Electif 621

E-Business and m-Business

Antoine Harfouche
 Session 5
Mobile Application
 What is the Mobile Web?
• Mobile Web is medium to which Web sites are
accessed using mobile devices

• Ubiquity  Mobile devices are capable of being

connected to the Internet and exchange information

– Connected anytime, all the time

 What is M-Commerce?
• E-Commerce with mobile devices (PDAs, Cell Phones,
Pagers, etc.)
• Different than E-Commerce?
• No, but additional challenges:
– Security
– Usability
– Heterogeneous Technologies
– Business Model Issues
• But first, let’s learn a little about wireless
technologies…
 What is a good application
• http://money.cnn.com/video/technology/2014/07/2
1/uk-london-burgerator-mobile-app-finds-best-
burgers.cnnmoney/
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WM85tRZ2x0w
• http://money.cnn.com/video/news/2014/11/03/star
bucks-ceo-on-mobile-payments.cnnmoney/
• http://money.cnn.com/video/technology/2014/01/0
3/t-ts-app-for-homeless.cnnmoney/

5
 Advantages for mobile web apps
• Convenience: Always on, always near the owner.
– 60% of mobile users keep their phones bedside at night
(Ahonen, 2008)
• Ubiquitous, omnipresent information streams: Don’t need to
return to a desk to input data
• Location aware: GPS, accelerometers widely available
• Media input: Most smartphones have built-in camera,
microphone, and speaker in addition to keyboard input
 “Mobile” is not just shrinking the
Website page

7
 Use only essential, relevant
content

8
 Reduce options, simplify

9
• Key Entry
Features
– Virtual or physical keyboard
– Numeric or alphanumeric entry
– External keyboard attachment
• Interacting with applications
– Touch or multi-touch
– Handwriting and/or voice recognition
• Geo-location
• Facial and gesture recognition
• Connections: Phone, web, texting, email
 Best Practices
• Handle unavailable or lost network connection
• Limit permissions requested as much as possible
• Optimal use of storage. Use the SD card if possible
• Use standard GUI layouts
• Efficient, fast, responsive
• Multi thread slow time consuming operations
• Save application data when state changes occur
• Share data with apps by implementing content providers
• Implement activities launchable from other apps
• Utilize notification facilities, progress bars, flash screens
 Design Considerations
• Orientation changes
• Varied screen sizes and resolutions
• Operating system choice to reach a wide audience
• Intuitive operation
• Reason for continued use
• Well-defined purpose
• Multi user support
• Upgrades/new features (without feature creep)
• Multiple language and color support
• Varied font sizes
 Getting the product to market
• Register for an Android Market account: market.android.com/publish/
• Click: Setup Merchant Account to set up a Google Checkout
• Adhere to Android application policy requirements
(www.android.com/market/terms/developer-content-policy.html)
• Digitally sign (can be self-signed) and upload to the Android market (see
developer.android.com/guide/publishing/publishing.htm)
• Price the application
– The average paid app price is $3.13 – 30% for Google; 57% are free.
– In app advertising price per view
– virtual products (Google retains 5%)
– Limited free version, with paid version having full capabilities
• Market: social media, app review sites, advertising networks, etc..
 Browsers
• Preinstalled
– NetFront , Myriad, Explorer, Safari, Nokia, Sony,
Obijo, Motorola, Symbian, Android, webOS,
Blackberry, Samsung, MicroB
• User-installed
– Opera Mobile, Opera Mini, Firefox (Fennec) for
Mobile, Chromium, UC, SkyFire, Bolt
• Webkit
– Open source framework used by many browsers