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Southfield, Mich. It’s been quite a week at jacAPPS.  First, the smartphone application developer received word that its app for Spartan Sports Radio Network was honored as the winner of the “Best Use Of New Media” category by the Michigan Association of Broadcasters Broadcast Excellence Awards.  A few days later, jacAPPS was a 2012 winner of Corp! Magazine’s DiSciTech Award in the Digital Division.

Corp! Magazine & The Michigan Association Of Broadcasters Honor jacAPPS

“While we’re not in it for awards, this is valued recognition for the great work that our team has done,” comments Paul Jacobs, Vice-President/General Manager of jacAPPS.  “A lot of hard work goes into creating great mobile applications, and it’s nice to be recognized.  Now the staff is on me to buy a trophy case!”

jacAPPS’ business philosophy has always been to put the customers before the code.  Will Tieman, President of the Spartan Sports Network observes, “We developed this application with jacAPPS to make a statement about who we are and what we do. Its effectiveness has enabled us to reach a larger listening base and future brands our network as a national leader.”

jacAPPS has created over 600 apps for customers around the world, including The Ann Arbor Art Fairs, The Detroit International Jazz Festival, C-SPAN Radio, public radio’s “Car Talk” program, and many others.  Crain’s Detroit Business recently ranked jacAPPS as the number one application developer in Southeast Michigan.

For more information, contact Paul Jacobs at pauljacobs@jacapps.com pauljacobs@jacapps.com or visit www.jacapps.com.

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Apps, Awards, Creativity, Mobile

jacAPPS Announces Development Of Mobile Apps For The Kindle Fire

jacAPPS has announced it will be developing applications for the Kindle Fire platform.  The company recognizes the growing appeal of the Kindle Fire among consumers, and the opportunity it represents for its customers.

“While iPads dominate the tablet market, the Kindle Fire represents a surge in high-functioning devices that combine accessing reading material with the app experience,” jacAPPS Vice-President & General Manager Paul Jacobs comments.  “Given the fact that over 4 million Kindle Fires were sold in fourth quarter and they’re backed by the Amazon platform, we want our mobile clients to be able to connect with these consumers on these hot new devices.”

jacAPPS, a division of media consultancy Jacobs Media, is one of the largest developers of smartphone applications in the United States.  Since 2008, it has developed more than 540 mobile apps for its clients for iPhones and Android devices, garnering more than 13 million downloads.  jacAPPS has developed apps for a wide array of brands, including public radio’s “Car Talk,” C-SPAN Radio, the Taste Of Atlanta, WEEI/Boston, and many others.

For more information, contact Paul Jacobs at 248-353-9030 or via email at  paul@jacapps.com.

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Amazon, app development, kindle fire, Tablets

App Annie recently rolled out a report that highlights 7 key trends about the “Rise of the Planet of the Apps.”

Here’s some of our takeaways from this study that can help you with your mobile strategies:

• If you have a great app, you’ll raise your revenue ceiling with a “freemium” vs. a premium model.
• Apps with in-app purchases are monetizing at more than double the rate of those without this feature.
• For 2011 iPad downloads are up 200%, and up 70% for iPhone
• Tablets will continue to convert notebook and smartphone owners at faster rate, and eventually represent 60% of the PC market by 2015
• Revenues from iPad apps are now contributing to 30% of overall iOS revenue -
• The iPad generates 2.4X more revenue per download than iPhones/Touches.
• Norwegians love premium apps

These figures and estimates are likely conservative given the upcoming changes to Apple’s desktop platform, OS X, where they’ve just announced they are dropping the “Mac” name from the OS, and are incorporating more and more iOS features in the next version due out this summer.

Check out the infographic below:

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Apple, Apps, Future, Research

Another interesting finding from Flurry Analytics (see our previous post on Native Apps vs. Mobile Web) come along the lines of which categories of app are being most used.

Games and Social Networking categories capture majority of app users’ time.  Gaming accounts for nearly half their time using, with a third using apps built around Social Networking apps.

Ultimately, these two categories account for nearly 80% of the time that users are engaged with their apps.  It’s important that you consider aspects of these two categories (especially Social) to include in your app projects.

*(It’s worth noting that Flurry does not track Facebook usage, so the Social Networking category is actually likely considerably larger.)

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One of the more common questions app developers hear is about Mobile Web vs. Native Apps and which one is “better.”

There’s no doubt that both have strengths, and that each has its own limitations.  Regardless of the technology, what’s ultimately at stake is the Customer Experience and what will make the best end-user product and enhance usability and allow you to reach the largest – and most appropriate – audience.  In most cases integrated HTML5 pages into native apps can offer a solid approach that benefits everybody.  But ultimately “gut” and emotion becomes a big part of the conversation.

One of the key factors missing from the discussion is typically actual analytics and data to help frame the topic.  New data from app analytics firm Flurry finds that mobile users are spending more time with native apps than mobile web browsing, widening a gap that appeared last summer.

Flurry posits that a good amount of the change could be due to higher usage of Facebook in apps – notably with the recently released Facebook iPad app:

Our analysis shows that people are now spending less time on the traditional web than they did during the summer 2011. This drop appears to be driven largely by a decrease in time spent on Facebook from the traditional web.  In June 2011, the average Facebook user spent over 33 minutes on average per day on the website.  Now, that number is below 24 minutes. Time spent on the web without Facebook has grown at a modest rate of 2% between June 2011 and December 2011.

Regardless of Facebook’s actual impact, the continued growth of native apps relative to the mobile web is a trend very much worth watching and studying as we determine the best approaches for mobile strategies.

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html5, Mobile, Strategy, Web