22 | SERVICES
Best Cross-Platform Tools Provider Marmalade
Kony Solutions
Marmalade is one of the pioneers of the crossplatform tools space. Its platform lets developers build one code base and deploy to multiple platforms with just one click. Close to 100,000 developers have chosen Marmalade and games such as Cut the Rope and Draw Something were made with it. Beyond the SDK, Marmalade runs an service to help connect developers to lesser-known app stores. Over the last year it paid out over $500,000 to developers as part of this program. In 2012 Marmalade extended the functionality of its SDK with enhancements based around location, notifications and social media.
The KonyOne platform lets developers build an app once and deploy it across more than 9,000 devices, seven operating systems and multiple channels. The US-based firm is already working with 70 Fortune 500 companies in airline, automotive and insurance. Kony had a memorable 2012, doubling bookings and extending into added HTML5 apps and the enterprise BYOD (BringYour-Own-Device) sector with off-the-shelf, vertical-specific apps for banking, healthcare, retail, travel and other areas.
Appcelerator Appcelerator’s Titanium platform is one of the world's most popular solutions: there are 50,000 Titanium-built native apps in production today on 75m devices. The system leverages over 5,000 device and OS APIs to create native iOS and Android apps as well as HTML5 web apps. The firm reckons customers who standardise on the Titanium Platform get to market 70 per cent faster than with native development and can quickly optimise business results with analytics–driven insights into user behavior and app performance.
Mippin Mippin has been around for years but pivoted away from its news aggregation project to turn itself into a cross-platform app-creation engine that allows content owners to build great-looking apps in minutes. It offers these services from its own platform but also licenses it to OEMs and operators, so they can extend the functionality to their own partners. This year, Mippin developed the BlackBerry App Generator. It’s an an online tool that enables publishers to build apps for BlackBerry device in less than ten minutes, and distribute it via BlackBerry App World.
appMobi
Usablenet is a pretty different beast from the games-focused Maramalade and Unity. While they target hardcore developers, Usablenet has reached out to mainstream brands in retail, travel, banking and more with a platform that re-configures a full web site for mobile (or app) and requires no technical expertise from the customer. It delivers versions that work across any device, plus Facebook and other channels. The firm works with 25 per cent of the Fortune 1000.
US firm appMobi is one of the industry’s most enthusiastic flag wavers for HTML5 web apps. It has over 50,000 developers using its services to apps using just one code base. appMobi's solution supports in-app payments, push messaging, user analytics, gamification and game acceleration. It is billed on a per app/per-active user basis. Last summer, appMobi embarked on an audacious promo, offering free access to its tools – with no fee chargeable until an app has reached 10,000 monthly users (after which it costs ten cents per additional monthly user).
Unity Technologies
July Systems
A previous winner at the ME Awards, Unity achieved a notable milestone in 2012: hitting 1m registered developers for the first time and over 6m total downloads. Unity reckons nearly two per cent of the world’s 16m active developers are using its tech to develop their projects. Clients include Coca-Cola, Disney and EA. Mirroring the growth of the Unity platform is the Unity Web Player, which lets gamers run 3D content created with Unity directly in the browser. It’s had 125m installs and reaches over 5m new PCs a month.
A switch from operator portals to branded apps and sites saw July prosper in the ‘second wave’ of mobile content. The firm’s Mi platform now powers solutions for big clients such as ToysRUs, Intel and the NBA. The ‘platform as a service’ solution lets these clients crate their own products without tech expertise, and configure them for different devices and user bases. Perhaps its best known product is the ESPN Goals app it made for the eponymous sports broadcaster.
Usablenet
For table sales and ticket enquiries contact Katy.Phillips@intentmedia.co.uk or call +44 (0) 1992 535647