobile Apps are applications or services that can be downloaded and installed to a mobile device, rather than being rendered within a browser, which helps to meet personal use or business requirements for the user. The app may pull content and data from the Internet, in similar fashion to a website, or it may download the content so that it can be accessed without an Internet connection. A mobile app may be a mobile Website bookmarking utility, a mobile-based instant messaging client, Gmail for mobile, and many other applications.

The small-business demographic is pushing the envelope when it comes to mobile technology adoption. The fact is that they have really being doing so for the last decade.

The Corporate Mobile App Strategy Survey, published by partnerpedia.com, found that 78 per cent of the large companies with 500 employees or more had a desire to purchase apps. Of those, 90.2 per cent intend to buy mobile solutions for use by employees, while 43.9 per cent wanted apps for customers. The survey, which also included responses from companies with less than 500 employees, found that 22 per cent are buying apps for contractors.

And, close to 40 percent of small-business owners are using five more mobile apps to run their business, according to an ongoing survey conducted by J2 Global.

The number of mobile business apps – some cloud-based, some residing on the device – is proliferating. We can expect to see even more being developed as a result of the new HTML 5 standard, says David Bradshaw, a research manager at analyst IDC. HTML 5 makes it possible to develop apps simultaneously for different mobile platforms, so that a business that chooses to roll out a sales app. There are also a growing number of apps designed specifically for mobile use. These can be very generic or targeted at particular sectors.

Business Advantages of Mobile Apps:

If personal mobile phones and tablets are now an integral part of working life, how can enterprises turn this to business advantage? Many organisations have started carefully, by allowing employees to access the firm’s email and calendar applications from their mobile devices. Even this can save time and money.

The advantage of an enterprise app store is that the IT function can configure apps appropriately before they are downloaded, and create blacklists or whitelists of apps for users. IT then has a single point from which to manage the provisioning and decommissioning of apps and the implementation of security policies.

However, most of the companies allow users to choose their own mobile apps, because users understand their own needs better than the IT function. Whichever approach is chosen, it is still hugely important to put security policies in place to protect corporate data.

Mobile Apps are popular with business owners and their customers. With today's market going mobile, Apps help you keep pace:

Benefits for Business – Apps:

• Build relationships
• Build loyalty
• Reinforce your brand
• Increase your visibility
• Increase your accessibility
• Solve the problem of getting stuck in spam folders
• Increase sell-through
• Increase exposure across mobile devices
• Connect you with on-the-go consumers
• Generate repeat business
• Give you tools that are driving the "New App Economy"
• Enhance your social networking strategies

Symantec's 2012 State of Mobility survey has revealed an uptake of mobile applications within enterprises across the globe.

Commissioned by Symantec, Applied Research spoke with 6,275 organisations in 43 countries from August to November in 2011.

The survey highlighted an expansion of both adapting and customising mobile software for business purposes across the board -- 71 percent of enterprises stating that there were at least current discussions concerning the ways in which custom mobile applications could assist their business, including the idea of custom 'stores' for employees to download authorised and corporation-related applications.

In terms of an improvement in business practices and increased efficiency levels, according to the survey, 73 percent of small and large corporations alike have enjoyed a positive result through the adoption of mobile technology.

What’s New in Mobiles apps market?

As the smartphone market grows, so too do the apps you can use on them, uses of mobile app technology to get you up to speed with your handheld device and its potential.

Following are the trending Mobile Apps top opportunities that are already taking hold of the mobile app market or that we expect to take off in the near future.

Mobile Health

In the recent days Mobile apps are changing the way healthcare industry do business, permeating every step of the health and core aspect of their operations.

Nine percent of all cell owners have apps on their phones that help them track or manage their health.

"I was surprised to see that almost one in ten cell phone users have a health app. I thought it would be lower,” said Susannah Fox, Associate Director of Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project and author of the report, 85 percent of American adults who use a mobile phone today 17 percent have used their phone to look up health or medical information. The percentage goes up to 15 percent for mobile phone users aged 18 to 29-years-old. Only 8 percent of mobile phone users aged 30 to 49-years-old and 11percent of aged people use health apps.

Urban cell phone owners are also more likely than those who live in suburban or rural areas to have a mobile health app on their phone.

Many consumers also have health-related apps on their smartphones to get nutrition information, count calories, calculate body mass index and learn new exercises, the survey found.

Localized Deal Updates

The explosion of location-based technology was revolutionary in the app world. Now we’re using that location information to deliver personalized and relevant updates and alerts. The number of apps and services that support hyper-local experiences is on the small side, but this is an area that is ripe for growth.

Location-based services like Loopt, Foursquare and Gowalla are all investigating ways to let users know not just when their friends are nearby, but what offers are available in their areas.

Mobile Travel

Mobile technology has revolutionized the travel industry: Countless travel apps have popped up, promising to enhance your experience in foreign lands. There are lots of useful travel mobile apps helps users to book the flights and also allows passengers to virtually "check in" into airports using foursquare. Customers may also share their experiences through other social networks.

Half of the airlines have already implemented mobile services for flight search and check-in with close to half also providing boarding passes, ticket purchase and flight status notifications.

The latest Airline IT Trends Survey reveals that a whopping 93% of airlines have mobile services for passengers as a top investment priority over the next three years, with 58% investing in major programmes. It predicts that information technology and communications (IT&T) spend as a proportion of revenue is expected to stay stable, at around 1.65% in 2012.

While only half the respondents, made up of more than 50% of the world's top 100 airlines, expect IT spend in 2013 to increase in absolute terms.

Social Media

Mobile social networking is social networking where individuals with similar interests converse and connect with one another through their mobile phone and/or tablet. Mobile Social Apps that can connect you to twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, LinkedIn, Flickr together where you can post status updates, share photos, videos, likes, retweets. For instance, the photo sharing apps that support the widest range of share targets tend to be more popular. Even apps like Path — which by design are meant to be private — have learned that it is essential to allow users to post their data to other networks, like Facebook.

Mobile Commerce

The world is increasingly becoming mobile. The technology creators of today are creating goods for the mobile consumer. The concept of social commerce can be taken literally, as in making a purchase directly through a social media property. Far more important is the degree to which content shared through social media is influencing purchasing decisions, which is happening on a massive scale. 33 million consumers shop with a mobile phone according to research firm Experian Simmons. 24% of U.S. adult online iPhone users and 21% of Android users have used a shopping application in the past three months. (Source: Forrester, 2011)

The ways of communicating with your customers is changing and businesses need to adapt to these changes in order to stay ahead of their competitors.

Sources:http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/symantec-survey-shows-surge-in-mobile-apps-switching-it-focus/69999

http://www.airport-world.com/news-articles/item/1678-mobile-apps-changing-the-face-of-airline-travel-%E2%80%93-it-survey