I was did a walkthrough of the Motorola Xoom running Android’s new 3.0 release for tablets called Honeycomb.
The device itself has a great feel, great screen, good performance—but once you get over that it is the same old Android. There is a lot of mediocre press around the Xoom, but I don’t see it. It seems like great hardware that is hindered by the software—something you don’t see often in mobile these days.
Let’s call a spade a spade, what makes the Xoom suck is Android. Honeycomb feels like a big phone. Not designed for the tablet context at all.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab’s we reviewed (video coming soon too) is hindered by both shitty hardware and software.
Slides from my talk at Breaking Development in Dallas on April 11. From the description:
Have you ever considered that the way you design and build a site or app might be completely wrong? Have you ever actually had to support the top devices on the market, let alone make each of them amazing? Have you ever designed or built a mobile app for devices that don’t even exist yet? Do you know how to do all of this and still come in under budget?
These are just some of the questions that are being answered deep within the mobile community. It is unlike the web. It is opaque. It is competitive. It is an entirely different medium. And it is really really hard. In fact, there is a good chance that everything you think you know about mobile is wrong.
Lots of great discussion at the conference on some of the transitions happening in web and mobile—not to mention where they converge.
Evangelists say the HTML5 movement has so much momentum that it could defeat the native app — an application that is designed to run on a single platform — in as little as two years.
On the flip side of this really great BBC article, Mashable has some really awful tips for small business owners, that I would really encourage you to ignore. With the exception of #4. Does It Solve a Problem? and #7 Give [Customers] Magical Powers (and maybe #3 Forget About It—but I don’t agree with the statement about partnerships)—I would take the rest with a grain of salt.
Coming from a family of small business owners I’m actually a bit insulted that anyone would be offering advice like mobile payments and couponing to small business owners. You might as well throw your money away.
If you are a small business and considering building a mobile app, think long and hard about what you hope to accomplish. I would highly encourage you to talk to some experience mobile developers in your city (for example attend a few Mobile Monday’s) or put some money into hiring someone to help you draft a mobile strategy for your firm. A small up front investment will save you a lot of money in the long run.
I would look to the mobile web as your answer. Can you leverage some of the tools and frameworks to reduce the cost and complexity of mobile for your business? It probably won’t be the perfect solution, but it at least lets test the waters for a minimal investment. Collect data and assess interest from your customers to see if making a broader investment into mobile is warranted. And be prepared for the answer to be “not yet.”
While at CTIA, we had a chance to catch up with Suzanne from Motorola. She gave us a demo of the new Motorola Mobile Dev Studio for how to make Android apps for Motorola products like the Xoom and the Atrix.
Thankfully other media sources are starting to question ridiculous market forecasts coming from the douchelord analysts:
We have questioned tablet shipment number forecasts a while ago and were chastised by analysts for our opinion and were heavily criticized by the analyst community. However, we are concerned, that those numbers change virtually every month and if you were to base your business on those forecasts you’d likely be bankrupt within half a year.
An app can tell you who you are dealing with, where they are and what they are doing, and then it can let you respond to consumers’ need. No other channel can do that all at once.
The BBC has a good write up on what you need to know about building mobile apps. Quoting the MMA and other sources, they’ve compiled a good reference article to what one might expect when considering building a mobile app. I can’t agree more with MMA’s 10 tips for a successful app:
Start with business need – don’t jump on the bandwagon
Look at how mobile enhances communications already in place
Don’t just replicate what you have online
Consider how to deliver on the expectation of instant interaction
What happens when a two-way dialogue with consumers has been established?
Decide what is most useful to the customer and base the app on that
Utility apps last longer than those based on entertainment
Find a specialist app developer – they provide technical expertise and offer valuable relationships with the wider industry
Just because it seems everyone has a smartphone, don’t assume your target audience does
Mobile websites or messaging (SMS or MMS) have far greater reach
I especially like how they provide insight into the costs of building a mobile app:
They are expensive to create – a simple app could cost you £20,000 ($32,639; 22,835 euros) and take two months to create. A complex app could have a price tag of more than £100,000 ($163,200; 114,180 euros) and take six months to develop (and you’ve got to hope nothing happens to render it obsolete in that time). […] This price multiplies if you decide you want to make it available on more than one operating system.
The article mostly deals with apps and doesn’t get too far into mobile web apps or hybrid apps. Using cross platform tech like HTML5 can reduce costs in some cases, but often it isn’t by much.
The return on investment on mobile can be quite significant. Honestly a lot of the upfront costs are actually redefining products and services for the mobile age. Once that investment is made total costs of building clients for iPhone, Android and iPad, Mobile Web, etc tend to decrease over time.
There has been a bunch of chatter about the poor sales of the Motorola Atrix and Xoom this week. It was sparked by some shit brain analyst that speculated on poorer than expected channel sales, of which I can’t find his source.
It got picked up by the media looking for a story. The media gratuitously used the plural of analyst in their reports, though I can’t see any report of poor sales from anyone else but the ass clown from Pacific Crest. Verizon and AT&T have both come back saying sales are fine
I had a chance to review the Motorola Atrix at CTIA a few weeks ago (we reviewed the Xoom too, video coming soon). While it pretty much feels like your typical Android device, the Lapdock accessory turns the phone into an interesting new class of mobile device—a MacBook Air-sized laptop being powered by your smartphone, complete with keyboard, Firefox web browsing with Flash and email.
Together they seem to me like a pretty powerful combination to me for $200 bucks ($500 with the Lapdock). If I wanted a new Android phone, I would take a serious look at it.
I chalk all this scuttlebutt up to another case of analyst douchelords looking to cash in on mobile by making bold and often false claims to sell reports and “research.”
My rule for reading between the hyped lines: unless they clearly state the source or sample size disregard it entirely.
Despite ducks quacking and impending flight to Australia, Brian and Chez shot our fourth episode discussing what’s next—how mobile is changing everything.
First up, everyone is searching for answers, including at events like CTIA, SXSW and WWDC. But are the answers at these events? Is there something bigger happening that Web 2.0 or the dot-com boom before it?
We also talk about the concepts behind responsive web design and how it differs from mobile design. Is this good or bad and what do people need to pay attention to?
Chez tells a very heartfelt story of Twitter and the Japan Earthquake and how mobile technology can help us save lives.
We revisit Twitter’s dickbar fiasco one more time. While the dickbar might be gone, it still lives in infamy. Brian shares a quote from mobile developer Marco Arment that explains why.
Brian talks about Mobile Intellectual Property (IP) and a recent issue pinch/zoom had our client portfolio. He explains how mobile projects differ from web projects in terms of protection.
And finally Brian shares that his book is available online in its entirety for free at mobiledesign.org