The Shift in Mobile Development

Are the days of App Stores Numbered? Certainly that's what the experts believe if we go by web-giants like Google. According to a leading online mobile app store, GetJar, coming years will see a gradual fall in the developer community as the world of Apps will be as huge as the internet. However what might keep the developers carefree at this moment is the hypothetical time-line of ten years, suggested by CEO of GetJar, which might take before it begins to fall. Where the numbers are still rising in the App world, what might begin to vary is the nature of applications developed, that will incline to get more personal and practical as believed by Symbian Foundation. The spark set by Apple's App store couple of years ago is still flaming high, with download figures notching above 1.5 billion by end of 2009. The storming popularity of Apple's App store among users and developers even took Apple by surprise. The move, believed to be a ‘one time hit' by many, is now turned into a race among the top mobile giants like Apple's iPhone, Blackberry, Google's Android and the world's largest mobile phone business, Nokia. Thus it is wise to say, that the variation in sales and popularity experienced by application developers like Playfish, is perhaps not ideal to suggest a downfall of the developer community but an indication of rapidly changing interests and trend among the users of such applications.
The recent years have witnessed a shift in the way that businesses across the globe have begun to view and analyze mobile applications as an add-on to promote their growth in the market. The introduction and availability of high-speed mobile data networks, like EDGE and 3G,in the developed world has further supplemented this ideology and has pushed a demand for a platform shift from personal computers to hand-held mobile devices. This is also provoked by the users' need to access real-time information on the move as the falling prices of mobile devices have made it more affordable for larger chunks to buy and use these services. In the contemporary world of communication, today it's not just the professionals', but the general mobile users', need to access the internet via mobile phones. Companies offering services like recruitment, travelling, real-estate, leisure, entertainment et. al., have shown urgency in integrating web-portals to mobile based applications. The ask is so high that in the recent few years the number of companies offering mobile application development have almost grown three times. Where this has increased the level of competition between developers, it has exposed companies to the risk of partnering with outsourcing-services providers with lack of experience and expertise. Due to this many IT companies in the west have burnt their hands to bad outsourcing service providers. This had a great impact on the way companies begin to perceive outsourcing and started questioning the benefits gained through it, resulting in strong hesitancy to outsource work or changing their policies to curtail it. Perhaps that explains why many outsourcing companies in recent years have either shut-down or fighting to survive in the business. However, this does not incline us to believe that outsourcing is a bad practice or is ineffective in drawing out benefits identified with it. As a suggestion, IT companies can only be more careful and measured in picking up outsourcing partners to avoid bad experiences.

With the growing infrastructure and empowerment of a mobile user, the business of mobile application development will continue to grow but with a noticeable difference that the immediate market for developers has begin to shift from a general mobile user, who once directly downloaded application from web based App stores, to companies that offer professional services to mobile users. Applications developed for mobile phones have begin to shape more specific and practical rather than general, how they were built until recently. Thus the days of App stores available on the internet might be numbered but the future of mobile application development is bright and will continue to surprise the users with more innovative and purposeful applications.
There are thousands of outsourcing service providers in India, however, only few of them are certified partners by Microsoft. Main services offered by these companies are development of IT solutions in technologies like.NET, ASP, Java, Delphi, PHP and others open source technologies, QA and testing services and recently added mobile development on iPhone, Android and Window Mobile. Though it is easier to find a company offering such services but only few provides quality services at competitive prices.