The Changing Trends and Challenges in Mobile Gaming Applications- An Overview

The rapid growth of mobile games industry has led to hosting applications in the games space. Its visual appeal is now about the same as what you would expect with the latest gaming consoles. However, nowadays, it’s possible to provide the same user experience on high-end mobile phones as on other gaming devices with the improved hardware and technology.

Let’s have a look at the changing trends and challenges bestowed from the gaming MobileApp Development industry.

Changing Trends

In early days, single player modes, and filler-type games (arcade-based/cards) were popular but then there is a growing market for multi-player modes and 3D games. Say for instance, location-based games, cross-platform games, connected/online games and learning games.

Location-Based Games: Games of this type determine the mobile user’s co-ordinates. This includes treasure hunts, street games and adventure games.

Cross-platform games: Games played across multiple platforms falls under this category. For example, a game could allow a website to create some content for the mobile game.

Community games: In this type, the mobile user participates for the sheer pleasure of social communication, and stay in touch with the community.

Education, Health And Nutrition-Based Games: Mobile learning (m-Learning) is gaining momentum, and experts see potential here, be it simple or complex games, depending on the target audience.

Challenges For Mobile Gaming Applications

This constantly evolving industry faces many challenges too:

Accessibility: The mobile gaming industry finds it hard to make mobile games easily accessible to a wide audience. However, the App store model is very popular now for downloading games.

Piracy: Many people pay for the content by implementing different models while not reducing accessibility. This is something that most gaming software providers need to consider.

Technical Challenges: There are many hurdles such as limited phone resources, data traffic pricing, latency issues and portability.

Non-Technical Challenges: One of the constant challenges in the gaming space is to understand the diverse requirements and user needs meanwhile satisfying multiple stakeholders.

As a bottom line, the mobile game development market is driven by the fact that mobile services have penetration in both urban and rural world, marvellously. 

5 Guidelines before launching Your First iPad App

Mobile app development isn’t the same across every platform. If you've ever wanted to try your hand at developing iPhone and iPad apps there are plenty of great tools and services to help you get up to speed quickly.

But what drives app sales more than uniqueness? Before seeking out an iPad application developer, it is good to know the basics of iPad app development.

Cost of Development

Usually the main concern for businesses is the budget as it varies greatly depending on the app features, updates and whether it’s a native or cross-platform app. In general, the average cost ranges between $25000 to over $100000. However, with few features, the app may not be as popular with users except the fact that not all developers are familiar with older versions of iOS for backwards compatibility.

UI Different From iPhone

Experts who are into iPhone development aren’t sometimes aware that the exact design matches for an iPad app. Apple provides different guidelines for these two and since the iPad has a larger screen size, the apps can have more features leaving room for better pacing for a cleaner layout.

Choosing the Version

One of the difficulties in iPad apps is that an older app may look distorted on a newer iOS version. Means, it is important to check with the app development company whether they cater specifically to the latest Apple operating system or sacrifice some of the newer features for a more compatible app.

Apple’s Cut

Any apps designed in Apple are subject to additional fees, if money oriented. For instance, an iPad used more for online shopping and even in-app purchasing for game features. So knowing which features to add in to encourage users to buy extra options or products helps balance the fees and keep profits rising.

Plan for Upgrades

Design an app that’s easy to upgrade as you never know when Apple will release a new version at any time and this may enhance more compatibility, less buggy and more user-friendly. Being prepared is half the battle in staying ahead of iPad development trends.

When you try to choose iPad apps developer, be aware of your business wants before sitting down for a discussion. The result is a stunning app that gets your business noticed for all the right reasons.

The Crucial Decision: Pros and Cons of Cross App Development

When businesses were advised to develop a mobile strategy, developing apps for Android or iPhone, or Windows or BlackBerry had become the priority. With course of time, the competition has taken another level. It’s no longer enough to have on a single platform but for a myriad of target platforms. The problem is however comes in terms of development cost, time and resources.

This is when cross mobile application development frameworks like Appcelerator’s Titanium, Rhodes and PhoneGap came in to picture. The basic idea behind this is to help developers build mobile apps in dynamic programming languages and then compile them to multiple platforms. But then, there are pros and cons to taking a cross-platform approach to mobile application design and development. Let’s see what they are.

Pros of Using a Cross-Platform Framework:

1.       Reusablity: Instead of writing code for specific action or sequence for each platform- the tools let you write the code once and then reuse those bits in later projects or on other platforms.

2.       Plugins: Appcelerator and PhoneGap offer easy access to plugins and modules that can easily plug into other services or tools.

3.       Developer’s Desire: As most frameworks are dynamic or scripting languages, developers find it easy to work with. Also, these support HTML5 and CSS3 alongside the calls to more native functions.

4.       Reduced Development Costs: One of the biggest aspects is that it allows companies or brands to get an app onto other platforms without having to invest in a team or developer specific to that ecosystem.

5.       Supports Cloud Services: Beside plugins and modules they have the option to directly integrate with cloud services, including Salesforce.com, AWS, Box.net and others.

Cons of Cross-Platform Frameworks:

1.       Slower Code and Render Time: When compared to the native tools, these can sometimes be slower and any cross-compilation process has the chance to be slower.

2.       Limited High-End Graphics and 3D Support: Yes, this feature is limited but fortunately, game-centric development platforms, like Unity are here to help fill in those gaps.

3.       Less Supportive to Features of an Operating System: The framework you are using need not support the additional features to Google, Apple or Microsoft.

A good cross-platform application looks at home, doesn’t matter on what platform it is used on. How do you approach cross-platform design and development for mobile devices?

5 Unique Qualities Required To Built a Simple and Elegant Business App

Since Apple and Google have entered the fray the ability of business apps are teeming with potential to reach out to a massive audience. Besides, entertainment and news consumption, apps can be a great starting point for getting yourself and your business on the map.

But then the digital world emphasises the recipe for a successful app to include many ingredients to make it to the big leagues.

Firstly, Hiring The Right App Development Company with experienced developers who will understand your needs:

ü  discuss your ideas free of cost under a Non-Disclosure Agreement 

ü  Dedicated Apple Certified iPhone application developers

ü  Development of custom business apps with extensive web services and seamless integration with social media, APIs, SaaS models, mobile payments and ads.

ü  An average turnover time of under four weeks

ü  Developers having experience with a variety of apps in all categories.

Secondly, Serving the Purpose:

Let’s take an example. An app developed solely for marketing purposes can’t bring revenues directly, but then requires building a favourable consumer environment for your product. This way you can positively influence sales sheets.

Thirdly, the User Interface of an App:

This is what really helps you enable the success of your product. While the main objective of any app creation us to satisfy the audiences- make it easy, efficient and enjoyable for the user. Besides, consistency is an important part of your user interface.

Fourth, the Navigation:

Once you get hold of the customers, isn’t very necessary for them to understand where to go next? YES. Many users will be unaware of the navigation experience and abandon it forever. Having a path through your app that is logical and easy to follow makes things better.

Fifth Optimisation :

Easy to Install, Easy to Access and Easy To Use- this being clear it is very important to ensure your business app is optimized, compatible and functional for multiple devices.

While most of us may not think much about what goes into the development of an app, you can even share us insight into the most important qualities of mobile apps.

Why PhoneGap is the Best for Enterprise App Development

Many websites have mobile app equivalents.  In today’s digital market, it is imperative to launch an app that can run on the multiple platforms and give the pleasing user experience. Guess what could be the consideration choice. PhoneGap.

Img Source - www.i95dev.com

It is a Cross-platform Mobile app development technology, based upon opensource open source Apache Cordova project, resulting applications that are neither truly native nor purely web-based but are packaged as apps for distribution and have access to native device APIs. With the support of the latest web technologies: HTML5, JavaScript and CSS3, the processing speed, screen size, network speed, touch events, etc..are improvised than ever before. Plus, it also offers cloud based service that is built on top of the PhoneGap framework.

Why Choose PhoneGap For Enterprise Mobile App Development?

Evaluating the potential solutions to create a mobile app, developers always prefer to use PhoneGap due to its advanced features and advantages. A few important features that are required by most of the applications are as follows:

Internet connectivity: It must be possible for the users to easily access the data via the net.

Animations: Usage of animations between the screens help you view slide off-screen in the left and show the detail view when the item is selected.

List view: This enables the users to scroll the list of offers, select to view more details.

Facebook SDK support: Despite the “No Login rule”, the platform should provide an interface that enables the user to log in to the application via their Facebook account.

Notifications: The user must be notified with respect to important information even when the application is not running.

Device detection: Through which, it is able to determine the kind of device that the application is specifically running on and the type of features that it supports.

Phonegap seems to be a good and cost effective solution that can be used for most of the renowned mobile platforms Like Android, IOS, Windows Phone, etc without much trouble. So, are you looking for a simple and quick app? PhoneGap is the Key.

The Marching Next-Gen OS War: Apple iOS 8 vs. Google Android L

Both Apple and Google have partly unveiled the newest version of their smartphone and tablet operating systems: iOS 8 with iPhone 6 and Android L on the Motorola Nexus 6. While both have become very competitive to each other in terms of their feature set though, there a few differences when coming user-acceptance.

Having gotten a niche, we have looked upon a few features which might help you find the right answer to the question.

Img Source : todoiphone.net

App Design Support for Target Users

Despite Apple and Google are enhancing each and every feature-strength, both keep a different set of target user-base in focus while designing the next version of their platform. In terms of user base, iOS users are more loyal than Android and have more spending power. While Android users play around and customise their device as much as possible with custom launchers, live wallpapers iOS users like to keep their devices straight forward and spend more time on trying out different apps.

Notification System

Both the platforms are getting close to each other in terms of notifications. While Apple has now introduced more interactive notifications it seems like Android is heading the same route with the Android L.

Operations in Vehicles

One major fight is between Android Auto and Apple Carplay. The Apple-based Carplay allows you to easily browse navigation and other content. On the other hand, the Android Auto works out in a similar fashion. But then it will finally depend on car makers as to which platform they want to follow.

Market Share Worldwide

During Q2 2014, Android had a significant lead over iOS in parts of Asia, South America and Africa while iOS leads in European and North American markets. Plus, 60 percent of Android devices that were sold in Q2 2014 fall under the low price tier ($0-$200) while over 80 percent of iOS devices fall under the high-end price tier ($400+). this means, only 44.4 percent of Android users intent to upgrade to an Android smartphone.

The fact that iPhone users are comparatively more loyal than Android users and thus revenue generating opportunities for brands targeting iOS users is more. Howbeit, only time will tell how their strategies will pan out.