Want to impact the Mobile Computing industry and develop top-shelf software for the Apple iOS and other mobile platforms?  Now's your chance, as eM is currently looking for a self-motivated software engineer (or intern!) to join our team!  

What You'll Need

To be considered, the interested candidate must have:

https://shiftyjelly.wordpress.com/2011/08/02/amazon-app-store-rotten-to-the-core/

What we want to know is, how could Google allow this sort of thing to go down in the first place?  I mean, don't they care about the Android brand and the developer community that tries to support it?  Don't they want to attract more developers and businesses to their playground?

Wait, don't answer that.  It's clear what kinds of answers we'd get.  And we have to say, things are not boding well for Android these days.  Just look at the issues:

1. Subpar developer tools
2. A Fragmented deployment model.
3. An unclear path to aide in monetizing development costs
4. Malware
5. Purported 40% return rate of devices to carriers
6. Patent concerns up the wazoo.  

We could go on but let's just cut to the chase shall we?  

"it's about the developer, stupid!"

In case you missed it, it costs real money to develop software for mobile – it always has.  Whether you're an app developer looking to launch the next great consumer-facing app or you're a dynamic business looking to empower your field force by streamlining their day-to-day jobs, building a stable, sophisticated and secure mobile application that properly serves the end customer is hard and more costly than you might imagine.  Oh and then you have to support it once it's deployed.

Now don't get me wrong.  There is money to be made in mobile for sure.  With a sound idea, strong business case and a well-rounded infrastructure to build everything upon, your software development team has a very good chance of helping you succeed.  Without those good tools however, you can expect your development costs to blossom, quality of your product go down, and the costs to support unreasonable as your team struggles with the tools.

This is why back in 2008 when Windows Mobile was being ushered out (our primary development platform at the time) and we had a chance to choose between Apple and the other mobile platforms out there, we went with Apple.  Why?  Because they seem to understand that without an excited and properly supported, compensated and empowered mobile software development community, they've got nothing.  

Based on all accounts, I think we made the right decision.  I mean, we're still here, doing better than ever and honestly, when is the last time you've heard of a developer conference selling out in something like 10 hours? (The last WWDC did just that.)  Or people sleeping outside for the pending release of the next Apple iOS device?  (Dare I suggest googling for that one?)

Look, we've been wanting to support another mobile platform for some time now, but man, can Google make it any harder?  It's sad, but we've had to strongly advise against  developing for Android unless there is a very clear path to monetize because of all the reasons I've mentioned above.  

More to the point, who else is even worth considering right now?  RIM is now faltering with every step (no unified ecosystem there), Microsoft simply cannot give away their new phones and well, we all know Symbian is done.  That leaves HP / Palm Pre, which while I almost think has the best chance to be #2, can't seem to claw back their way into the market yet.  Oh and please don't press the mobile web here.  Yes – we're watching HTML5 closely and while we think it's a great tool for many things, the mobile web, by itself, is still not ready for complex data collection nor a more diversified mobile user experience.

Show us a straightforward way for the best chance at making our client's money back by developing for your mobile platform and you've got a developer to add to your community.  But keep ignoring your mobile software development community's needs and problems (like allowing others to rip them off), and you leave us no choice but to continue to steer clear of your world.  

Got it?

Heads up! …. eM is now actively looking for a mobile software developer to join the team during the summer of 2011.  

Here's your chance to get into the Mobile Computing field and learn to design, develop and test software for the iPhone, Android and other mobile platforms!  In this role the selected candidate will have a chance to work on real projects.  Actual tasks assigned will depend greatly on current skills, demonstrated progress and willingness to learn new things.

The interested candidate should be studying Computer Science and have a focus in Software Engineering.  S/he should also be fascinated with mobile, possess an attention to detail and a desire to write well-designed code.  Experience with C and C++ or Objective C a must. Self-motived, object-oriented people are encouraged to apply.

For a complete job description in PDF form, please click here.

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Oh, and what's that the Senator is holding?  "Mission accomplished."

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This year’s all-encompassing topic was Social Media.  You can review the collection of slides from each panel speaker online here.

Social Media In The Air

It’s all the rage, I tell you … this Social Media thing and using your mobile devices to do it.  Every single person in that room (90+) at the 777 Series event had a Smartphone and wanted to learn all about how they could use Social Media to reach out and engage with new and existing customers who also have Smartphones.

One panelist talked about how to use Twitter.  Someone talked about tools like Yelp and FourSquare.  Another talked about the legal aspects of Social Media and another addressed Cloud Computing and mobile.  It was a good solid baseline on the Do’s and Don’ts of Social Media (Hint: check out the slide deck linked above for more).

Anyway, my role?  To talk about the future of Mobility and the evolution of user behavior that first starts with Social Media on Smartphones and grows into something more.

The Future Of Mobility

In my presentation I spoke about how Social Media on Smartphones is slowly raising the curtain for consumer-facing businesses on what big enterprise-level companies have been doing for many years … using mobile devices (and now Smartphones) to  consume and collect relevant data for their businesses.  I then suggested that Social Media tricks to engage customers is just the tip of the iceberg.

Soon your tweets and blog posts will simply not be enough for your customers.  Soon consumers will realize they can do more with their smartphones than just read tweets and access the web.  They’ll want to, well, consume more and more of whatever you have using their Smartphones and do it in new and different ways that empower them.  They will want to take stuff with them, order things – whatever – and do it in an increasingly OnDemand fashion.  Soon Social Media will become an introduction to something more that you will have to offer to keep your customers coming back for more.

“OK great”, you say.  ”But what does this have to do with this ‘Mobile Data Crunch’ thing you teased me with in the subject line??”  I’ll tell you.

5 Year Predictions

Before I got into all that though, I presented three predictions recently made by various research analysts and industry experts that cautions businesses to move forward with Mobility very carefully.  Those predictions are as follows:

1. Mobile Internet Usage > Desktop Internet Usage within 5 years. This is backed by several trends showing the rate at which mobile internet access is ramping faster than desktop internet usage ever did.  If you want to learn more about this prediction, you should check out  April 2010 Internet Trends just put out by Morgan Stanley.
2. Demand for mobile content > carrier capacity within 5 years. This is backed by studies made in December 2009 that showed data demand surpassed voice demand for the first time ever.  This means people are using their Smartphones for consuming data over actually talking on it.  If you want to learn more about this prediction and the facts behind it, you should check out this report by RYSAVY Research.
3. Hybrid mobile apps > mobile web apps > standalone apps within 5 years.  I personally made this prediction based on all the trends I’m seeing and reading about.  Despite the huge push for HTML5 to support more robust mobile web apps based in The Cloud, people just won’t change.  They will continue to adopt Smartphones out of the convenience they bring and they will continue to consume increasingly copious amounts of data despite their mobile carrier’s inability to support the demand.  Thus I predict that we’re going to see more data pulled over WIFI and stored “On Device” / offline than accessing it immediately in the Cloud because mobile users are OnDemand users and they simply will hate to wait for anything.

The “Mobile Data Crunch”

All these predictions speak to what I’m now calling the “Mobile Data Crunch”.  The what?  The “Mobile Data Crunch”.  Say it with me now … “Mobile” … “Data” … “Crunch”!

Yup, it’s coming I think.  There is a perfect storm brewing in the Mobile World, and it is being brought on by the following trends:

• Increasing numbers of Smartphone users
• The need to consume more and more data on their Smartphones, and
• Phone carriers unable to provide reasonable bandwidth to support demand.

Basically, everything will take longer to get from “Point A” to “Point B” if all these things continue.  OnDemand users will start to feel the “data crunch” as their smartphone user experience slowly worsens on carrier networks.  Carriers will move to regulate the flow of data by charging for bandwidth in an effort to guarantee some level of reliability and performance.

Don’t believe me?  AT&T just eliminated their unlimited data plans from their offerings.

What to do about it?

My prediction in #3 above is where I see it going.  More and more OnDemand users will rely on their home WIFI networks or free hotspots to consume their data and communicate with the world at an increasingly faster pace.  When not in these high-speed, wireless environments they’ll want to carry as much information as possible with them to remain productive.  Even then, WIFI could be slow or unreliable in highly congested areas so OnDemand, OnDevice content will be critical to users remaining productive.

Software Developers of increasingly feature-rich mobile applications will also have to step up and get ridiculously smart about how the dispense and manage mobile data.  Because consumers will want more of it at their finger tips, they’ll also have more to sift through and search.  They’ll want to leverage pre-defined filters and context-driven rules to automatically present content that matters (and filter out the rest).  Geo-location and other like tools will play a huge role in enabling these tools … but we’ll also have to code in some smarts to use them properly.

Don’t get me wrong.

Carrier Networks will still be vital to communicate and we’ll use them when appropriate.  I know I will, but with more and more of them (like AT&T) switching their data plans to include a bandwidth meter, we’ll all just have to get a whole lot smarter (sooner than later) about how we use Mobility if we’re going to leverage our Smartphones and thrive amidst the ensuing “Mobile Data Crunch”.

I sure hope I’m missing something here, but right now I’m just not seeing it.  Stay tuned!