What is all this mobile talk anyway?

In the last few years, one big thing has been popping up in homes and pockets across the world. What is it? A “Smart phone”. If you don’t have an iPhone, then you probably have another “smart device” like any of a number of Android phones, or one of the newer Blackberry’s or maybe a Palm Pre.

The main driving factor for these smart devices in all of our pockets is the need to stay connected. You may think that it is the iPhone that caused it, but even if Apple didn’t release a phone, we would all still have some sort of device. The thing is, most of us do have an iPhone in our pockets, and a percentage of us also have an iPad, but it can’t quite fit into my pocket anyway.

One great thing that we all are benefiting from is the “apps”. We love our phones because of what it CAN do, not what it does. No matter if you have an Android phone, or an iPhone or something else, chances are that you have been to that phones’ “App Store” and either loaded up on free games or apps, or purchased them. This is what makes our experience with the device meaningful.

The Apple Side

Let’s look first at the Apple App Store. This thing is a monster, and really started it all in my opinion. As this blog posts, the Apple App Store has over 208,802 (numbers from appshopper.com) apps with over 3 billion downloads! That’s insane! Think of the app store if it was a brick and mortar store down the street. That would be a VERY successful business no matter what it sold! The cool thing is, it basically sells other peoples wares. Anybody can have an app in the App Store and that’s what has made it (and the developers) so successful.

Of those hundreds of thousands of apps, about 8,000 of them are made for the iPad. That’s still a pretty good number considering that the iPad has only been out for about two months! And the numbers are only going to rise. As of this weekend, Apple is claiming that 2 million (that’s 6 zeros!) iPads have sold in the US and internationally. Here is a small timeline from ipadinsider.com

• April 3rd – 300,000 WiFi iPads sold on launch day
• April 8th – 450,000 iPads Sold total 5 days after launch, 3.5 Million iPad Apps and 600,000 iBooks downloaded
• April 10th – 500,000 iPad Units sold in its first week
• May 3rd – 1,000,000 iPad Users in 28 days since launch
• May 31st– 2,000,000 iPad Owners after its International Launch

This mobile device seems to really be hitting home. I personally have one, as well as a few co-workers and our office has one, and the question I get asked the most is “do you like it and use it?” I can always answer with “yes!” It’s a pretty great device and if I wasn’t a “power user” then I think I could get away with JUST having an iPad. But what really makes it great? Again, it’s the content that it provides, aka, the apps!

Sure I use it for browsing the web (using the built in safari app) but I also use it to stay connected to social networks, and games are awesome on it with the large screen and multi-touch. Productivity apps certainly have their place too because it’s literally all at your fingertips.

The Android Side

Enough about the Apple side of things, let’s take a look at the second biggest heavy hitter (soon to be the first???), the Android Market. The Android Market has more recently started to grow by leaps and bounds. It is not quite as mature as the Apple market but with the amount of devices being offered with Android, (vs. Apple only putting iPhone OS on iPhones and iPads) Android is slowly becoming the next big thing.

Currently Google’s official numbers for the Android Market are over 38,000 but they don’t publish numbers often. A third party app tracker for android (androlib.com) has put the total app count closer to 60,000 apps but again, it’s not official until Google says it is. That is still a lot considering the popularity of Android devices has been slowly increasing over time. It didn’t hit as big as the iPhone but with ever evolving device capabilities, the competition is getting fierce. It is pretty much a one-to-one on the newest android phones to the iPhone in terms of capabilities and features. And in terms of tablets, the iPad isn’t the first tablet to the market, and will certainly not be the last. Android OS tablets are currently in the making and soon to be sold. When that happens, the same great experience from the Apple side will be on the Android side and another boom will happen within the market.

Android devices differ from iPhone in that, they come in all shapes and sizes. Most cellular companies offer multiple phones that have Android OS and each of those phones have different feature sets. They have more introductory types of phones that ring in at $100 or less yet is still considered a “smart phone” and they have the heavy hitters like the Google Nexus One or the Droid Incredible or HTC EVO. The heavy hitter phones are the devices that are striking directly at the heart of Apple by being “iPhone killers”. They are introduced to offer a replacement for the iPhone and I know several iPhone owners who are going to make the switch to android specifically because of the HTC EVO.

The End Result

Devices and OS’s aside, more and more if you see an app on the iPhone you can get the same one, or similar, on an Android device. This is a benefit for everyone! Developers, or Businesses who hire them, can get their app out there into an ever growing market. I still know a few people with a Motorola Razr or some other “dumb phone” but as technology increases, the smart phones of today will be the free phones of tomorrow and they will be in the hands of everyone. What is more beneficial, relying on a typical ad campaign for your services, or offering the customer a rich mobile experience to help drive them to your site, or business? In the future, I think that having an app will be the only way to survive in this market.