Friction in mobile application provision

Firmly believe that "applications" will win on mobile devices - an application that can take up the full screen of a device, and has an instant response to starting the application is more convenient for a mobile phone - and a browser can't provide this as easily as an application can.

However browser based solutions provide far fewer points of friction to a developer who wants to make functionality available on a handset.

Developers frequently complain about fragmentation being a cause of problems in delivering mobile applications. This is a natural view, as developers spend most of their time dealing with issues caused by different platforms, languages and other technical features of phones. Yet fragmentation is only one form of friction for mobile application developers. Other forms of friction in getting an application out are:

• Multiple application stores - to reach a consumer in the UK it's likely you will have to support 10s of different application stores, and keep versions up to date across all of these stores
• Marketing differences between different stores - there is no consistency between the image formats or screen sizes required for screen shots for the same application on different stores - so even with one app there will be multiple versions of marketing assets required
• Approval times for different app stores vary
• Digital signature processes differ for different application stores, so application authors need to maintain multiple identities to support this
• Testing and QA processes differ for different stores, so application authors need to manage multiple different QA processes

All of these elements get in the way of an application developer getting their solution to market on time, and on budget, and being able to spend money on creating new features, rather than managing the distribution of the application.

Hardly surprising that the people who are making money in mobile applications are the large aggregators who can generate economies of scale by managing these solutions for multiple applications with multiple application stores.

The economics of a mobile web application are quite different however. While fragmentation in the mobile web space is just as bad - or arguably even worse than in the mobile application space there are fewer points of friction.

• A single web URL can be made to work for all mobile phones. Try m.facebook.com
• Consumers expect either direct marketing, or search engine marketing for web sites - on mobile as well as on desktops
• Few external approvals are required to launch a web application - there may be some if operator specific APIs are integrated with (for example for online mobile payments)

The result - it's quicker and easier to reach mobile devices from a web solution than with mobile applications. Apple's App store managed to significantly reduce the points of friction for an application developer bringing their app to market - and saw huge success as a result compared to previous application stores. The challenge for other application stores is - do they bring similar reductions in friction.

Comments

[Josh]

Assuming you are OK with an online only experience. I think the iPhone proved there is real value not being tied to a network connection to connect to your users.

[Matt]

I agree - applications give a better experience, but are much harder for developers to get into the hands of consumers.

Browsers give a compromised experience but are easier to get into the hands of consumers.

What we _want_ is a great experience, that's easy to get into the hands of consumers. I'd rather see innovation in the app store discovery download & update experience, than try and improve the browser - I think it's the bookmark/url entry/link click experience is the wrong paradigm for a mobile user.