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When we start talking about smart-phones, there has been a lot of changes: there are lots of smart-phones to choose in the market, retailers have started eying the mobile-friendly sites, applications and consumers are adapting to the idea of shopping on their mobile devices.

Retailers have started having a mobile strategy; “mobile commerce or the m-Commerce”, recognizing the rapid adoption of smart-phones, unlimited data plans and 3G services retailers have to provide the best mobile commerce platform. This provides a uniform smooth experience for searching, shopping and buying items. Mobile sites and applications have to be more user-friendly, and secured.

All this boils down to two important questions,

• Why retailers should have a native mobile commerce app?
  • The answer to this is very straight forward; smart-phones are currently dominating the mobile internet (the iPhone in particular and the fast catching android based smart-phone). A native app is likely to be appealing and more user friendly.
  • Smart-phones apps will appeal to an audience with more disposable income.
  • Better user experience and consistent user interface which user is comfortable with.
  • Native applications provide faster performance and more responsive application.
  • Using the on device imagery, could provide a high quality visual experience and branding.
  • Can utilize native capabilities of device (e.g., GPS, camera, Bluetooth, contacts)
  • Deliverance of push alerts even when application is not open and provide a real time awareness of time-sensitive communication.
  • Access to native cryptographic libraries for on-device data encryption and decryption.
  • Better integration to other applications on the device like email, messaging, contacts etc.
  • On some platforms, we can even leverage it to provide dashboards on the phone home screens.

• Why retailers should have m-commerce website?
• • Ability to reach a greater audience, an app restricts the number of customers you can appeal to.
  • Can overcome building multiple applications to support different platforms (Android, BlackBerry, iPhone).
  • According to Taptu Research, the browser based mobile market is the future.

When a retailer wants to reach the vast target audience for its different products and services, the best and effective way would be to start off with a mobile website optimized for all mobile and hand held devices. This would enable the retailer to reach most of his audience by optimizing the mobile website with the help of mobile search engines.

When a retailer has statistics of the different smart-phones and handhelds used by his audience and when there are a good percentage of users using iPhone, Android handhelds and many more upcoming tablet’s and handhelds, then the retailer could decide upon developing a native mobile application for his customers.

The best way a retailer can reach all of his target audience, is to have both the Mobile website and the native mobile application. This is some of the best practices followed by major and successful retail companies, i.e. Amazon, Best Buy, eBay and many more…

With smart-phone sales set to form two thirds of mobile handset sales in the US in 2015, opportunities for mobile commerce are expanding significantly,” says Coda Research (above).

Some of the questions to be answered before a retailer choose a mobile strategy

• Where should a multichannel retailer start its mobile strategy?
• What does a mobile strategy built against customer needs look like?
• How do you overcome the challenges of operating effectively in a new and evolving space?

How retailers can develop an effective mobile channel

• Leverage existing customer behavior
• Leverage the largest mobile install base
• Leverage existing promotions and CRM strategies
• Allow consumer to reach you directly for product and service information.
• Make it easy to opt-in
• Make it free
• Make it optimized for mobile
• Make it relevant

Best practices of a Mobile commerce site and application design

• Clear call to action: Simple and clear display of content, what you are offering and how they can get it.
  • Make sure the terms of the offer are very clear and the user fully understands the cost for the content.
  • Each transaction should take no more than two steps, fulfilling the double opt-in obligation and making for a simple and easy user experience
  • Provide Search functionality
  • Integration into the main website
  • Clear terms and conditions
  • Allow for exclusive content
  • Maintenance and updating
  • Interactive experiences
  • Customer support
  • Protect your brand
  • Ability to have real time clear insights on Analytic

Understanding the mobile audience and strategy

Mobile marketing includes many ways of delivering targeted communications to a mobile device, and each tactic has a predominant audience that requires a specific strategy to maximize reach.

There are four mobile marketing tactics that are currently more widely adopted by marketers, retailers and consumers alike.

• SMS and MMS
• Mobile Web
• Applications: Applications were made famous by the iPhone and the App Store, but other companies are now getting into the act including BlackBerry with its App World, Palm by making its Palm Software Store accessible from its mobile devices, and Google with its Android Market. Applications are fantastic for providing a rich user experience that far exceeds what is possible with a mobile-browser-friendly Web page. However, because applications serve a dedicated audience only, the rich functionality and consumer experience possibilities must be balanced against the relatively limited audience of all mobile devices that can use the application.
• Mobile advertising

It’s time to start paying attention to mobile Commerce. We at TechJini could help you come up with mobile strategies, which can help to set yourself up for the future right now.

For more details drop a mail on shiv@techjini.com

This is a research of Gartner on worldwide mobile phone sales and rankings given to the manufacturers as well as OS. I thought I need to share this with you.

Worldwide mobile phone sales to end users totalled 314.7 million units in the first quarter of 2010, a 17 per cent increase from the same period in 2009, according to Gartner, Inc. Smarpthone sales to end users reached 54.3 million units, an increase of 48.7 per cent from the first quarter of 2009. Among the most successful vendors were those that controlled an integrated set of operating system (OS), hardware and services.

“In the first quarter of 2010, smartphone sales to end users saw their strongest year-on-year increase since 2006,” said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner. “This quarter saw RIM, a pure smartphone player, make its debut in the top five mobile devices manufacturers, and saw Apple increase its market share by 1.2 percentage points. Android’s momentum continued into the first quarter of 2010, particularly in North America, where sales of Android-based phones increased 707 per cent year-on-year.

Growth in the mobile devices market was driven by double-digit growth of smartphone sales in mature markets, helped by wider product availability as well as mass market price tags. “Increasing sales of white-box products in some emerging regions, in particular India, also drove sales of mobile phones upward. We expect sales of white-box products to remain very healthy for the remainder of 2010, especially outside of China,” said Ms Milanesi.

The first quarter also saw some movement outside the top five mobile handset vendor rankings (see Table 1), Hong Kong-based manufacturer G-Five made its debut into the top 10, grabbing 1.4 per cent of market share in the first quarter of 2010. The rise of white-box manufacturers from Asia has also helped the “others” section, as a proportion of overall sales, increase its market share to 19.20 per cent in the first quarter of 2010, up 2.7 percentage points. “This is having a profound effect on the top five mobile handset manufacturers’ combined share that dropped from 73.3 in the first quarter of 2009 to 70.7 per cent in the first quarter of 2010,” said Ms Milanesi.

Table 1
Worldwide Mobile Terminal Sales to End Users in 1Q10 (Thousands of Units)

Source: Gartner (May 2010)

In the first quarter of 2010, Nokia’s mobile phone sales to end users reached 110.1 million units, a 1.2 per cent decline in market share year-on-year. Although Nokia’s midtier products sold well, Nokia lacks a high-volume driver in the high-end. “MeeGo based devices and other high-end products will not rejuvenate Nokia’s premium portfolio until the end of the third quarter of 2010 at the earliest, and Nokia will continue to feel pressure on its average selling price (ASP) from vendors such as HTC, RIM and Samsung,” said Ms Milanesi. The reorganisation announced last week demonstrated that Nokia is trying to streamline the reporting process to deliver results quickly, which we believe shows its recognition of the pressure it faces from investors.

Samsung sold 64.9 million devices in the first quarter of 2010, an increase of 26.3 per cent year-on-year. Samsung was one of the five vendors in the top10 vendors ranking to grow its market share, which increased by 1.5 percentage points year-on-year. Samsung saw healthy margins in the first quarter of 2010 and was also able to grow its presence in developing markets such as India and the Commonwealth of Independent States.

RIM’s mobile phone sales reached 10.6 million units in the first quarter of 2010, a 45.9 per cent increase year-on-year. RIM is making its debut into the top five worldwide mobile handset manufacturers ranking. RIM’s focus this quarter was centred on its ecosystem strategy, its tightly integrated control of store, OS and device played to RIM’s strengths.

Sony Ericsson sold enough units to remain in the top five mobile handset manufacturers, but its market share declined 2.3 percentage points in the first quarter of 2010. The channel held some inventory for Sony Ericsson in the first quarter of 2010 as some new products reached the channel late into the quarter. One of Sony Ericsson’s most important future differentiators is its relationship with its parent company, Sony. This partnership, combined with Sony Ericsson’s ownership of the strongest portfolio it has had since 2007, place it well to lead the trend toward increasingly connected consumer devices.

The first quarter of 2010 was Apple’s strongest quarter yet, which placed the company in the No. 7 position with a 112.2 per cent increase in mobile devices sales. “Growth came partly from new communication service providers in established markets, such as the UK, and stronger sales in new markets such as China and South Korea,” said Ms Milanesi. “The second quarter of 2010 will be a very important one for Apple. We expect that Apple will present its new iPhone in June during its Worldwide Developer Conference, which will be the first to feature the latest release of the iPhone OS that includes welcome improvements for developers and users, such as multitasking.”

In the smartphone OS market, Android and Apple were the winners in the first quarter of 2010 (see Table 2). Android moved to the No. 4 position displacing Microsoft Windows Mobile for the first time. Both Android and Apple were the only two OSs vendors among the top five to increase market share year-on-year. Symbian remained in the No. 1 position but continued to lose as Nokia remains weak in the high-end portfolio.

Smartphones accounted for 17.3 per cent of all mobile handset sales in the first quarter of 2010, up from 13.6 per cent in the same period in 2009.

As seen with the iPad and web books based on Google’s Android platform, mobile OS ecosystems are developing and will move beyond smartphones to continue to deliver consumer value and a rich user experience,” said Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner.

Table 2
Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System in 1Q10 (Thousands of Units)

Source: Gartner (May 2010)

Mobile e-mail, rich messaging and social networking will continue to drive demand for smartphones and enhanced phones that feature full qwerty hardware keyboards. “To compete in such a crowded market, manufacturers need to tightly integrate hardware, user interface, and cloud and social networking services if their solutions are to appeal to users,” said Ms Cozza. “Just adding a qwerty keyboard will not make a device fit the communication’s habits of today’s various consumer segments.”

The morale of the research would be to understand the domain of mobile marketing and effectively utilize the advantage to our marketing efforts.

Earlier, we were using mobiles for making calls and just to stay in touch. It was even luxurious and unaffordable in the mid segment customers. Now, having a mobile is no more a luxury, besides it has become necessity.

Mobile is no more used only for calls, it is being used for more than that. Every consumer wants to have the power of mobility with him. He wants to order pizza on the go, book tickets for a movie on the go, want to Google on the mobile, want to pay his bills from his mobile and what not!!!!!!!!. We want everything on the fly because we lack only one thing now a days and that is time.

Probably this was best understood by the Mobile OEM companies in the right sense who are eagerly looking out for continuous innovation. Yes, then there entered something called business phones which are supposed to be only for the C Level Executives in the early stage of its evolution. You do only business work like  checking only important emails, and open spreadsheets and do numbers of Total revenue and Net profit that bothers them always ( Hope the usage of BlackBerry had no impact on increase of revenue but yes I have to agree that for sales guys it had impacted to identify the person if he is a decision maker or not). As everybody knows that  RIM has best understood this strategy, and BlackBerry has become a luxurious tool for C-Level Executives.

In the continuous evolution process,  when many of the mobile OEM’s are coming up with low price strategy to enter into development markets, some innovative guys like Steve Jobs, whose another name itself is innovation has probably some day woke up and said to himself ” I want to build iPhone “. Hope the letter “i” is very rhythmic in sense with innovation or Steve. If we look at his brands that has brought Apple to a huge limelight the iPod, iPhone, iPad, iStore, iTunes have brought him much more fame than “Mac” ( Of Course outside US). Now a days we have started speaking about iPhone a lot and who knows the better revenue model other than Steve. Even if he opens a App Store we know that there is a revenue  model for Apple and he wants his customers to be loyal to his products because of the abundance of Apps. Hmmm, probably this is the marketing strategy where other OEM’s should focus on.

Whether it’s an individual or an organization, there is a lot of buzz in Smart phones.  iPhone has created a revolution in the market and now Google’s intervention into the segment with Mobile OS.

The possibility look at all the three phones BlackBerry, iPhone, Android, gives us a sense that it is not going to be easy one for Apple and BlackBerry where their presence is limited to only the phones they manufacture, compared to Google’s Android, where there are nearly 18 manufacturers of the handsets. The moral of the story is that it’s not enough to have a single model  phone to rule the market but probably Apple and BlackBerry can look at different initiatives to expand their market presence by collaborating with other manufacturers.

This argument I would definitely support with  Gartner’s latest report headed by the title “Android to grab No. 2 spot by 2012, says Gartner”. I have read it in Computerworld magazine.The below article is courtesy of Computerworld magazine.

“While the Google-backed Android mobile operating system currently runs on less than 2% of all smartphones, Gartner Inc. predicts it will surge to 14% of the global smartphone market in 2012 — ahead of the iPhone, as well as Windows Mobile and BlackBerry smartphones.

In that year, Gartner forecasts Android will actually rank second globally, behind the Symbian OS, which is used in Nokia devices that are highly popular in Europe and many countries outside the U.S. Symbian now runs on about half of all smartphones, but will fall to 39% in 2012, Gartner says.

The Gartner forecast gives Android such an enormous surge in popularity because of a variety of factors, but chiefly because of Google Inc.’s backing of Android and the range of cloud computing functions and related applications that Google will make available in coming years, Ken Dulaney said in an exclusive interview with Computerworld. And because Android and Google operate in an “integrative and open environment, [they] could easily top … the singular Apple,” he said.

The complete Gartner forecast for smartphone OSes by the end of 2012 puts Symbian on top with 203 million devices sold, and 39% of the market. Android will be second with nearly 76 million units sold, and 14.5% of the market.

Coming in a close third, the iPhone will ship on 71.5 million devices in 2012, giving a 13.7% market share. Windows Mobile will finish fourth, with 66.8 million units sold, or 12.8% of the market.

Very close behind Windows Mobile, the BlackBerry OS will sell on 65.25 million devices in 2012, Gartner forecasts, making it fifth with 12.5% market share.

Android will have moved up the most from 2009 to 2012, from sixth place to second. BlackBerry will have moved down the most, from second to fifth, while iPhone will remain in third position and Windows Mobile will remain in fourth position, Gartner says.”

I still don’t know perfectly how Gartner does future predictions like Astrologers but I strongly support them because I find a strong logic behind their research.

Smart Phone Apps

Thanks to Apple, Google, and BlackBerry. Whatever competition does we don’t mind but we ourselves equip in providing the latest apps on all platforms.  Probably these guys have now created an economy that may be named as “App Economy” which never existed before.

Organizations are looking at Smart Phone Apps as a great movement and Ad agencies are rejoicing the power of new medium for elevating the Brand experience for their customers in a very personalized way. Every one wants to put their strengths in smart phone apps to showcase their creativity and to help their customers in building much more loyal brands.

Still, I understand one thing, probably after Recession, it’s not only customer satisfaction but customer loyalty has also become a very high priority for all the organizations. The Marketing and Branding heads are breaking their heads to use this new medium.  Some use apps for brand elevation and some use it for mobilizing their Enterprise Applications.

What I could suggest is whether you are looking at any of these apps, we need to prioritize, the usage of our customers. We need to look at the ratio of Android, iPhone, and BlackBerry among our customer’s community and then work on building apps.

Why Smart Phone Apps ?

There has been a huge buzz about using latest technologies for marketing. It was facebook, twitter and now the latest is  Smart Phone. Smart Phones are very handy compared to other technologies and they provide the following benefits with a a very personalized and targeted approach to your customers

• Brand Elevation
• Improves Customer loyalty
• Easy way to promote your promotional offers faster
• On the go mobility to reserve or book
• Improves Customer Satisfaction
• Improves Revenue at low TCO
• Real time data for Customers about the latest happenings

Cnet reports that the number of users who will tap into the App store will be at 100 million by 2013. Just imagine the momentum and let’s grab the opportunity with a well build good looking app that helps in your Brand Elevation.

Why TechJini ?

Whether you need to build only an iPhone App or a BlackBerry or Android App,  TechJini helps you in evaluating your customer base first.

• Global Consulting Company
• Innovation in every aspect of Application Development Life cycle
• More than 25 iPhone Apps in the Apple App Store
• Focused and personalized approach towards each Client
• Experience in working with Mobile OEM’s and Fortune 500 companies
• Quality Process with Zero defect delivery
• Flexible Engagement Models
• 100% Delighted Customers
• More than 60% of annual revenues from repeated business
• More than 100% growth YoY

Contact us for a World class  Smart Phone App and get your idea conceptualized and take a perfect shape in TechJini. Just Email us always zameer@techjini.com

The iPad marks the emergence of a new business model for Publishing Houses, are you ready to use this opportunity to move into the digital age?

iPad is likely to be a great medium for publishing houses, who have drastically been hit with fast falling revenues (in reference to the year 2009). Newspapers have seen significant decline in print advertising revenues, online versions did not provide many options to monetize. However iPad and mobile apps may have slated to change all these.

Why iPad and Mobile Platforms for Publishing Companies?

 Why choose iPad and Mobile platforms instead of Web, the major problem with digital content on the web are that people expect it to be free. As this is one of the greatest strengths of the web, while free is great for consumers and the World, it does not create any revenue for publishers.

The iPad provides an opportunity to change all that. We’ve already become accustomed to paying for iPhone applications, it seems natural to pay for iPad magazines, books, and news papers provided the experience is significantly better than the dead-tree versions.

Several hundred thousand iPads have been pre-ordered. Analysts expect Apple to sell around 5 million units in 2010. A survey executed by the analysts of comScore indicated that 34 percent of iPad buyers will use it to read newspapers and magazines. 68% of young consumers indicated a willingness to pay for news and magazines specially formatted for e-readers.

The US Audit Bureau of Circulations already revised the definition of digital magazines. Publishers may now report items as E-reader distribution averages, mobile app purchases, etc. in order to reflect the new audience.

The article quoted Chris Anderson of Wired at TED 2010 stating that the iPad “[is] an opportunity to reset the economics,” of digital publishing. “For the first time, people may value this experience so much they’ll pay for it.”

Many Companies adapting to the World of Mobile and iPad World:

Many prominent Publishing houses like McGraw Hill, Houghton Mifflin, Kaplan, USA Today, New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, BBC News, the Associated Press, Time magazine and many more are looking at iPad apps as a very strategic initiative on a subscription mode. USA Today has been downloaded 175,000.

Statistical details on the applications being downloaded on the “Apple iTunes store” –source O’Reilly Research

We could see from the figure one that 30% of downloads are from the books and rest applications comprise to 70%, as many publishing companies have started publishing multiple titles on the emergence of the iPad.

In reference to the fig 2: Application Downloads

Obviously, a game developer won’t be able to churn out new applications at the same rate as an eBook publisher. Game developers have, on average, 2.3 apps in the store (looking at data from the last week), while a typical eBook vendor is selling almost 18 apps right now.

Books are also currently the fastest growing category in the App Store (285% in the last three months), mostly because vendors can simply pack different texts into separate applications. Compared to other categories, productivity apps are only growing slowly, though the number of apps in this category still grew 58% over the last 12 weeks.

Statistics on the Downloads

Different kinds of eBook application on iPad and iPhone

Average prices in Top-100 under the category “Books”:

Distribution of prices in Top-100 under the category “Books”:

Portfolio characteristics of the most successful publishers from Top-100 “Books”:

Fig 3: Content uniqueness:

Fig 4: By content

• Portfolio of the average successful publisher from Top-100(“Books”) has approximately 60 applications.
• Moreover, there’s one publisher holding 25% of all content of the section “Books”.

Effective models for selling the books:

• Free Application with free books and In App purchase of books
• Portfolio of books with SEO of high quality both in iTunes and through search engines (Google etc)

Conclusion:

• Publishing companies should work on releasing interactive books which started promptly developing last month, especially in light of iPad release (even though the cost for producing such books is much higher as compared with normal books);
• The segment of medical books has some perspectives (most probably it is also related to iPad release, which allows to operate easier with the graphics etc) and making the students or the readers to have a very good usability.
• Interactive books for children and comics, which is one of the most stable and quick-growing segments.

Why Techjini?

• More than 25 iPhone applications in the Apple-app store.
• Global Consulting Company: We apply innovation into every aspect of application development, be it Project management or Lifecycle Management.
• Individual and personalized focus on each client of ours.
• Competitive pricing  for iPad application development services
• Professional support and maintenance for iPad projects.

For more details or a free quote kindly contact shiv@techjini.com

Hotel industry is moving ahead aggressively in terms of marketing by using the power of mobile and smart phones.They are utilizing mobile Apps to provide the convenience factor for their loyal customers to stay ahead in the competition.

Many prominent Hotel Groups like Hilton, IHG, Choice Hotels, Best Western, The Peninsula, Four Seasons and many more are looking at mobile apps as a very strategic initiative to increase customer loyalty. Hilton’s app was downloaded 126, 000 times till date.

Why buzz in mobile Space?

• 75 million Blackberry users in the world
• 50 million iPhone users in the world till date and 450,000 iPads sold in 1^st week and growing.
• 172 million Smartphones users in the world with 4% on Android

Smartphones market growing 25% YoY basis

How do we help you to Benefit?

We could develop a customized iPhone or any smart phone app that will initially give your smart phone toting customers basic tools for booking and managing reservations. Expect to find:

• Search and book hotels
• GPS functionality to find nearby hotels
• ability to see hotel photos and facilities
• custom directions using the iPhone’s GPS
• click-to-call front desk for each hotel
• automatic use of any membership Club account information to speed bookings
• redeem loyalty points for stays
• view point balances, level, etc…
• view and cancel upcoming reservations
• enroll in the program, if you’re not a member
• customize billing preferences and room/rate preferences
• Customer could customize his requirements even before arrival into the hotel.
• see special offers for loyalty members

Why iPhone App for Hotels?

There has been a huge buzz about using latest technologies for marketing. It was facebook, twitter and now the latest is iPhone. iPhone is very handy compared to other technologies and it provides the following benefits with a a very personalized and targeted approach to your customers

• Brand Elevation
• Improves Customer loyalty
• Easy way to promote your promotional offers faster
• On the go mobility to reserve
• Improves Customer Satisfaction
• Improves Revenue at low TCO
• Real time data for Customers about the latest happenings

Cnet reports that the number of users who will tap into the App store will be at 100 million by 2013. Just imagine the momentum and let’s grab the opportunity with a well build good looking app that helps in your Brand Elevation.

ROI on Smart Phone Apps for Hotels

The main driver behind the increased usage of mobile apps by Hotel customers is ” Convenience”. It is said that many of the customers are booking rooms on the fly. Given below are some stats that could help you i evaluating the ROI quotient for Smart Phone Apps.

• Mariott Hotels mobile initiative has generated nearly $ 2 million in gross revenuebetween its Aug, 2008 launch and end of the year. Courtesy Ad Age.com
• Omni Hotels mobile site traffic has grown by 85 % in the past six months and mobile is seeing a conversion rate of 25% said Kerry Kennedy, the hotel’s e-Commerce Director.That means one in every four people who visit the chain’s app end up booking a room.
• Mr. La Rose of Hilton told that wireless bookings have generated roughly $ 1.4 million dollars in an average 100 day period.
• Many Hotels have improved ROI of more than 25% per year.
• Mobile bookings have improved to nearly 85% without any promotions of mobile apps.

By looking at the above stats , we could at least safely consider that it is going to wow the customers and when we get the ROI in 2-3 years it is going to wow the management. As a customer focused industry, we need to bring that convenience and comfort to customers which in turn improves Sales.

Why TechJini ?

• Global Consulting Company
• Innovation in every aspect of Application Development Life cycle
• More than 25 iPhone Apps in the Apple App Store
• Focused and personalized approach towards each Client
• Experience in working with Mobile OEM’s and Fortune 500 companies
• Quality Process – Zero defect delivery
• Flexible Engagement Models
• 100% Delighted Customers
• More than 60% of annual revenues from repeated business
• More than 100% growth YoY

After interviewing several iPhone developers here in Bangalore, I am really frustrated. We already have a team of iPhone developers (who are the best) and now we are trying to add a couple more people to the team. But we have not been able to hire even 1 person after more than 40 interviews. And we have interviewed candidates from all types of companies, big (the top 10) and small.

Well, lets get this straight, you are NOT an iPhone developer if:

• you have no idea why you write “nonatomic” and “retain” in all properties. And you’ve never tried to find out.
• you cannot tell the difference between release and autorelease
• you hear the terms “main run loop” or “event loop” for the first time during the interview
• you think all classes are either views or controllers
• you have never written code for “applicationDidReceiveMemoryWarning” and “didReceiveMemoryWarning”
• you do not know if you should release objects you created by through “copy” or “mutableCopy”
• the terms build configurations and provisioning profiles do not ring a bell
• you have never even seen the iPhone HIG (Human Interface Guidelines) document
• you think both “viewDidLoad” and “loadView” are same methods
• you have never used breakpoints and the debugger
• you have never used the Instruments Application to monitor memory or network usage
• you do not know how to read crash logs or how to add symbols to crash logs
• even after programming for iPhone, you do not know about the Model-View-Controller pattern or the delegate pattern

And in case you are just starting off with iPhone programming, it would be wise to know the basics of both objective-C and the iPhone SDK. Don’t skip reading at least the following:

• iPhone 101
• Objective-C programming language guide
• iPhone Application Programming Guide
• View Controller Programming Guide for iPhone OS

We have faced the issue of push notifications working seamlessly over sandbox but never work on production. This has happened more than once.

I still have not investigated the root cause but the following fixes it.

We did not do anything extra or change any code or project build configuration. Here is what we did:

1. Restored our iPhone/iPod Touch devices by erasing everything and reinstalling the OS. Did not sync the device or restore old data to avoid putting in the provisioning profiles again.
2. Deleted all certificates and private keys from keychain on the mac (all including the Apple provider certificates)
3. Removed all provisioning profiles from xcode.
4. From the developer portal, we deleted the adhoc and dev provisioning profiles
5. From the developer portal, we revoked the push SSL certificates for both dev and production versions
6. Then we regenerated the push SSL certificates, both production and dev. Note that we did not download them from the wizard itself at this time.
7. We then waited for a few minutes (5-10 mins) and then generated the provisioning profile. Not downloaded yet.
8. We again waited a few minutes (5-10 mins) and then downloaded the certificates (sandbox and production) and the profiles (dev and adhoc)
9. We then generated the single PEM file from the certificates and the key only for the production version. We did not even install the sandbox version certificates in our keychain.
10. Then installed the adhoc provisioning profile in xcode and the device
11. Started the application and tested a push notification
12. It worked

They key difference is that we generate and download the dev profiles and sandbox certificates but do not use them at all. We only use the production certificates and the adhoc profile. That seems to always work.

Since many iPhone and iPod Touch users have not upgraded to the iPhone OS 3.0, it makes a lot of sense to enable backward compatibility on applications. But if you want to leverage the latest 3.0 features, you would have to put some extra effort to ensure full backward compatibility.

And if you are also integrating 3rd party libraries (analytics, ad networks etc.), you would have to ensure those also are backward compatible.

Q: How can I ensure that my application works on all iPhone OS versions from OS 2.0 to the latest 3.x version? And I do need to use some 3.0 features like push notifications or the Map Kit functions.

1. Choose the Base SDK as iPhone Device 3.0. You can do this by right click on project name->Get Info. Then on the General tab, set the “Base SDK for All Configurations”to “iPhone Device 3.0″.
2. Choose your deployment to be the lowest version you want to support. You can do this by right click on project name->Get Info. Then on the Biold tab, select “All Configurations” for Configuration so that this change is applied to all you configurations. Then look for the “iPhone OS Deployment Target” property under the “Deployment” section. Set that to the correct iPhone OS version. In my case I set it to “iPhone OS 2.0″.
3. In your code wherever you use any APIs available only in versions later than your deployment target, use them conditionally after checking if they are available. This can be done for both classes and selectors.

Apple’s documentation describes this in further detail. Here is an image from the documentation that describes how the compatibility works based on the configuration:

When using 3rd party APIs and linking to dylib libraries, there might be further problems if the versions are not compatible. When trying ot integrate AdWhirl, we got an error:

Dyld Error Message:
  Library not loaded: /usr/lib/libxml2.2.dylib
  Referenced from: ......
  Reason: Incompatible library version: xxxxx requires version 10.0.0 or later, but libxml2.2.dylib provides version 9.0.0

This happens because iPhone OS version 2.x  and 3.xuse different versions of the library. The simplest way to fix this is to make the linking for the library weak. This can be done by right click on your application under “Targets” and select Get Info. Then on the General tab, under the linked libraries, locate this library and change the linking type from “Required” to “Weak”

We tried several tools and methods for user interface designing of iPhone applications. We now use a combination of these tools and our choice depends on what best suits the product as well as the customer. The key point is communicating the design clearly to both the customer and developers.

Before going into details, let me just list the iPhone design and mockup (wireframe) tools/methods in no particular order:

1. Use Interface Builder (Mac only)
2. Use Balsamiq mockup tool (Mac, windows, linux) – http://www.balsamiq.com (http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/2009/03/01/iphone-controls-new-icons-and-much-more/)
3. Use Omnigraffle (Mac only) and import an iPhone stencil – (http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnigraffle/download/ and http://www.graffletopia.com/search/iphone)
4. Use paper and a stencil- http://www.designcommission.com/shop/iphone-stencil-kit/
5. Use a pre-printed sketch paper – http://labs.boulevart.be/index.php/2008/06/05/sketch-paper-for-the-mobile-designer/
6. Use photoshop and the iPhone PSD – http://www.teehanlax.com/blog/?p=1628
7. Use Adobe Fireworks – http://blogs.adobe.com/fireworks/2008/08/iphone_gui_as_adobe_fireworks.html and http://www.building43.com/videos/2009/06/23/mockup-iphone-app-adobe-fireworks/
8. Although not there yet, you can try http://iphonemockup.lkmc.ch/
9. Use the stencil kit from Yahoo! which is available in a variety of formats – http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/wireframes/
10. Use the sketchbook available at http://www.mobilesketchbook.com/

Some bonus stuff

• For some great tips on designing iPhone apps, you can read http://www.mobileorchard.com/7-iphone-ui-user-interface-design-resources/
• A PSD for creating iPhone line icons http://www.keepthewebweird.com/iphone-icon-psd-template/
• Icons for tabbar and toolbar http://www.glyphish.com/ and http://eddit.com/shop/iphone_ui_icon_set/

Lazy as I am, I decided to write details about each iPhone UI design tool later, so till then please use the list above and explore them.

If I missed your favorite tool, please let me know in comments and I will gladly add it here.

After 10 days in review, Aw’ Shugs Free is now available on the iPhone App Store. The update to the paid version is still under review.

The only difference between the free and paid versions is that the paid version allows users to catch shugs anywhere and not just limited to a range around their current location.

Enjoy!!