Smartphone Apps

Apps are applications or software programs run on your smartphone which provide the user with services, information and entertainment. App categories range from social networking, productivity and reference to news, finance, travel and, of course, business.

Apps can interact with the Web and get data from the Internet, but they can also interact with the functions of your smartphone such as the GPS, video and maps.

The apps, some of which are free and others bought, have to be installed on your phone after which they are always accessible. Some contain advertising and some similar to free demos giving limited functionality until the full version is bought. Although some can be quite costly, for the most part even paid apps are only a few pounds.

While BlackBerry might be considered the business smartphone of choice it is Apple’s iPhone, iPad and iPod apps which are most closely associated with the app business, although it is Android smartphones that have the dominant share of the market at 48% compared with Apple’s 19%. Of course, though, the Android market is split between many different companies. There are others, too, such as Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7, which has just 1% of the market.

Each of the mobile platforms have their own language, and in most cases if a mobile app developer writes an app for one platform it will have to be written from scratch for another. As the cost of developing the same app for two platforms is estimated to be 160% of the cost of developing for one, it’s no surprise that developers won’t always develop across all platforms.

Apple

BlackBerry

Android

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