Insights success the 10 fastest growing mobile app solution provider companies compressed

www.insightssuccess.com MARCH 2017

The way of business solutions

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Towards Green Eco-Mobile Apps for the Cleaner Environment

Trending Mobile Apps for Smoother Human Life

Beginning Josiah Humphrey Co-CEO & Founder

Wireless Mobile Technology: Scope for Tremendous Opportunities

Appster The Best Software Development Process in the World For Technology Entrepreneurs and Challenger Brands

Since 1984

www.fossil.com

GRIP

That Truly Works.

+91-11-23311112-7 www.jktyre.com

Editorial

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he mobile apps usage has increased tremendously over the past few years. Continuously growing mobile technologies resulted in the strong adoption of modern smartphones, more and more. Today, consumers are using mobile apps to order food, plan & order groceries, book tickets, perform banking transactions, watch videos, listen to music, etc.

The number of mobile apps keeps on increasing continuously to make our day-to-day life easier by facilitating through their unique functionalities.

Mobile Apps: Making our Lives Effortless and Pleasant

Today, Keeping in touch with friends anywhere across the globe is no more a chore, as mobile apps like Facebook, Whatsapp, and more are connecting not only two friends, but also bringing all groups of friends together on a single platform with 24 hours uninterrupted connection. Everything in the world is becoming digitized, pushing the growth of mobile apps. Daily newer and newer apps are getting introduced with special features and functionality. Millions of apps are available on iTunes store and Play store with different categories. Mobile users have downloaded billions of apps from their respective app store.

App developers are providing different supports of apps depending on the hardware and software on the devices.

The growing demand for more functional apps has made innovation as an essential part of mobile app development. New technologies like Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), ArtiďŹ cial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), Cloud, Wearable Devices, and more are gaining the share in the mobile app space. Voice controlled apps like Alexa, Cortona, Siri, Google Assistant, and more are spreading their roots strongly in all utility segments like the refrigerator, cars, mobiles, and more.

Bigger players like Google, Apple, Amazon, Uber, and Microsoft are investing heavily in the future apps like Voice Controlled apps, Smart homes apps, IoT, and Cloud. Mobile app space only feels much crowded, but actually, it is demanding a lot of innovations for changing user trends and requirements.

Till lots of space is available for new innovative apps that suit for the future technologies and needs.

Suhel Mashayak

CONTENTS 8 Appster: The Best Software Development Process in the World For Technology Entrepreneurs and Challenger Brands

CXO STANDPOINT

32 Towards Green Eco-Mobile Apps for the Cleaner Environment

Trending Mobile Apps for Smoother Human Life

Beginning Wireless Mobile Technology: Scope for Tremendous Opportunities

22 36 30

The Need to Understand the Necessity of Innovation

20 Five Mobile App Development Trends to Watch Out For in 2017

42 Managing corporate communication on mobile devices

7/Apps: Exhaustively Researched, Meticulously Planned and Designed to Pixel Perfection

18

A.Y. Technologies: Building Software that Solves Real Problems

Five Pack Creative: Where Beautiful Apps Are Born

28

26 Fueled: Fueling the Mobiles

Touchtap: Building World-Class Apps

40

16

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Inď€ num: An Independent Design and Development Agency

Editor-in-Chief Pooja M. Bansal Senior Editor Ariana Lawrence Managing Editor Suhel Mashayak Co-Editors Vikram Suryawanshi Abhijeet Parade Visualiser David King Art & Design Director Amol Kamble Co-designer Alex Noel Picture Editor Aparna Vanzul Art Editor Vinod Alhat Business Development Manager John Mathew Steve Smith Marketing Manager Chris Business Development Executive David, Joseph, John, Mary Research Analyst Jennifer Circulation Manager Robert Database Management Steve Technology Consultant Vishal More sales@insightssuccess.com

March, 2017 Corporate Ofď€ ces: Insights Success Media Tech LLC 555 Metro Place North, Suite 100, Dublin, OH 43017, United States Phone - (614)-602-1754 Email: info@insightssuccess.com For Subscription: Visit www.insightssuccess.com

Insights Success Media and Technology Pvt. Ltd. Ofď€ ce No. 513, 5th Floor, Rainbow Plaza, Shivar Chowk, Pimple Saudagar, Pune, Maharashtra 411017 Phone - India: 020-69400110, 111, 112 Email: meera@insightssuccess.in For Subscription: Visit www.insightssuccess.in ,

Mobile App: Simplest Way Towards Digital Life

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ith every passing year, mobile apps are rapidly growing than any other tech products. Today, mobile apps become the everyday need of a human life that resulted in the formation of this huge industry which is growing daily, and there is not any friction seen for it. The number of mobile apps in the market is getting launched with their unique applications and specifications. Since nature and preferences of common users are going through speedy changes because of the high-performance gadgets, new emerging technologies, and other trends, the latest innovations and their adoption is making the mobile app industry more valuable business.

For this issue of “The 10 Fastest Growing Mobile App Solution Provider Companies”, we highlight the cover with ‘Appster’, which is the fastest growing App Development company with a vision for creating the most innovative app technology in the world. Appster has offices in 3 continents from Melbourne to San Francisco with the best software development process in the world for technology entrepreneurs and enterprise companies wanting to take new ideas to the market. It helps both entrepreneurs and enterprise with the platforms; Ideation, Validation, Development & Marketing.

Josiah Humphrey and Mark McDonald are the Co-CEOs and Founders of the Appster. Both had started the company back in 2011 when they were 18 & 19 years old. In 5 years they have aggressively grown to over 400+ staff over three countries, with eventual plans to IPO. They are extremely passionate and obsessed with building a company culture that embodies Appster’s mission.

Insights Success Magazine, after doing in-depth research and studies, has shortlisted; 7/Apps: Exhaustively Researched, Meticulously Planned and Designed to Pixel Perfection, A.Y. Technologies: Building Software that Solves Real Problems, Five Pack Creative: Where Beautiful Apps Are Born, Fueled: Fueling the Mobiles, Infinum: An Independent Design and Development Agency, Touchtap: Building World-Class Apps, Clearbridge Mobile: UserCentric Product Design & Engineering, Crazy Web Studio: Complete solutions in the field of Web technology and marketing, and Octal Info Solution: Technology-Outsourcing-Simplified.

While going through our magazine don’t miss out, Eco-Mobile Apps for the Cleaner Environment, Mobile Apps for Smoother Human Life, and Wireless Mobile Technology: Scope for Tremendous Opportunities from the Editor’s Pick.

Managing Corporate Communications on Mobile Devices, The Need to Understand the Necessity of Innovation, and Five Mobile App Development Trends to Watch Out For in 2017 from the View of the Successful Leaders.

COVER

STORY

Josiah Humphrey Co-CEO & Founder

r e t s p Ap ftware The Best

So t n e m p o Devel n the World For

Process i

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& s d n a r B r e ng

Entreprene

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Build Things that Change the World

Appster is the fastest growing App Development company with a vision for creating the most innovative app technology in the world. For getting this goal, Appster is working with the people, with incredible ideas that make them more valuable.

Appster has offices in 3 continents from Melbourne to San Francisco with the best software development process in the world for technology entrepreneurs and enterprise companies wanting to take new ideas to market. Appster helps both entrepreneurs and enterprise with the platforms; Ideation, Validation, Development & Marketing.

We

“ ♥ Building

“

T

he Mobile app industry is all about differentiation and providing the proper value for customers. The solutions aren’t just about making a “great app” anymore. There is a myriad of other things that are important, Speed of implementation, Quality of the solution, and Measuring engagement, are some of the things apps need to focus on to be successful today.

World-Class Apps Creators of Appster Josiah Humphrey and Mark McDonald are the Co-CEOs and Founders of the Appster.

Both had started the company back in 2011 when they were 18 & 19 years old. In 5 years they have aggressively grown to over 400+ staff over three countries, with eventual plans to IPO. They are extremely passionate and obsessed with building a company culture that embodies Appster’s mission.

Secure Solutions for Success Appster is not just an app developer but a team of Appster focuses on helping their clients be successful across the entire lifecycle of app development. They focus mostly on de-risking a project and asking themselves what needs to happen at a technical and commercial level in order for the project to be successful.

Appster has a unique set of offerings which are focused on making projects successful. In their Rapid Concept Workshop, they design product strategy and map out the right technical solutions. In Traction Labs, they help prototype and validate ideas at an early stage.

Benefits for clients Appster has helped many clients go on to

Appster works exclusively with high potential disruptive startups and every project is important. Instead of having countless departments and cross functional hierarchies, they build stable and high performing teams which work with each other regularly and with limited clients, so that they get clients’ vision and dream and can truly get onboard executing it. It’s HOW clients get the execution power of a global “big” development firm with the transparency and collaboration of having a technical cofounder.

Appster doesn’t think of themselves as a vendor, but a critical partner to help solve real business challenges.

Team Appster’s belief is that, “you get the best outcome when we work ‘with’ you rather than ‘for you’. If you agree, we’ll get along well!”

We Build Break through Products for Challenger Brands

“

&

Disruptors

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raise millions of dollars, have multi-million dollar valuations and in some cases get acquired. It provides separate solutions for startups and enterprises, by understanding the fact that both demand a different type of solutions for their businesses.

Appster has launched dozens of Australia’s most successful tech startups over the last 5 years. Their deep experience working on the bleeding edge of emerging technologies and launching #1 apps means client’s project is developed using best-practice and is truly future proof.

Learning’s from Experience Setting up an office in India: When both the founders of Appster were 20 years old and had no context of the culture, the way of doing business, etc. They took a huge risk to set up there and struggled early on, but with determination and grit, they managed to build one of the best app development facilities in the world now with 350 people.

Scaling: They had one time when they went from 150 to about 300 in the space of 3 months. Having so many new people joined at the time was almost like an acquisition of a new company and the culture was impacted for a period of time. They spent a lot more time focusing on the culture and working on improving leaders across the company which has had some lasting impact.

Setting up in the US: Both founders know that it is a very competitive market here and they underestimated the amount of effort and time it would take to get things as large as their Australian operations. But it has paid off now and have two offices in San Francisco and New York.

Customer Oriented Approach “Getting noticed is the biggest challenge,” says Josiah about today’s competitive mobile app industry. “It is becomingly increasingly expensive to get installs with increased competition too. You need to focus on building an incredible product that people want to rave about. You also need to start thinking about virality and retention from day one. We have some epic Growth Hacking services that focus on all of these as well as launch strategy and execution,” Josiah added.

Achievements and Future Plans Appster awards: -2014 BRW’s 27th Most Innovative Company -2015 Telstra Business Award -EY Entrepreneur of the Year As per future plans, Appster is fully focused on building a development hub for the greatest ideas and innovations in the world.

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Company Name

Management

Brief

7/Apps www.7apps.com

Juan Fernandez Co-founder & CEO

7/Apps develops world-class apps and the complex systems needed to power them – solving the toughest of problems and elevating every user experience.

A.Y. Technologies www.aytech.ca

Amin Yazdani Founder

A.Y. Technologies is a mobile development and web application agency in Vancouver, B.C., created by founder Amin Yazdani in December 2015.

Five Pack Creative (FPC) is a mobile app development agency Five Pack Creative Jerry Beers that provides creative solutions for companies in need of mobile www.fivepackcreative.com Co-founder & President app services like development, staffing, training and more.

Fueled www.fueled.com

Rameet Chawla Co-founder

Fueled is an award-winning technology product consultancy and popular mobile app company.

Infinum

www.infinum.co

Tomislav Car CEO & Co-founder

Infinum is an award-winning software design and development agency that provides Mobile and Web App solutions.

Touchtap www.touchtap.io

Noah Labhart Founder

Touchtap is an app development agency, based in Dallas/Fort Worth, TX which provide iOS and Android native development services to startups, agencies and entrepreneurs.

Appster www.appsterhq.com

Josiah Humphrey Co-CEO & Founder

Appster is the fastest growing App Development company with a vision for creating the most innovative app technology in the world.

Clearbridge Mobile www.clearbridgemobile.com

Deepak Chopra CEO

Clearbridge Mobile is an award-winning full stack mobile app development company in Toronto that provides user-centric product design & engineering services to enterprises.

Crazy Web Studio Ltd. www.crazywebstudio.com

Radoslav Nedyalkov CEO

Crazy Web Studio provides complete solutions in the field of Web technology and marketing.

Octal Info Solution Pvt. Ltd.

Arun Goyal M D, Founder

Octal Info Solution is a web & mobile app Development Company, which provides all types of innovative mobile app and web solution.

www.octalsoftware.com

7/Apps: Exhaustively Researched, Meticulously Planned and Designed to Pixel Perfection

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he mobile app market is beyond saturated. Building something unique and good is now more difficult than ever. More choices for consumers means subpar apps can’t compete. To catch any attention, apps must be useful, intuitive, engaging, and attractive.

Unprecedented market growth has resulted in an enormous demand for developers. To remain competitive, many development shops and ad agencies have turned to foreign developers, which can lead to lower quality code and design along with inherent language and time barriers.

Choosing the low-cost developer will almost always cost a client more in the long run.

7/Apps focuses on developing world-class apps and the complex systems needed to power them, solving the toughest of problems and elevating every user experience.

About 7/Apps and its Achievements Through ideation, rapid prototyping, rigorous development and testing –7/Apps brings truly great ideas to life. Visions they’ve engineered for clients include Clinique’s Blue Ocean app that customizes product regimes, the National Park Service’s interactive walking tour app for Gettysburg visitors, an app that identifies paper currency for the visually impaired on behalf of the U.S. Mint, and most recently, marking the first-of-its-kind React app that connects appliance owners with pre-screened repair service providers on demand for ServiceTapp.

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Architect of 7/Apps 7/Apps’ blended creative, technical, and strategic vision is driven by it’s Co-founder and CEO, Juan Fernandez.

Fernandez began his professional career as a graphic designer. His portfolio earned him a position with Walt Disney’s Imagineering and Animation studios, where he developed an affinity for creative technology and artistic excellence over his seven year stint. Recruited by Apple, Fernandez spent the next seven years helping grow Apple’s Enterprise Group by designing and implementing some of their largest and complex solutions for hospitality customers such as Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, Hilton, and Starwood Hotels.

Inspired to bring his own ideas to life he left Apple to start a company where he could combine his love of design and technology to build creative enterprise apps and technology solutions for forward thinking clients.

Identifying Truly Great Ideas Fernandez says, “To be effective in this market, you need to be able to identify the truly great ideas and work with clients that have what it takes to see their ideas through to success. You need to foster a creative environment, refine your ideas, but then execute quickly, without sacrificing quality.”

The 7/Apps team works to anticipate client needs today and years into the future. They keep up with and look ahead of rapidly evolving technologies. They build scalable support products, such as websites and back-end cloud infrastructure, in addition to their mobile app solutions. | March 2017 |

“

Unique Services for Clients The 7/Apps team puts a lot of emphasis on research, ideation, spec writing, and planning. Those components should account for 20-30 percent of the total budget for an app.

Clients that haven’t budgeted for research and ideation often end up wanting major changes mid-process.

The resulting expense usually adds up to more than the initial research and ideation budget. 7/Apps is also unique in that during ideation, the team goes beyond rough designs, creating production ready art, iconography and the entire app UX and prototype. Many companies start development after crude wireframes and can leave out critical details that cause development delays.

The 7/Apps team of well-rounded experts brings passion to every project and works together to develop the best possible solutions to turn early stage ideas into visionary products. They work hard to make sure their clients know their ideas never have to be limited.

Juan Fernandez Co-founder & CEO

Learning from Every Lesson Because 7/Apps’ first team was too designer-heavy, they over compensated by hiring journeymen in very specific fields who couldn’t see beyond their own discipline. Those lessons helped 7/Apps to evolve into a multidisciplinary team with broader, complementary expertise. “I consider our team to be one of the best in the industry,” says Fernandez.

developers may be jumping in on, but the team at 7/Apps works to remain focused on identifying those unique components in a client’s vision that allow for apps that stand out. They are willing to turn work away when experience tells them an app idea won’t succeed or can’t compete in a saturated market. “There’s always a way to shine, as long as you execute brilliantly on a fantastic idea – there’s little room for error. That’s why you do the research, design, plan and refine your ideas – and then refine and refine again. Then you code”, says Fernandez.

It can be easy to get distracted by the breakneck speed of the industry and what trends hundreds of other

Future Goals The 7/Apps’ team accepts projects for clients who share their vision,

| March 2017 |

There’s always a way to shine, as long as you execute brilliantly on a fantastic idea – there’s little room for error

“

They also craft pitch decks on behalf of clients seeking funding and provide pro-forma vetting services before an app hits the marketplace.

appreciate their value, and want to work with them. As innovators, technologists, artists, and perfectionists, they believe form and function must have equal footing to create not only apps that will succeed today, but also be relevant for years to come. They have a knack for predicting future trends in technology and they ultimately want to catapult as many great ideas into success as they have the fortune to.

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A.Y. Technologies Building Software that Solves Real Problems W

ith more than 2 billion smartphone users in the world, the mobile app industry is booming more than ever before. Not only do we have a bigger market for mobile apps, we have a more sophisticated market. Users are not settling for mediocre apps anymore. They demand the highest quality performance and user experience.

Whether an app is already released or going to be released, they can’t survive if they don’t meet certain standards. Speed, usability and performance are big standard differentiators in this market, and A. Y. Technologies is the keeper of these standards.

A.Y. Technologies prides itself on it’s talented and flexible team, which has emphasis on delivering digital products frequently and rapid iteration.

Software Architect Amin Yazdani is the Founder of A.Y. Technologies Inc. Amin has more than 15 years experience with software development and 5 years experience with software architecture and design. He has helped many startups with the scalability of their software systems and implemented agile processes to improve software development efficiency. He is an advocate of the new wave of software development and operation management (DevOps) and has been a volunteer and organizer of DevOpsDays Vancouver for the past 3 years.

A Mobile Development and Web Application Agency A.Y. Technologies is a mobile development and web application agency in Vancouver, B.C. Quickly growing to a team of 8, A.Y. Technologies provides a range of services from their initial Roadmap Workshop, development, and custom software/integration services.

Unique Differentiators For A.Y. Technologies, there are two unique differentiators in the market: 1 - Technology and 2 - Process.

They use state of the art technology to solve problems for their clients. As an Agile development organization, they collaborate closely with their clients and focus on delivering innovative, scalable applications in rapid iterations.

On the technology side, they build all their mobile apps with React Native. React Native is on the cutting edge of technologies for building Cross-platform mobile applications. The apps they build with React Native are fast, performant, secure, and cost-effective. Furthermore, as they

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Amin has a B.Sc. Degree in Software Engineering from Sharif University of Technology and M.Sc. Degree in Computer Science from Simon Fraser University.

| March 2017 |

“

On the process side, A.Y. Tech has a unique on-boarding program called the Roadmap Workshop. They offer Roadmap Workshops for every stage of the product development cycle. They help entrepreneurs get their ideas off the ground and find product market fit, and also helps start-up businesses speed up development and growth.

Furthermore, they help the established businesses improve efficiency and reduce costs.

These workshops are 2 weeks long and the main goal of all of them is to reduce the risk of failure, delays, and cost overrun. Untill now A.Y. Tech has been very successful with these workshops and expects more in the future.

Current Challenges within the Market Being a young company, the team of A.Y. Technologies has learned a lot during the past year and half. They’ve learned the value of clear communication between team members and their clients, and how to better manage projects to deliver as promised.

They found that the biggest challenge for mobile apps is that users are getting more sophisticated and their standards are generally much higher. The apps that had acceptable performance or user experience a year ago would not pass the test today. Mobile apps need to match the level of sophistication of their users and that’s the biggest challenge, both from the technology side as well as user experience design.

| March 2017 |

Amin Yazdani Founder

Building Great Apps that make Companies Successful To overcome the current and future market challenges, A.Y. Technologies follows the best user experience design practices with state of the art mobile development technologies. They bring the best of both worlds together to help apps reach their full potential. They also focus on building scalable platforms for apps, so they can easily handle millions of users. With their focus on startups and entrepreneurs, they build apps that make companies successful.

Making Mobile Apps more UserCentric and Performant On their unique approach, Amin says, “We are not here just to build what

As an agile company, we deliver results fast and make sure they can see the return on their investment

“

build only in React Native and then compile into both Android and iOS platforms, their clients spend less money and get more value.

clients think they want. We guide them through our process and clarify what they need and, in the process, reduce the risk of failure. By building clickable prototypes that look like the real thing, we help them test their apps with their target market before writing a single line of code.”

Their goal is to help startups achieve their growth goals. And they see themselves as a leader in a new mobile app movement, one that is making mobile apps more user centric and performant.

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CXO Standpoint

FIVE MOBILE APP DEVELOPMENT TRENDS TO WATCH OUT FOR IN 2017

T

his past year shaped up to be a phenomenal year for the app economy, and 2017 is set to be another progressive year. There has been a continuous growth in the number of companies that are adopting the mobile-first mindset, and realizing that the mobile is no longer an optional investment, rather a necessity.

Today, apps aren’t just built for smartphones, but for a myriad of other platforms, including connected TVs, smart homes, IoT-enabled devices, and many more. With these various platforms, the app space holds a significant amount of promise and opportunity for the both companies and consumers. What does the future hold for the app economy?

Here are our top predictions on the tech trends that will shape the way we use and think about mobile app development: 1. Progressive Web Apps Gaining in Popularity Progressive web apps have attracted a lot of attention because of the ease of development and the almost instant gratification for the app’s user experience (UX). A progressive web app is an application in which the user interface runs in a web browser. With a progressive web app, users will be able to immediately begin using it without downloading it first.

Progressive Web Apps are fundamentally designed to help websites load on mobile with unstable or poor data conditions. The capabilities of web apps are advancing quickly, including better performance with special features such as push messaging.

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2. Android Instant Apps Becoming More Common Similar to Progressive Web Apps, Google recently announced Android Instant Apps, which delivers exactly what its name says-it enables Android apps to run instantly.

These apps do not need to be downloaded or installed on a device, making it possible for users to access a wider range of apps seamlessly. For example, if a user sends a link from a friend, they can open it with one tap. This enables them to utilize a specific feature from the app without actually installing it on their own device. Android Instant apps are still in its early days, and only available for Android that is limiting, however they’re great for apps people may not use as often.

3. Beacons & Location-Based Technology Will Continue to Rise Within the last two years, we saw the advancement of location-based beacon technology and it shows no signs of slowing this year, particularly in the retail and healthcare space. Beacons enable retailers to bridge the gap between the in-store and online experience. They collect valuable instore data, location-based push notifications, and even traditional in-store metrics such as footfall. Personalization has become more important than ever, which is a main reason why beacons are gaining traction as engagement tools to enhance the overall customer experience.

4. Augmented Reality & Virtual Reality Taking Hold With the release of Pokémon GO in 2016, there’s no surprise that AR development will continue to rise.

Pokémon Go proves AR technology has great potential to influence consumers in engaging and meaningful ways.

| March 2017 |

Apps that utilize AR have often been perceived as promotional however, a greater number of apps have started integrating AR into utility.

Much has also been said about the growth of virtual reality as forecasts predict its growth into a USD 30 billion market by 2020. VR has come a long way in terms of performance and accessibility thanks to Google who introduced Cardboard back in 2014. In just one year, several leading tech manufacturers launched their own VR headsets, which are quickly pushing the technology to mainstream adoption.

5. IoT Apps Will Surge With Smart Home Technology We’ve been hearing about the up and coming revolution of the IoT, specifically the interconnectedness of smart home technology, but the problem has been an overly saturated market.

There are many appliances and apps on the market right now, but there are very few solutions to unify devices into a simple, seamless UX. This year we’ll see more smart homes that will get much more interactive. Amazon, Nest, and ecobee are two companies that have trail-blazed smart home technology. Now, that bigger companies are becoming more experienced in creating seamlessly connected user experiences, we expect to see some major advancements on this front in the coming year. Apps that cater to IoT and integrate seamlessly will reap the most benefits.

These are the top 5 trends that we predict will take shape in the upcoming year, however, as user behaviors are shifting at a rapid pace, companies must adapt in order to meet demands.

What is definite is the fact that users’ attention spans have shortened dramatically.

Because of this shift in user behavior, mobile apps must contain a great deal of value to entice a user to return for a longer session. If you fail to do so, you’ll risk losing your users to your competition that offer a lot more value.

| March 2017 |

DEEPAK CHOPRA Founder and CEO Clearbridge Mobile Deepak Chopra Founder and CEO Clearbridge Mobile

About the Author: Deepak Chopra is the Founder and CEO of Clearbridge Mobile, a leading mobile app development firm that provides user-centric design and product engineering services. He leads a team that works with over 35 Fortune 500 brands to bring the next generation of mobile applications to users.

Over the past 15 years, Deepak has become one of the leading experts and a frequent speaker on the mobile market through various roles including entrepreneur, wireless executive, equity research analyst and investor. Before founding the Clearbridge Mobile, Deepak was a toprated sell side equity analyst for over a decade following the technology space. He was best known for his in-depth coverage of the mobile ecosystem.

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Towards Green

Eco-Mobile Apps for the

Cleaner

ENVIRONMENT E

ffects of Climate Change are becoming worse and disturbing the overall culture of living being.

Increased carbon dioxide emissions tend to the greenhouse effect and the heat emerged from that, melts the ice of the poles and the ocean that worsens the weather and expands the oceans. Uneven weather is a major threat to agriculture that reduces outcome or destroys all crops in a single attempt. Polluted air directly affects the human respiratory system, causing different health disorders.

Polluted water also leads to different diseases of stomach, eyes, bones, and much more. Pollution not only affects the humans, but also all living beings. Species dependent on forests, polar/sea ice, etc. are vanishing. These effects make human beings to take efforts for changing their living style for the survival of self and the entire world.

Many fruitful efforts have been done and are going on to reduce or stop emissions of carbon and other pollutants into our atmosphere like; use of hydrogen in vehicles, use of solar/wind/tidal/water energy for power production. All these efforts are limited to specific authorities, but from an individual point of view, that needs different solutions.

Growing mobile technology helps a lot through the mobile apps which guide an individual towards the cleaner environment that results in great future and health of living being. There are millions of apps specially developed for an ecological purpose. This large growing eco-apps market is making a significant effect on cleaner and greener future of our planet and its inhabitants.

Ecologically oriented apps are available in a number of categories that includes air and water, energy, transportation, education, food, chemicals, and much more like; Air & Water Apps Pollution: Pollution app by aMobileFuture informs about local pollution sources, and their measured exposures like; Electromagnetic Pollution, Air Pollution, Water Pollution,

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Pollution and emissions to soil, Real-time air quality, Interactive map, with visualization of pollution sources, and more.

State of the Air: The State of the Air app gives the ability to see what your lungs are collecting anywhere in the United States. That provides through different tabs like; Today’s Air Quality, Air Quality Alerts, Get Informed, Speak Up, Donate.

EPA’s AIRNow: The app will allow users to get location-specific reports on current air quality and air quality forecasts for both ozone and fine particle pollution. Air quality maps provide visual depictions of current and forecast air quality nationwide, and air quality-related health effects explain what actions people can take to protect their health at different AQI levels, such as ‘code orange.’

Bluesky Map: This is a mobile app by the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE) of China, which allows users to monitor air and water pollution in the China. It reports real-time emissions from sources all over the China. High pollution areas are shown with orange circles. This app encourages citizens to report the government official regarding high levels of pollution.

Transportation and Energy Apps Alternative Fueling Station Locator: The Alternative Fueling Station Locator app helps the user to find fueling stations that offer electricity, natural gas, biodiesel, E85, propane, or hydrogen. It shows the stations on a map or list of stations ordered by distance from current location. It also

| March 2017 |

Towards Green product reviews based on scientific research and ratings.

Products are rated on the scale from zero to 10 for their impact on health, environment, and social life. The user can find ratings for food, personal care, and household products, by scanning the barcode of products and get information about it.

provides the contact info and other details.

Carbon Emissions Calculator for Air Travel: Carbon Emissions Calculator allows passengers to estimate the emissions attributed to their air travel. The user just needs to select origin-destination airports, and then specify the class of travel and number of the passengers. It will evaluate the carbon footprint on that specified trip.

GasHog: GasHog is a fuel-efficiency app that evaluates the efficiency of the vehicle by entering the odometer reading and the amount of fuel added each time in the tank and compares it to historical averages. The app also offers tips for improving fuel efficiency.

Waze: Waze is a community-based traffic and navigation app. The user can join drivers in their area who share real-time traffic & road info to save time, gas money, and improve daily commuting for all. This traffic navigation app helps the user to waste less time and reduce emissions.

Light Bulb Finder: It is a mobile app that makes it easy to switch from conventional light bulbs to energy-saving equivalents with the right fit, style and light quality. The app allows users to view bulb images, cost, savings, and its environmental impact .

Think Dirty: Think Dirty provides the easiest way to learn about the potentially toxic ingredients in the cosmetics and personal care products. It allows the user to compare products on shopping. It needs to scan the product barcode and it will give the information about dirty ingredients that helps to shop for cleaner options.

Visualization Apps NASA's Images of Change: NASA’s Images of Change app provide the close-up view of many of changes due to human activities which are rapidly altering the face of our planet. For example; it compares Alaska's Muir Glacier in 1941 to the glacier as it looked in 2004, Shows the expansion of agriculture in Saudi Arabia as viewed from satellites. It provides constantly updated, informative, compelling, and up-to-date visual experience.

These are some of the mobile apps which are benefiting us and our environment by securing our health and future. The introduction of new technologies in mobile phones again easing the working of apps with new improved features.

These are only some initial steps taken towards green and clean future using mobile apps. No doubt in the future, numbers of new Eco-Apps will be introduced with improved features using advanced technology; helping human beings in securing the future of the Earth.

Breeze Wind Farm Monitor: The Breeze app collects data from users wind turbines and presents it in an intuitive interface. It provides detailed data of wind farms and the status of each wind turbine on the go. It provides a track record of wind turbine stops and warnings in the real-time.

Consumer Information Apps GoodGuide: This app helps consumers to find safe, healthy, green, and ethical products with

| March 2017 |

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Five Pack Creative:

Where Beautiful Apps Are Born T

he mobile marketplace continues to grow very rapidly, which includes a high demand for beautifully crafted apps for consumers and enterprises alike. Apps released into the marketplace continue to grow at an incredible pace. Innovation in the mobile device space is moving so rapidly that companies, as well as educators, cannot keep up, resulting in a continued shortage of the talent required to build and maintain these apps. Five Pack Creative (FPC), a premier mobile app development agency in the Dallas area, noticed the talent shortage and the desperate need for a more innovative educational avenue by which developers can continue to evolve quickly with the market demand.

Five Pack Creative (FPC) is a mobile app development agency based out of Frisco, TX and has been building native mobile apps since 2008 when Apple released the SDK and gave the development world access to the App Store. Since that time it has grown into one of the premier resources for custom mobile development projects and for sourcing mobile development talent.

Five Pack Creative works in four areas of business: Custom App Development: This is where the FPC team helps companies (everyone from startups to Fortune 500) build their very own custom app. Services include: strategy, UX/UI design, project management, development, testing, launch, and maintenance.

Advanced Mobile Staffing Services: This is where the FPC team can partner with companies to solve staffing

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challenges by assisting them with contract, contract to hire and direct hire placement.

Development Education: FPC launched their first iOS Bootcamp in 2016 called ALT-U, for Alternative University, which has been a great success. These classes, taught by FPC’s top developers, draw from the company’s vast experience in order to improve students’ skills so they can become highly qualified in the mobile development field.

Hours Time Tracking: FPC also has their own App called “Hours Time Tracking”. It has been extremely popular and a leader in the time tracking app space. It is designed to take the pain out of project-level time tracking.

FPC has had the opportunity to work on 100’s of released apps and has accumulated several high profile clients in their portfolio, such as American Airlines, Match.com, One Technologies, and the United Way to name a few. FPC is focused on native mobile development, and their favorite by far is Apple technology, including iOS, tvOS, and watchOS. FPC projects have included mobile apps for industries like: Medical, Travel, Education, Retail, Social Media, Gaming, Music, and many more.

Creator of Five Pack Creative Jerry Beers is a Co-founder & President of Five Pack Creative. Jerry got his start at Worldcom as a systems administrator, and his first programming job was at a company called TAASC - Tax and Accounting Software

| March 2017 |

Corporation. Intuit later acquired this company. While there, he met some great people, including Kevin Legg the other co-founder of FPC.

“

You can trust us to deliver a great product and a great experience

Solutions to Innovate FPC partners with their clients to help them innovate in the mobile space and ultimately accelerate app development.

The FPC team is extremely flexible in meeting their clients’ needs and helping them with their mobile initiatives in Custom Development, Mobile Staffing, and Development Training. Their flexibility allows the FPC team to easily plug into any development environment.

Benefits for Clients With a massive amount of experience, the FPC team is able to minimize pitfalls throughout the design, development and delivery process and ensure a great product is delivered. The result: the client gets beautifully designed applications that exceed their users’ expectations. The FPC team can also spin up innovation or skunk work teams for companies to help prototype and develop new innovations for which their core development teams may not have the time.

With their deep experience and specialization in mobile, FPC helps small, mid-sized, and large organizations by reducing their time spent recruiting, interviewing, on| March 2017 |

Jerry Beers

Co-founder & President

“

Jerry was one of the very first developers standing in line at Apple’s WWDC event in 2008 to get access to and learn more about Apple opening the iPhone to developers. He knew it was beneficial, as well as rewarding, to build professional relationships with his peers, so he brought Kevin on board and began assembling a team of top-shelf talent. Jerry is considered a thought leader in the mobile development space and contributes to tutorials and books from the leading iOS resource – RayWenderlich.com.

boarding and replacing mobile developers. FPC has access to great talent and experience in finding, screening, hiring, training and mentoring quality mobile developers of Co-founder Jerry says, “To be an today. innovator, you have to get high-quality products to market quickly. This Process for Success requires a good process, but also a lot While assisting their customers, the of flexibility and the ability to FPC team recognized another prioritize and make decisions quickly.” challenge where companies struggle with the iterative software Five Pack Creative’s Vision development process. The days of big FPC is a mobile expert and a leader in requirements and long release cycles native mobile development in the are gone. As with so many apps, the Dallas market and beyond. Whether it challenges become differentiation and is custom development, advanced ease of use. Nearly all app ideas have staffing services or developer training, competitors in the market, and the FPC FPC will continue to serve their clients team helps clients concentrate on doing with the same flexibility that has things a little differently and a lot proven to be beneficial time and time better in order to come out on top. again.

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Fueled: Fueling the Mobiles W

e’ve seen this major shift towards a prioritization of product-led thinking in the way companies build apps. Especially in Fueled’s early days, the dominate approach to mobile (for big brands) was to build something from a marketing perspective, not focused on driving value for users and driving users to take an action that drives direct revenue for the business.

These products were little more than toys and gimmicks.

We can see a trend away from those traditional marketing techniques. Companies are moving towards product that customers really want to use, but most agencies are poorly equipped to work on a product in a strategic business sense rather than from a promotional and marketing perspective.

Fueled is an award-winning technology product consultancy and popular mobile app company, which is appreciated globally for their experiments, innovations and efforts for fulfilling the real needs of the end users.

Fueled’s Insights Having its offices in the New York and London, Fueled is a product development agency that is globally recognized for its work in creating world class mobile apps. Fueled has created award-winning iPhone, iPad, and Android apps used by tens of millions of users and generating hundreds of millions in revenue.

working space housing 35 of New York’s most innovative startups. The Collective has since served as a driving force and catalyst for continued innovation in the local community.

Refiners of Fueled A man who is better recognized for having an authority on mobile technology and a player in the global technology scene, Rameet Chawla is the Co-Founder and Chairman of Fueled. Often acknowledged as a thought leader, Rameet is a regular contributor for Forbes, Inc., UX Magazine, VentureBeat, and more. A frequent conference speaker, in 2014 alone Rameet has led talks at Google, the London Business School, the Island Innovators, Tech Open Air Berlin, Techweek, Northside Innovation and more.

Ryan Matzner is the Co-Founder of Fueled, and over the past four years has led Fueled’s growth from a living room to a 100-person global team at the forefront of mobile design & development.

Before joining Fueled, Ryan pioneered new social media and viral marketing tactics at Hummus Bros, a London-based restaurant chain.

He met Rameet Chawla in NYC when the two decided to collaborate on an app that celebrated their passion for good food by allowing users to easily keep track of their favorite restaurants.

That passion for building intuitive, useful products has lead to the creation of apps that have driven over $1 billion in revenue for clients and numerous apps featured in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

In 2013, Fueled opened the Fueled Collective, a shared

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| March 2017 |

“

He was recently listed number 4 on TNW’s list of “50 People in NYC Tech You Need to Know” and has been invited to speak at events such as Behance’s 99U Conference, NYC Social Media Week, Louisana International Film Festival, and Berlin’s Tech Open Air.

Benefits for Customers Fueled launched over 1 million iPhone & iPad apps out there. Team Fueled is passionate about standing out of the crowd. They build the kind of apps that people move to their home screen.

They know what users want and know how to build apps that matter to them.

Fueled has built businesses for mobile apps that makes money. It’s no coincidence the apps they’ve built have generated over $500 million in revenue for their clients. And that doesn’t even include the over $100 million in VC funding they’ve received. Fueled apps featured in the Google Play and Apple App store over a dozen times. Their projects have topped paid and free charts in multiple countries and languages. Their apps have been covered by every tech publication under the sun.

| March 2017 |

Rameet Chawla Co-founder

Learning for Success “One of our key learnings is that what clients initially want, and what we ultimately deliver, are rarely the same thing. The biggest lesson learned is that we should focus on the client’s goal and ask ourselves, what are they trying to achieve? What do they want their users to achieve? Then we work backwards from there to create the perfect product”, Ryan asserted.

Future Focus Team Fueled knows the saturation level in mobile app is so high that only the most interesting products can break through. Fueled is concentrating mainly on innovative and unique products that stand them out from the crowd.

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Delightful Services and Solutions The diverse skillset of the team Fueled allows them to expertly tailor their services to match the customer’s needs across strategy, design, and development for mobile and web projects. From full-project engagements to à la carte services, they help their clients launch the best projects possible. With best of the renowned strategy & planning, the team of Fueled works alongside their world class branding and digital design experts. They craft polished, intuitive designs that top-notch developers bring to life with nimble and immaculate code.

We are the purveyors of splendid apps

The team Fueled is inspired by the idea of helping others build apps that are both visually stunning and highly functional. The main goal of Fueled is ‘To empower both startups and enterprise corporations by building beautiful apps that users actually love’.

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Beginning

Wireless Mobile Technology Scope for Tremendous Opportunities

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ireless mobile telephony was mainly invented and implemented only for voice communication to be used anywhere, anytime, and on the go. With time wireless telephony has been heavily researched and developed. Each year, each month, and even each day new innovations and trends are being added in mobile communication technology. That has produced till dates, the most sophisticated wireless mobile telephony that we are using in the form of a smartphone.

History Some decades ago, mobile phones were costly, large in shape and heavy in weight used for voice calling only with limited access within metro cities. Gen X people know these big-1G-analog-mobile phones very well. These big phones remained the status symbol of rich people only. In 1990’s 2G-digital-mobile service was introduced that consisted voice as well as data capabilities, this was the major innovative generation of mobile phones. With this, doors opened for mobile telephony for all with ease and compact mobiles. These mobile phones were a bit costly and not heavy performers like PCs because of their weak hardware.

Satellite Mobile Phone In addition to the cellular network phone, mobile phones can also be connected directly from Earthorbiting satellites. These satellite phones can be used in remote areas where wired network is unavailable or where setting up of a cellular network is difficult. The Inmarsat system is the world’s oldest satellite phone network. Some other operators like Iridium, Globalstar, and Thuraya also provide satellite phone services. Use of a satellite phone is very low due to the need of a special expensive device that supports satellite frequency and high usage cost. In some countries, the use of satellite phones is illegal. Most of the satellite phones are used in defense and disaster response.

Wireless Broadband With the rise of 21st century, 3G service was first introduced by NTT DoCoMo in Japan. This technology becomes a game changer in the field of mobile broadband. Use of high-end-cutting-edge technology for manufacturing made mobile cheaper in addition to good hardware that can perform an internet browsing and downloading very well. 3G mobile phones reached the popularity with the Internet Access and Video Calling. Use of mobile phones instead of PCs made compulsory for OEM’s to build similar strong hardware and OS as PCs. New hardware and OS were introduced and replaced with new one.

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| March 2017 |

Beginning

Operating Systems for Mobiles For a decade, Symbian of Nokia was very popular as a mobile OS. It faced stiff competition afterward with the introduction of Android and iOS. After Symbian OS; Android, iOS (Apple), and Windows operating system became popular that converted a mobile phone into a smartphone. Symbian, Android, iOS, and Windows are the milestones in mobile technologies that provide nearly similar computing capabilities of PC’s to mobile with the similar hardware configuration. All these OS supports different applications for a different purpose depending upon the user requirements.

Need for Mobile Applications Digitization in banking, governing, and in near about all the fields increases use of smartphones instead of PCs and laptops because of their low cost and compactness. Now people are not only using mobile phones for communication, but also for gaming, online transactions, social media, job hunting, online shopping, downloading-watching videos, and more. All these needs cannot be full-filled by Mobile OS and Mobile Browser only, which demands most sophisticated separate application for different use. Mobile Applications are becoming more popular as they are time saving and simple in operation. This has given birth to the Mobile Applications Industry.

Effect of New Technologies Newly developed 4G technology broadens the use of wireless mobile technology. IoT (Internet of Things) mainly use the wireless network for their operation. Using the IoT machines can be connected to each other and can be remotely controlled and operated with the help of wireless internet and software. IoT needs high internet speed and strong software to control machines like drones, autonomous vehicles, etc. 4G technology provides 50-1000 Mbps speed which is highly suitable for IoT devices. IoT also needs a special application depending on need, which may run on iOS or Android or any operating system.

Base for Mobile Applications Mobile applications are mainly based on the OS and hardware on which mobile phone or device works.

Today there are mainly three popular OS; Android, iOS, and Windows. Based on this, developer develops the applications for specific use. These applications are available in App Store of that OS. Like Android places their apps in Play Store, iOS of Apple in App Store, and Windows in Microsoft Store. All these apps are third party apps developed and maintained by other developers and solution providers. Some of the apps are free and some are priced small amount with some validity. Another fact is, free apps are also available in chargeable premium version, maybe with ad-free versions having high-end features.

Scope for Business Mobile apps business is growing faster after the 3G technology. 3G and 4G technology provide faster internet access that brings users to the mobile internet platform. Mobile is now used as a replacement for bulky PCs. All-day-today activities are carried on mobile that demands different applications for different use with periodic update depending on changing trends, security, and needs. All biggies are making large investments in the app solution business due to huge demand for different apps. Dependency on apps is growing due to use of the new technologies like IoT, M2M, Virtual Reality (VR), and more. Again gaming apps are also gaining more popularity as hardware of mobiles are becoming more advance that can support high-end gaming.

Numbers of apps are entering into the mobile market, creating lots of space for mobile app developers and solution providers. New mobile technology innovated, implemented and grew continuously, that again creates the new requirement of different apps, keeping app industry growing.

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CXO Standpoint

The Need to Understand the Necessity of

Innovation

B

igger, faster, everywhere! The measurement of how we rate technology in general, but more specifically data communications. From the days of spending hundreds of dollars to upgrade from a 14.4 to a 28.8 modem, we have always wanted the data to arrive as fast as possible. More importantly, we have always wanted the user experience to keep improving as we breach new horizons and figure out how to make it bigger, faster and everywhere.

It’s in human nature to want to always make things wildly more impressive from a performance perspective. The car engines just kept getting bigger and bigger to make the cars go faster and faster. At a certain point, the realists had to step in and make it clear that an even bigger engine doesn’t do anything, because the rest of the car is not equipped for that power. The engine itself has to get more efficient with technology, not just bigger, and we have to start thinking about other things, such as stability, safety, efficiency and longevity. As nostalgic as some of us can be over the 1960’s vehicles, the era of the Prius and Tesla are here. Even the older style muscle cars are packed with much newer technology and safety features.

I remember the days of bragging about the bonded 128k ISDN line and when my friend got a 500k modem. The location to live would greatly be determined by what type of internet is available. Today, if I ask some of the savvy

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network engineers what their bandwidth is at home, they won’t even know, and if they check, it’s usually around the 50-100Mb. Meanwhile the less savvy will brag about their 300Mb or 1Gb fiber and will be upset if they are only testing at 700Mb. Why is this the case? What changed? Are we just getting older and not caring about latest and greatest tech anymore?

After digging a bit deeper into this question I realized that we are those realist jumping and saying “do you seriously think you are using more than 100Mb at home?” The reason the internet is crappy is not because of the speed, but because it’s crappy!

So, what are the important applications of the internet?

Browsing, Voice, Email/messaging, Social media, Shopping, Video streaming (movies), Payments/banking etc. Of all of these applications, it seems that security, privacy, latency, quality and reliability would be the most important things. Bandwidth would really only come into play for streaming video. Netflix suggests 5Mb/s for every HD stream. That means at 100Mb, I can have twenty separate HD Netflix streams at the same time, and even that I’m sure never happens in any household or office. So why do we push for 200Mb, 500mb or 1Gb? Do we just love the sound of it?

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I predict that there will be some refocus of how connectivity is provided. The main focus will not be bandwidth, but will be all the other parameters with bandwidth being one of them. Intel finally changed to model numbers to make it clear that the clock speed is not the only metric. (I3, I5, I7) SD-WAN is becoming a reality for all businesses and it will soon become a reality for homes as well. SD-WAN provides reliability, quality, some privacy and latency/jitter prevention. It also opens a new way of doing security and making it more accessible for everyone. This is the beginning of a next evolution of how data will be delivered worldwide. The connection between LAN and internet has relied on the wrong metric and poor quality for long enough and the world is realizing it now.

Along with the realizations and new technologies, people will quickly retire the old metric and start looking at new metrics as the litmus test of connectivity.

Andrew Bagrin, Founder and CEO, My Digital Shield

About the author Carriers have been building Andrew Bagrin is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of My Digital Shield services bundled together with (MDS), a leading provider of Security-as-a-Service (SECaaS) for small businesses. their unreliable connection. They With more than 17 years of experience in the IT security industry, Andrew started are now starting to shift to MDS in 2013 to bring cloud-based, enterprise-level security technology to small provide those service OTP or at the top, which mean provide it on businesses at an affordable price. the IP layer and decoupled from the connection carrier layer. Long time ago, Nortel made a big bet connectivity and provide the services separately on top of on services over layer 2 and they lost, because it wasn’t the enhanced connection. decoupled and couldn’t provide the level of integration that was needed. Meanwhile, other companies like Cisco put Welcome to the future of always connected with quality, their services over layer 3 and quickly became the dominant reliability, performance for its intended uses, not just player in the industry. making the gauge hit the red line!

Connectivity will decouple from services to enhance the | March 2017 |

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Trending

M

obile apps are becoming essential and popular tools for carrying out our routine activities.

These are getting largely used while social networking, internet browsing, downloading different stuffs, watching movies, purchasing online, transacting digitally, securing device from malware, gaming, and more.

The new emerging technologies like IoT, VR, AI, etc. are also demanding different sophisticated apps for their functionality.

What are the Mobile Applications?

As everybody is aware of mobile apps that are the software application developed to run on mobile devices like mobile phones, and tablets. Mobile apps are developed separately for each operating system such as; iOS, Android, and Windows. These specially developed apps may get preinstalled into the device or available at the special ‘app store’ of that respective OS, from that app it can be downloaded and installed on the device.

Mobile apps are available on the basis of the use, type of device, and operating system. Most mobile devices are sold with several apps as pre-installed software like; web browser, email, video player, calendar, maps, antivirus, and many more.

Some major popular Apps are; Internet Browsing Apps These apps are mainly developed for the mobile that helps smooth browsing with weak hardware. These apps also provide; faster page loading, ad blocking, secure browsing, font/image adjustments for comfortable viewing and reading, shortcuts and bookmarks for instant loading, etc.

Some browsers also provide inbuilt apps or shortcuts for apps, for all-in-browsing. These apps also run on weak hardware and software with compressed version making them more popular in this segment.

Social Networking Apps Social media apps are purely made for a specific social networking service, like Facebook, whatsapp, tweeter, and instagram are having their own apps. Social networking service is mainly driven by mobiles and smartphones.

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Mobile phones are always with the user; facilitating them to maintain continuous contact with their social group, unlike PCs. These apps provide flexibility to the user to upload their images, view, download images and more in addition to chatting, voice/video calling directly from their mobile.

Social networking apps are on the top for getting installed from the respective app store.

Gaming apps Gaming apps requires specific hardware in mobile to run smoothly depending on various elements like their complexity, resolution, connectivity, and number of levels.

After social networking apps, gaming apps are more popular as they provide a total gaming platform on-the-go.

Multi-player gaming apps have the facility to connect with number of devices, having the same app through wifi or internet connection. By using this feature multiple players can play the game in real time from their respective devices. Location-based gaming apps are not only played on mobile phones, but they also integrate the player’s position into the game concept. The player’s movement and coordination are main elements in this mobile game.

Presently, Pokemon Go is very popular in this segment.

Depending on the functionality and specialty, variety of gaming apps are available on the app store.

Mobile TV, Music and Video Player Apps Watching live TV or video streaming on the mobile is possible by using TV apps, user can select the channel and watch the TV live without requirement of TV or setupboxes. Music app has a huge song list of all types. From that list, users can select songs and play without the need of downloading. Video player apps help user to play video of any format with options like screen size, screen resolution, video brightness, volume adjustment, subtitle on/off, and more.

E-Commerce Apps E-commerce-mobile apps are developed only for special Ecommerce platform (like Amazon has its own mobile app for shopping). These apps help buyer to compare and choose an item and add the selected item in the cart and order when needed. The buyer doesn’t need to log-in every time, and can check order status, order history directly from a mobile phone. The E-Commerence site also offers discounts, sometimes for orders through mobile app. For | March 2017 |

Trending payments, these apps provide the option of wallet for every account or redirect to internet banking or also provide an option for cash on delivery depending on the customer’s requirements.

Maps and Navigation Apps These apps help user while travelling to new places by navigating them on maps. These maps also provide voice assistant for bikers. These apps are mainly developed by giant like Google and Uber. Uber uses this platform in their taxicab business for booking and payment.

images, sounds and other sensations that replicate a real environment. VR is becoming more and more popular with the continuous introduction of new VR related products in the market, they are creating a space for different VR mobile apps.

Voice-controlled Apps Voice-activated Assistant Apps like Amazon’s Alexa is

Health Apps Health apps are generally pre-installed in the smart-wearables as it shows heartbeats, temperature, and other functions of user’s body which helps them during workouts. These apps can also be downloaded to mobiles as well; because it also gives diet advice to users for their daily intake.

Mobile Security Apps Security apps mainly installed in the device for securing from malware. These apps act as antivirus as well as device cleaners. It cleans junk file and stops unused apps for better performance of the device and battery. These apps provide continuous updates to the users that safeguard their devices from new malware.

Mobile Wallet Apps The mobile wallet is gaining more popularity as it eliminates physical handling of currency for transactions. By using a mobile wallet, users can pay bills, recharge their mobile/DTH packs directly from mobile, and transfer funds to any of their bank accounts. Big automobile companies have also introduced mobile wallet into their cars to pay bills for parking, fuel, tolls, etc.

These are some useful apps made for the everyday application. But with the improvement in technology, utilization of apps is also advancing. Innovative new technology changes the conventional way of usage of apps.

Some of the advanced apps are; IoT Apps IoT apps are developed on the basis of requirement, use, and the type of device. IoT makes use of different sensors, processors, actuators, network connection, and software. As IoT is gaining more space due to automation, it demands a special mobile app. IoT apps are mainly used in autonomous vehicles, drones, smart-homes, etc.

made for voice interaction, music playback, setting alarms, making to-do lists, playing audio-books, streaming podcasts, and providing weather, traffic, and other real-time information. It can also control many smart devices as a home automation hub. Some automobile companies also implementing voice assistant apps for their vehicles for controlling different functions.

Nearly, all the needs of the user can be completed with the apps like purchasing, taxi-train-plane-bus seat booking, food ordering, selling of old-new products, and more. There is the continuous addition of new apps in the mobile market that takes place with their uniqueness and usefulness.

New technologies and new requirements are making the apps industry to innovate beyond limits that can fulfill the emerging requirements of a human being.

VR Apps Virtual Reality (VR) apps are used to generate the realistic | March 2017 |

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Infinum: An Independent Design and Development Agency T

he demand for software in general is as strong as ever and the Mobile App solution industry is getting more competitive. It’s a global marketplace, and it’s good to have many players involved because it keeps everyone pushing forward and doing better work.

Better work demands innovative and flexible solutions depending on the clients’ needs.

Infinum is an independent software design and development agency. It currently employs over a 100 highly-skilled employees across offices in the US and Europe. Having around 11 years of experience and a solid US client base, they are thrilled to be recognized for the quality of their work, especially because the San Francisco Bay area is known for being the global center of technology.

Over 300 clients entrusted Infinum to build their digital products, and they’ve wrapped up twice as many projects by now. Many of these projects are also award-winning, which come as a staple of quality. Infinum works with clients ranging from financial, telecommunication, healthcare, automotive to FMCG, media and, leisure sectors.

Infinum’s leadership Tomislav Car is the CEO at Infinum and one of the Founders. He co-founded Infinum along with his friend Matej Spoler when he was 19 years old, and three other

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partners (Nikola, Josip and Tamara) joined after a couple of years. Tomislav is a programmer by trade, he graduated computer science and dabbled in different aspects of building software.

Tomislav says, “I’m basically unemployable, simply because I never worked anywhere outside of Infinum in my life. I love motorcycles, I own two of them, one in Europe and one in SF, where I spend most of my time to run the US office.”

Beginnings Infinum started providing Mobile App solutions because it was interesting for them and also the clients were demanding for the services. It was like the market was trying to tell them to do so. Their clients were continually impressed by the end-quality of their work, and Infinum grew based on referrals. At that point, the smartphone market was just getting started and Infinum was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. The rest was hard work, planning and leadership.

Benefits for Clients Infinum dedicates a lot of time to user experience. “The entire UX research process opens a multitude of questions client didn’t think about beforehand ”, says Tomislav.

That’s why, before starting sketching or coding anything, Infinum always runs a series discovery meetings, design sprints or workshops with the clients. This essentially means a clearer vision of business and consumer objectives, and a better interpretation of the end product.

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“

Another important factor is code quality. At Infinum, they pay a lot of attention to the underlying technical implementation. This enables them to be fast in updating their clients’ apps and to introduce new features on time.

They recently wrote an article about technical debt, communicating the value of the code quality. As Tomislav explains, “keeping the code tidy will save the organization and their client stress, money, and even bankruptcy in the future.”

Every day, large companies and brands trust us to design and develop their digital experiences

Infinum’s Journey Tomislav started Infinum from scratch, with zero capital, basically incorporating with the money from their first sale. After that, everything they earned was reinvested into the company until they build a stable business model.

Difficulties along the way included not really knowing how to run a company, at least until team Infinum learned it “on the go”. Finding, motivating, and retaining people and dealing with spikes of either having too much work or too little work.

Apart from the money Infinum invested, everything they could spare went to their employees in order to make them better off and happier.

Offices, perks, the ability to work on internal projects, etc. Team Infinum is also quite aware that being profitable is key. One great lesson Tomislav has learned from Jason Fried - no one ever | March 2017 |

Tomislav Car

CEO and Co-founder

“

Ultimately, Infinum tests all products before shipping them to production.

They have an in-house QA team and they work closely with designers and developers from the beginning to ensure every app that they release meets Infinum’s standard of quality.

Sometimes they even do usability tests with specific target groups.

went out of business by turning a profit.

Challenges and Goals Infinum see a general shift in consumers’ perception. There’s a mobile app for almost anything now, and getting the user to install an app has become a serious issue. Tomislav says, “A lot of the trends in technology today go towards circumventing the ‘I need to install another app problem’.

Chatbots for instance are trying to do that. Voice interfaces like Alexa, Google Home, and Siri. And then there’s the good old web app.”

“We built this brand through the collective effort of our team, that’s why we’re so proud to have it evolving to

this day. We are all friends, we treat each other fairly, have fun together, support each other and offer help when needed. Simple commitments such as these are deeply integrated into our company’s culture, and they’ve worked extremely well so far,” Tomislav added.

Team Infinum is devoted to producing high-quality work. They know that their reputation depends on the solutions that they deliver, and they’re always trying to go that extra mile.

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Touchtap Building World-Class Apps P eople come about with entrepreneurship in their veins and they take the challenge to make our world a better place. Be it in IoT, Cloud, IT or even Mobile Apps, they make their mark on the business world with their creativity, passion and vision.

from turning on the lights to starting the car to opening our garage door. That’s what Noah recognized and ventured his vision into Touchtap with the sole goal of building great mobile apps. As time has passed, this vision hasn’t changed, but has matured.

Likewise, Noah Labhart, Founder of Touchtap, has entrepreneurship in his veins. Even more so, he enjoys seeing lives impacted by creative technology and elegant solutions. Thus, when he saw the opportunity to make a difference in people’s lives with mobile apps, he took the plunge into starting his own native app development agency based in Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas.

An Entrepreneur Who Took Mobile Apps to make People’s Lives Better Architecting solutions has been Noah’s passion throughout his business journey. Having worked in numerous lead roles over the past 12+ years, he gained tremendous experience in small to large scale organizations and implementations from multiple web applications to utilities to mobile apps.

t uchtap

Touchtap provides iOS and Android native app development services for digital startups, creative agencies and businesses. They also provide front end web development, back-end development and technical services to support the apps that they build.

Since its inception, Touchtap has built and deployed 20 apps and platforms across the gamut of verticals, and have since grown into a multi-member, fully distributed team.

Touchtap Started with One Goal: Build Great Apps

Nowadays, there’s no excuse for a company to not have a mobile app. In the same light, it's mandatory for companies to build something robust, user-friendly and fully functional, if they are to gain traction. When they do this, they have an intimate, direct line to their customers via their smart phone. It’s hard to predict the future, but there is no doubt that mobile is here for the long haul. Anything we do manually can and will be transformed by our smartphones -

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With Touchtap, he continues to build upon his passion for software by designing and developing mobile solutions that impact people and their organizations. Outside of creating, Noah maintains a personal-professional life balance by taking care of his family and home. “When I’m not being a geek or reading old calculus books, I can be found chasing after my beautiful bride, being chased by my kids, enjoying a good cup of coffee, playing my guitar(s) or being outdoors”.

‘Four Ds’ that makes Touchtap Unique

Every project that in the Touchtap pipeline goes through a four-phase process (or the Four Ds, as they call it internally). The first part of the process is Discovery. They offer a discovery service apart from development services.

It’s a multi-session approach where they focus on and learn about the client’s business vision and goals. The goals of | March 2017 |

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“

his phase are to ensure alignment, and to give new clients insight into Touchtap, the process and the marketplace. Once Discovery has been completed, the next step is Design, where they develop a project’s aesthetic and architectural design.

After that, the team starts into Development, where they utilize agile project management methodology, developing in two-week sprints and executing feedback cycles before moving on to the next sprint. Finally, Deployment takes place where they push the app live for market consumption.

We’re not a code shop – we’re technology partners

Touchtap focuses on two primary things - strategic alignment and user experience. They deem it paramount to understand their client’s vision and business goals so they can effectively partner with them and build their product to meet those targets.

Noah Labhart

Founder

In addition to understanding client’s vision and goals, they focus on user experience and urge their clients not to compromise in this area. Each decision they make on a feature set during discovery and design is first vetted through the lenses for a quality user experience. If something isn’t going to be supportive to the end user’s experience, they explore alternative solutions to improve the design with their client.

customers. Moreover, the team manages their project scope and project budget very closely, meeting or exceeding budgetary expectations. By making a low-to-high estimates based on an assessment project features and risk, meeting project deadlines are as simple as tracking numbers. At Touchtap, they are experts at estimation.

Meeting and Exceeding Budgetary Expectations

Overcoming Struggles while Being Prepared for the Future

The Touchtap team is very attentive to their clients’ business needs. As such, they immediately get in the co-pilot seat. With each new project, the team is excited over how the product will impact their client’s organization or

Like every startup, Touchtap faced some challenges in terms of keeping up with demand, from which they learned to keep their development network close at hand and to be masters in communication with clients. By doing

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Keeping Client’s Vision and Business Goals at Top

so, they learned early on how to manage client expectations. These early lessons are the foundation on which Noah developed a more robust discovery process. The Touchtap team always aims at strengthening the company culture of transparency and understanding before executing.

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CXO Standpoint

T

here is a strange inconsistency in how enterprises manage mobile communications compared to other types of business communications.

With traditional voice communications and data communications, we directly control how communications are deployed and used by our employees.

But for mobile devices, we give up this control to external mobile service providers, creating expensive management and regulatory headaches.

It doesn’t have to be this way, which is why I founded Tango Networks a decade ago to revolutionize business mobile communications.

The Company is The Service Provider Consider how other forms of communications are managed for employees.

For typical desktop phone service, the company purchases phones from a vendor along with a central system to provide voice calling, conferencing, inoffice dialing, and other features. The company or its contractor will run cabling and power for the phones.

Then the company contracts with a

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service provider for voice services. The enterprise is in control of the communications system, and sets the policies for each user.

phones in addition to the primary voice and data service costs. While the company is incurring these expenses, the company does not have direct control over the devices to ensure that It’s the same for data communications. corporate policies are followed.

Companies that must monitor The company will contract with a employee voice calls and data sessions, service provider for Internet service. or archive them for regulatory But then the company will install purposes, face added expenses. routers, firewalls, SBCs and Ethernet cabling, or Wi-Fi access points and In some companies, this model has similar infrastructure to get its evolved into Bring Your Own Device employees online. The company similarly is in direct control of its local (BYOD) programs, often when IT departments have simply given up and wide-area networks, and sets the trying to gain control over corporate policies for each user. mobile communications the way they In both cases, the company is acting as have always been able to manage their other services. a service provider for its employees delivering and supporting essential Instead of contracting for phones with communications services. a service provider, the employees are permitted to use their own devices.

But this model has remained broken Then the company reimburses or when it comes to mobile otherwise subsidizes services. While communications. this can be less expensive than a company-owned phone approach, it The Broken Mobile Model makes enforcement of policies very In more traditional situations, the difficult, especially for regulated company will contract with a mobile communications service provider and industries requiring buy or lease mobile phones and service communications recording. for employees. The company pays the In both cases, the mobile devices and provider to handle support, configuration and management of the service subscriptions remain separate

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That’s exactly what Tango Networks’ solutions do. Our Kinetic Communications Platform enables a company to control mobile communications in an entirely new way.

Shared Control The breakthrough is an innovation in how communications signaling and routing are managed. Our Kinetic platform creates a communications control system that is shared between your company and your mobile service provider, enabling the enterprise to be the service provider for their employees.

This means your IT staff sets policies, determines call routing rules, turns on features, and executes similar control steps. These enterprise-managed policies and configuration settings interface directly with the service provider where they are enforced on the mobile communications in the service provider’s network.

from the main form of corporate communications. If I call you from the office, you see my corporate number as the caller ID. If I call you from my mobile, you see my personal mobile number, or another number you don’t recognize. If you call me on my mobile but I need to take the call from my desk phone for recording compliance, I need to call you back, or else start up a special app on my phone to record the call.

In short, the user experience is messy, unwieldy, and less professional in appearance.

The Better Way Imagine instead that your mobile phone could be an extension of your main corporate communications systems.

You could make and receive calls using your corporate number. You could transfer, conference, call with in-office dialing. You could send text messages from your corporate number and receive incoming texts to your corporate number - something your desktop phone probably cannot do. Your calls and texts could be archived for compliance.

Your IT staff would have direct control over when and where you could make toll calls, or even route them through the corporate networks to reduce costs.

This provides great advantages for both companies and their service providers. For service providers, it means that companies are taking on much of their own support and management tasks. For the companies, it means the IT staff is more directly in control of this critical form of corporate communications. Our system is supported by many Tier 1 mobile service providers around the world and is serving hundreds of thousands of users with enhanced mobile communications today. On networks where our solutions are not yet supported, we also offer many of the same control capabilities for employees that use Android, BlackBerry and IOS (Apple) devices.

For the first time, mobile communications can be managed by your company precisely the way traditional fixed voice and data communications. In the end, this means easier regulatory compliance, lower mobile communications costs, and a better user experience that maximizes the productivity of your employees on the go.

About the Author A company co-founder, Andrew Silver now serves as Tango Networks’ Chief Technology Officer. Silver is an entrepreneur and business technologist who has held senior management and director roles in large and small wireless companies including Ericsson, Nortel Networks, Comverse and Spatial Wireless. He is an accomplished speaker at wireless industry forums and has been granted more than 50 patents in wireless communications systems. Silver holds an electrical engineering degree and an MBA from McGill University.

Suppose all this were possible even with your own personal device. Your business communications would operate as an extension of your corporate phone system while your personal communications remained totally private.

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