MOBILE APPLICATIONS

A mobile app, is application software designed to run on smart phones, tablet computers and other mobile devices.  Mobile app is a short for mobile application, or just app. Mobile applications usually help users by connecting them to Internet services more commonly accessed on desktop or notebook computers, or help them by making it easier to use the Internet on their portable devices. A mobile app may be a mobile Web site bookmarking utility, a mobile-based instant messaging client, Gmail for mobile, and many other applications.

Apps are usually available through application distribution platforms, which began appearing in 2008 and are typically operated by the owner of the mobile operating system, such as the Apple App Store, Google Play, Windows Phone Store, and BlackBerry App World. Some apps are free, while others are paid. Usually, they are downloaded from the platform to a target device, such as an iPhone, BlackBerry, Android phone or Windows Phone, but sometimes they can be downloaded to laptops or desktop computers.

Mobile apps were originally offered for general productivity and information retrieval, including email, calendar, contacts, and stock market and weather information. However, public demand and the availability of developer tools drove rapid expansion into other categories, such as mobile games, factory automation, GPS and location-based services, banking, order-tracking, ticket purchases and recently mobile medical apps. The explosion in number and variety of apps made discovery a challenge, which in turn led to the creation of a wide range of review, recommendation, and curation sources, including blogs, magazines, and dedicated online app-discovery services.

Mobile Apps: The Future of Marketing

Virtually every day, new evidence emerges of the consumer shift to mobile. According to new data from Gartner, by 2017, mobile apps will be downloaded more than 268 billion times, generating revenue of more than $77 billion and making apps one of the most popular computing tools for users across the globe. To put these huge numbers in context by comparing them to the current world population of approximately 7.1 billion and counting, by 2017, every man, woman and child on the planet will have downloaded 37 mobile apps. In reality, considering that a large swath of the world’s population still does not have access to mobile apps or capability to download them, this means that those of us who are wielding smart phones and tablets will be downloading A LOT of apps. Looked at another way, by 2017, mobile apps will have gone completely mainstream, giving businesses a new way to connect with consumers.