This is Swipe, a blog by pinch/zoom about mobile, design, user experience, usability, development and the future of technology.
Come help us create the next generation of mobile products. We have a very busy year ahead and are looking for a variety of roles, including Mobile Designers, Mobile Developers (iOS and HTML5) and Account Directors.
If that sounds like you or someone you know, please email hello@pinchzoom.com and let us know!
Chetan Sharma has compiled a list of mobile predictions for 2012 from various industry thought leaders. Some very interesting insight into the year ahead. I’ve listed the top answers here:
iOS is still the titan of mobile browsing. Down from 54% in November and 61% in October. 25% coming from iPhone, 24% iPad and iPod touch just 2%. Android is just 16% coming mostly from phones.
Next month should be telling to see if holiday sales gives iOS a larger lead. And we’ll see if the Kindle Fire boosts Android’s overall web browsing percent.
Source: NetMarketshare
Joe Wikert interviews me about our new HTML5 mobile publishing platform pinch/zoom Press that we created to make mobile publishing easy.
Some of the highlights of the interview:
A great post on the value of hiring “10x Teams” or teams that can scale beyond themselves, not just 10 times the people – or “butts in seats” as I refer to them. The idea is five of the right people is better spent than building one team of ten. That extraordinary people can do far more than regular people. And you should hire for the extraordinary.
My favorite part of this post is this diagram, which shows the qualities you need in a 10x Team. From my experience, this diagram is spot on for creating the perfect team that can solve really hard problems and create some pretty amazing shit.
I think we see this at a lot of great companies, but most clearly at Apple versus Microsoft or Google. Apple has created far better products with less resources than the competition. And now the market reflects that – Apple created 10x the value by hiring 10x Teams. Clearly the 10x Team model works.
Building a strong core team has always been a core principle of mine at each of my companies. That it is better to be focused, specialized and boutique rather than a big crank-it-out app factory. The problem in advanced markets like mobile, customers don’t always know what they want, so it can be hard for them to see the value of one versus the other.
So your small boutique firm ends up doing a bit of everything, because they are ethical and believe in building great products. But this also means while you have your A-Team, you’ve given them B-level work. So it doesn’t take long for your A-Team to feel like a B-Team.
This clearly doesn’t work, but fortunately goes away as the market matures. I think 2012 will be that year as we’ve already seen the signs in 2011.
Today I posted that we are looking to add to our family at pinch/zoom but let’s be clear: we are looking to continue to add to our existing 10x Team, we are not looking for 10 times the people.
We are looking for mobile designers to help us create tomorrows amazing apps for some of the biggest brands on the planet. We are seeking designers based in Seattle with experience in creating pixel perfect designs, that can communicate creative strategy and approach, has experience working in a fast paced, agency environment and has an eye for interaction and usability.
We offer a great salary, health benefits, unlimited time off, profit sharing, generous time allotted for education and personal projects, learning opportunities aplenty, super flexible schedule, family friendly workplace and an unrivaled team of passionate people, dedicated to making great mobile products.
If that sounds like you or someone you know, please email hello@pinchzoom.com with your job history and links to work that you’ve done.
The pinch/zoom designed – and now award winning – BBC iPlayer is now available for iPhone in Europe, Australia and Canada:
Watch a selection of the best classic and contemporary British shows on demand, including Doctor Who, Top Gear and Gavin & Stacey. Subscribe today for unlimited access, offline viewing and AirPlay.
Now you can watch the best of British television pretty much anytime anywhere… except in the United States.
When I was making the series How TV Ruined Your Life, we went out and asked members of the public to comment on a new invention we were claiming was real: a mobile phone that allowed you to call through time, so you could speak to people in the past or future. Many people thought it was real: not so much a testament to gullibility, but an indicator of just how magical today’s technology has become. We take miracles for granted on a daily basis.
— Charlie Brooker on the dark side of gadget addiction.
We’re really excited that the pinchzoom designed BBC Global iPlayer app has just been awarded the Editor’s Choice award for the best mobile app of 2011. They commented that the interface is slick and easy to use, which was one of our goals throughout the design process. Congratulations to the BBC and the pinchzoom design team.
CNET seems about as frustrated as I am about iOS and Android stats:
There are lots of metrics you can use to compare the two platforms, with new factoids arriving daily – some of them direct from Apple and Google, but more from research firms and other third parties. I decided to gather some recent competitive numbers to see if considering all of them at once helped to clarify the competitive situation.
Here is the breakdown from his research:
Read the full post for sources