With 74.6 million people using smartphones in the United States, it is clear why brands are investing in mobile marketing. While app-hungry smartphone users can make a great audience, engaging them and inspiring them to participate in your mobile campaign takes a commitment to building rich, native apps that have an interesting and intuitive UI. At first companies were releasing apps for only the iPhone, but the iPhone no longer dominates the mobile market. According to the latest figures released by comScore, Apple claims 26% of smartphone users, Android owns 36.4% and RIM has 25.7% of users. In addition to smartphone users, there are expected to be an additional 50 million tablet users in the United States by 2012. Releasing an iPhone app is no longer enough to please the wide spectrum of mobile consumers, and brands are starting to realize the importance of supporting all of the leading mobile operating systems and device types when they build mobile applications.
Two companies that have enjoyed success in the mobile marketing arena are Facebook and Starbucks. Facebook has released native apps for their social networking platform for iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android, and have announced a native app for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet this summer. While there are plenty of independently developed Facebook apps available for iPad, Facebook has yet to release one of their own. By not releasing a native app for iPad, Facebook is missing out on hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of app downloads. More pressingly, they are risking their brand’s reputation and their user’s privacy by allowing for so many un-endorsed apps to be marketed before they release one of their own.
Starbucks has made a similar mistake in their approach to mobile applications. iPhone and BlackBerry users can download the Starbucks Card mobile app, which allows users to load money onto their Starbucks Card account and pay for coffee using their smartphone. Starbucks tweeted back in May 2010 that they were working on apps for all platforms, but it has been over a year and Android users are still left without an official app. A former Starbucks employee took it upon himself to build the unofficial “My Coffee Card” app for Android, which has recorded more than 160,000 downloads. Android users represent 36% of the smart phone market, a segment large enough that Starbucks should have made an app for them in the first place.
Both Facebook and Starbucks are huge companies that have the financial means to build great apps, but for some reason they have fallen short on supporting all of the leading device types. This shows that a company that commits to building native apps for each mobile OS is biting off more than they can chew. New devices and operating systems are popping up just about every week, and users are rushing to the app stores to download all of their favorites. It is important for companies to release apps, but it is equally important to release apps that work on each device. Starbucks and Facebook, two very well known brands with huge fan bases, missed out big by not offering cross-platform native apps.
Do you know other brands that are making the same mistake? Leave a comment and let us know who else is alienating a segment of the mobile market by not supporting all of the leading devices.
Building an app for each OS one at a time is comparable to doing your laundry one piece of clothing at a time. If you put all of your clothes in the washing machine at once, you save time, water, detergent and energy. Take the washing machine approach to building apps. Don’t waste time, money, and resources building an app for each OS one at a time. Instead, use a mobile application development platform, also known as a MEAP, to build one app that runs on each OS.
Make sure that your company doesn’t fall short on its mobile initiatives by making the same mistake as Starbucks and Facebook. To learn more about more about the fastest, easiest, most cost-effective way to build native apps for all of the leading mobile operating systems, attend an upcoming webinar hosted by Pyxis Mobile. Also, check out our resources page for videos and webcasts that further explain the value of using a platform to build mobile applications for your employees, partners and customers.
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