Building an iPhone application is not as easy as some seem to think. If you’ve ever considered building your own iPhone app, think again. Following is not one, but five reasons to do so . . .
PointAbout is an iphone app developer.
1. Expense: Do you know Java? Do you know Objective C? Do you know have the time and expertise to hire, fire and oversee highly paid programming talent? All of these are required to build a native iPhone application. And, you need these for each platform. For example, did you know that putting together a native Blackberry app requires an intricate knowledge of Java?
PointAbout’s Solution: In short, focus. Our method allows you to spend your time on what you do best – web programming. We can even assist you with this if you need us to.
2. Time: In business, time is money. So it follows that when things progress slowly, you bleed money (ie, profit). Constructing a native application is time consuming, for extensive planning and executive have to be done up front. This can take months.
PointAbout’s Solution: How does 24 hours – or less -- sound instead of months? This is how quickly we can submit your application to Apple’s iTunes store. Literally within 24 hours of engagement.
3. Timeliness: Native iPhone applications become outdated quickly. This is just the way technology works. Every time a software is changed, iPhone applications created using it must be re-downloaded so that they can be updated.
This means that every time you will have to constantly send out software updates to users of your application. And, users typically don’t immediately download updates. They may fall behind by several versions before doing so.
And, the drudgery doesn’t stop there. As most of your resources are probably poured into your website and its applications, you have to constantly divert time and money to keep them updated. After all, your applications must be serviced because your customers expect it since they don’t update immediately. This is time and money that could be better spent elsewhere.
PointAbout’s Solution: How would you like to only focus on one microsite? That’s all you have to worry about when you employ our solution. We wrap your web-based mobile microsite within our native, thin-client springboard. What this in essence means is that you can update just the mobile version of your website via a microsite. No more downloading software for your users when you change an app; and no more spending time synchronizing everything manually. Everything stays in sync and up to date seamlessly.
4. Cross Platform: How does having to make an iPhone application for Blackberry, then Windows Mobile, then Android appeal to you? It can get expensive and time consuming quickly. Because native iPhone applications don’t work uniformly across platforms, you will have to make one for every mobile platform. And, what about when the next “must have” iPhone hits the market? Are you going to drop everything and make an application for that as well? There’s a better way.
PointAbout’s Solution: Remember the thin-client springboard we mentioned above? This allows your application to work on multiple phone platforms. When the latest iPhone hits the market, we do all the behind-the-scenes work to configure it so that it works for you – whichever app you’re using. By using the same microsite we discussed above, you’ll have access to the latest phone platform – every time.
5. Speed: Many think that native applications are faster than web applications. This is simply not true. Because of our thin-client springboard, your web-based mobile microsite will be just as speedy as a native app.
PointAbout’s Solution: By cacheing content via our local storage module, we cut down on the load time of web pages. This means you have access to your data quickly. When you consider that even native apps have to access the web to retrieve data, it means that many times, PointAbout’s solution can actually be quicker than going native.
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