RIM is down but not out --Why you need a blackberry mobile app

Life’s been rocky for Research in Motion (RIM) in recent years. The Canadian telecommunications giant that once possessed a rock-solid hold over the smartphone market has seen its brand equity and market penetration significantly diminished by the release of Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android platform.

Along with dwindling profits comes a decreased mobile cultural presence. With its lightning fast product lifecycles, the world of tech practically functions in dog years. Six months constitutes half a decade in this land. Which is how Blackberry, the smartphone that once inspired its own cultish legion of “Crackberry” devotees, has fallen from grace to become the bête noire of mobile computing.

When we tell people that the Appguppy platform develops mobile apps that work on iPhone, Android AND Blackberry, we usually get an earful about how RIM doesn’t matter anymore or raised eyebrows over why our genius co-founder bothered to write all those lines of specialized code to make sure your customized mobile app would work on Blackberry.

Discounting RIM is both shortsighted and misguided. If you want to go mobile, you need a multi-platform app strategy. And that must include Blackberry. Because what we all know and love about tech is that a speedy comeback is as probable as a tumble off the fanboy pedestal. The good news is that our instincts about Blackberry proved right on the money. Recently, several news outlets made our day when they reported that RIM is rapidly outselling Apple’s iPhone in India.

It comes down to this. We’re the first and only mobile app development software out there that lets you take your business anywhere, and to anyone, through mobile.

Have you ever wanted to take your business to a large market like India? Thanks to Appguppy, you can. By signing up with us, you have a much better chance of reaching 602 million Indian mobile subscribers and potential customers on a Blackberry than you would on an iPhone.

Having your app work on Blackberry starts sounding better all the time, doesn’t it?

4 ways to generate leads with your mobile app

You hear about them everywhere: Mobile apps are the hottest thing, and it seems like every big company has created its own.  Pizza Hut created one that lets its customers order pizza. BestBuy created one that alerts customers about the latest promotions. With a well designed app from Appguppy, your business can achieve a significant ROI by turning one-time sales into long-term relationships.  So how does a mobile app build customer relationships?

Having a mobile app for your business really can help build stronger relationships.  Because apps are fun and interactive, customers often don’t even realize that they are being marketed to.  Apps can mix marketing messages with other interactive content, and marketing messages sent via apps don’t get junked or sent to trash like email.  Moreover, using an app to market provides immediacy: you can distribute your message to your customers, regardless of where they may be, and they can communicate with you as well. The more difficult part is learning to take full advantage of the power of your app.  Becoming proficient at this requires time and planning, but it can be a lot easier if you follow these rules:

1. Your app should be user-centered, not marketing-centered. The app should provide real functionality for the benefit of its users first, and marketing functionality second.  An example is adding an e-commerce functionality to your app that lets users purchase your products or services on the go.
2. Your app should facilitate communication.  Users should feel that the app provides as much opportunity for them to speak to you as it does for you to speak to them.  And don’t forget the power of allowing your users to communicate with each other. Integrating other social media is a great way to do this.
3. Provide a hook.  Provide a reason for the user to download the app.  In the example above, the real estate agency offered coupons to local retailers.  Other things you can offer are prizes and discounts on your products/services.
4. Make it viral.  Make it easy for users to get their peers to download and use your app.

At Appguppy, our platform is built on helping you to turn one sale into many sales and maximize the return on investment for your brand.  

Mobile platform fragmentation is a problem...but not at Appguppy

With a wide array of protocols, standards, and regional differences by country, mobile platform fragmentation poses a serious challenge to brands with a need for a mobile marketing strategy.  Platform fragmentation is also one of the major reasons that the mobile technology, HTML 5, is gaining steady buzz as a possible unifying solution. Here at Appguppy, we’re moving beyond HTML 5 to provide a software platform that truly enables you to create a mobile experience on any smartphone, through any OS. But just how big a problem is platform fragmentation and why do we think it’s such a big deal that we’ve gone head to head with this issue?     

Mobile platform fragmentation prohibits market penetration: Compatibility with the top three or four mainstream native platforms (iOS, Android, Symbian and BlackBerry) brings apps to barely more than 20% of devices sold. In stark contrast, compatibility with only two or three mainstream browsers reaches 80% of web users.  Platform choice can mean sacrificing the right customer demographic in order to save money.  And with limited engineering resources, that’s exactly what most companies are doing.  But we don’t think you should have to.  That’s why we’ve created a tool that can help you get your app to any smartphone, through any platform.  

App stores worsen platform complexity: Meanwhile, app stores worsen the platform conundrum: Each of the fifty-plus app stores available has its own developer sign-up, app submission process, artwork and paperwork requirements, app certification and approval criteria, revenue model options, payment terms, taxation and settlement terms.  All of these additional restrictions don’t just keep people from getting their apps into the stores, they keep people from monetizing the apps that they already have in stores.  At Appguppy, we solve this problem posed by stores by bypassing them to create a truly scalable solution to this problem.   

HTML5 is only part of the solution: While HTML5 is a technology that powers platforms to offer apps through browsers, it may solve only a small piece of the puzzle.  After all, different smartphones offer different levels of support for the implementation of HTML5.  At Appguppy, we’ve jumped way ahead of this issue by customizing our code to every single platform so that you don’t have to. 

One thing’s for sure, the mobile application market is on the verge of a disruptive change, fueled by the need for innovation that solves the problem of mobile platform fragmentation. And we’re proud to be pioneers on this front.