Mobile App Development

Google promotes progressive web apps now

Google continuously proves that it not only has the ability to go toe-to-toe with the best in the industry, but that it never stops pushing the boundaries of what is possible. The last couple of years we have seen consumers gravitate towards the mobile experience. To cope with this Google has been planning and testing out ways to blur those lines. But, with their latest rollout, Google has finally pulled the trigger and introduced a way to seamlessly merge the web and the mobile experience.

The feature is known as Progressive Web Apps, and as the name suggests it is supposed to take the web app experience to a whole new level for users and mobile app development companies. Web apps have been around for a while now, but they were second class citizens, at best, on most devices. When created, web apps were relegated to the home screen, appearing as just another icon. However, with this update Google allows web apps to take their rightful place with other full applications. For mobile app developers, this means that web apps also live in the app drawer and have the same notification controls. This level of integration has previously been unheard of.

Progressive web apps make it that much more easier to access favorite websites right from Android device’s home screen. It is easy to see how critics of this feature would simplify it as a mere shortcutting update. It does, after all, allow users to turn a website into a clickable icon on the home screen, this is also important for mobile app development companies when they assist their clients on which platform to work with or wich technology to use. But, if one is to step back and look at it from a big picture perspective, it would be easy to see that this seemingly benign feature has more depth and meaning than at first glance.

First, there is the app functionality. Yes, this rollout will enable users to the basically turn a link into a clickable icon on their Android device. It allows them to access their web content faster. Data is loaded in the background to save time, while more power and control is had through notifications.n It is estimated that the adoption rate for this feature will be pretty high since it was designed by developers to look and feel like any other mobile app out there. Users are already familiar with its use and therefore feels like more of a native app than anything else.

For the user, progressive web apps boil down to convenience. They can do more with less hassle. Take the popular social media sites of Facebook and Twitter. Usually a mobile Android user will need to download, install and then continuously update the official mobile apps to receive the latest and greatest that they have to offer, or at the very least prevent the app from crashing. However, by linking directly to the online site, users can bypass the resource drain and hassle that comes with downloading the full native app. Doing this may seem counterintuitive to some people, but they only need to be reminded about the almost weekly update notifications that they receive for these mobile apps to make them think twice about using a direct website.

Then there’s its impacts on the mobile app backend, the coding end, the development end. Unsurprisingly, the shortsighted will not see much benefit in progressive web apps, but those who take the time to fully digest this feature, like mobile app development companies, will quickly come to the realization that it is a game changer. Mobile app developers shouldn’t just see this as an incremental way to advertise their mobile app, rather they should look at it as a way to exponentially increase the amount of engagement that their apps receive. Now, mobile app development companies have a new way to further provide their users and clients with a richer and more immersive experience.

Progressive web apps are not just mere links. Their greatest strength is their ability to interact with other apps. A progressive web app will be able to register the “intents” of other apps, which is another way of saying that another app can invoke it to perform sort of task or carry out a function.

The exact workings and limits of these progressive web apps are still unknown to the general public. The new feature will be rolled out in an upcoming Chrome Beta before being mass deployed at a later date, when most of the bugs have been dealt with. But, Google was quick to ensure everyone that they are dedicated not only to bringing this feature online, but also to make sure that it works flawlessly with all browsers that run on Android devices. This means that browsers like Firefox and Microsoft Edge can also be turned into clickable app icons on an Android device.

How much does an iOS or Android app cost?

For any business, especially SMEs, the main concern before initiating efforts for mobile app development is the total cost involved. While this question is fair and obvious from client’s perspective, the answer cannot be the perfect estimated amount of the entire project. The total cost of an iOS or Android app development project depends on the scope of work, technology to be used, resources to go, the timeframe and challenges faced during development process, and above all, the level of features expected out of the final product.

Mobile app developers, like Innovins Technologies, are the best bet when it comes to determining the rough estimation as they are the ultimate creators of your mobile app. If the mobile app category is games, the cost can be calculated based on the rich graphics, features, animation development and many other elements. If it is an e-commerce store you are going to run, your mobile app has to be standard, trendy and highly functional, which means good investment.

So perhaps, there is no such professional development company that can calculate the exact amount right away unless the requirements of final product are discussed. There is also a great scope of negotiation after several solutions are suggested.

Innovins Technologies, a top mobile app development company, has extensively worked across both iOS and Android platforms, creating brilliant apps loved by smartphone users all over the world. Being an experienced mobile app development specialist, they can say their mobile apps elicit best response among users and yield maximum engagement. Native apps interact with internal hardware and software of mobile devices such as GPS, camera, audio, video, contacts and other functionalities.

The usual approach towards figuring the rough estimation for the mobile app project entails:

• The type/category of the mobile app
• Complexity of development and implementation
• Planned hours of development process
• Integration of unique features and functionalities
• Innovations expected
• UX/UI interface
• Integrated APIs

Add-ons services

Some clients insist on adding extra functions to their existing app to scale it and make it more mature, usable and fully fledged. Some of the preferred add-ons are:

• Third-party API integration (social media)
• In-app revenue generation elements
• App store marketing
• Remote access of web services
• Extended customer support
• Post-deployment fixes and enhancements
• Customer behaviour and usage analytics
• Facility to share the customer highlights/activities

At Innovins Technologies, they offer complete solutions for iOS and Android mobile app development through transparent communication, innovative approach and satisfying services. They believe in passing every project through draconian quality assurance process to ensure the final product is flawless, engaging and compelling. Go ahead and share your ideas.

Your options in mobile app development

Choosing the right developers for your mobile app can be a daunting prospect. Choosing between a quick start with a mobile platform or a long-term custom development project only adds to the stress. In this article of the mobile app development company Innovins you will find what you need to know to make the right choice for your business.

Users across most age groups are spending upwards of 40% of their screen time using smartphones. For three consecutive years mobile web traffic is dominating over desktop (55%). What’s more: users are spending nearly 85% of their smartphone screen time using mobile apps. With all this information on hand, it’s no surprise that many businesses are starting to see that having a dedicated mobile app is now not only a highly recommended step, it’s pretty much a demand. The market shows that there is a demand for mobile apps, and it’s now just a matter of time before this demand begins to be met across all industries.

Why develop a mobile app?

User desires and preferences are important, but they’re just the tip of the mobile app iceberg. A dedicated mobile application brings with it the benefits of deeper analytics and flexible engagement opportunities. Even the most basic mobile app would allow you to reach out directly to your users, send them messages at the right time, and keep them informed about new developments in your business, product line, or offered services. On the flip side of this equation: comprehensive analytics. A well executed back-end will give you insight about your users, where they’re from, what features of your app they use the most. This will give you a clear picture of whether you should be thinking about adding more features, or whether your mobile app already meets the expectations of your users.

Custom app development vs low-code mobile platforms

As discussed in the eBook Get Mobile or Get Lost, the foundation of your mobile app’s success is your understanding of its end users. This understanding is also the basis of your decision for how to go about making the app. As of today, there are two options you can opt for: custom app development (i.e. in-house development or outsourcing) or developing an app using a mobile platform (i.e. using a WYSIWYG CMS to build, populate, and publish your app to the App Store). Each has its benefits and drawbacks, but your decision should be based on who you perceive your end users to be.

Choosing the right mobile app development plan

The key differentiation to consider regarding end users is their relationship to your business, in other words, you must decide whether your mobile app will be used mostly by employees and managers or by customers and clients. This will dictate whether you app will need to aim to improve daily business operations or sales and marketing objectives respectively.

Choosing custom app development is the best choice employee-oriented applications. Custom development presupposes the involvement of a dedicated Project Manager and Business Analyst, each bringing a unique perspective to the needs of the business and the ways software can help businesses obtain software that meets their needs and helps them meet performance goals.

While platform applications can also be extremely versatile in their use, they are generally better suited to the needs of customers, either providing them with information about the company and its operations or giving the company a great way to engage their customers on their mobile devices, sometimes both.

Benefits of custom mobile app development

Custom development is the optimal choice for employee-oriented applications because it aims to fulfill the needs of individual employees, optimizing their daily operations, and simplifying or automating tasks. These apps presuppose a concrete understanding of business needs, and integrate existing software solutions, making them mobile. Whether a business needs a mobile app for closing deals away from the office or a comprehensive catalogue of its product line — a custom app can become an irreplaceable asset.

Long-term custom development plans

A major benefit of opting for custom app development is the ability to plan a long-term development project. Development of this kind is often broken down into stages, each adding a key feature to the application. The initial release of the app will allow employees to optimize their daily business operations, while future iterations of the app will add features that are specific to individual departments and users. What’s more, opting for custom development presupposes the client’s ability to make fundamental changes to the design and functionality of the app. Custom app development gives full control over the end-product.

Low-Code mobile app platforms

Platforms are the optimal solution for creating customer/client-oriented apps quickly. Many platforms offer similar features, enabling managers to update the app on-the-fly through a web interface, send push notifications to users based on their activities (in more advanced platforms-based on their location), and receive at least a basic level of user analytics.

While features vary, it’s safe to expect a web-interface that allows marketing managers to populate the mobile app with news, images, videos, and sound clips. This same web interface can be used to design the look and layout of the app, choose whether users will need to log in using their social accounts and create triggers for notifications (requests to rate the app after 5 uses, discounts offered after certain in-app actions, promotional messages sent at specific times, etc).

Application feature development

While the aforementioned features may be enough for most, there’s no reason to believe that these are the limits of a platform-built mobile app. If the right platform for your mobile app is chosen, you may be able to request the addition of custom features just for your app. Whether you want to roll out Augmented Reality features in your retail chain or include a mobile shop directly in your app, the right mobile platform provider will be more than willing to develop these features for you.

This is one of the key benefits of using a mobile platform, they are simply a solid foundation for your customer-oriented mobile app, but custom feature development can still help you do what it takes to make your application truly stand out from its competition. They offer a robust feature set from the very start, while leaving plenty of room for improvement and growth.

The 8 easy things to remember when reselling mobile apps

If you have a question about how to market your mobile app product for sales this is one gem of an article written by the mobile app development company Innovins discussing points you need to keep in mind when reselling mobile apps.

This term ‘reselling’ sounds a bit mediocre and sloppy in terms of doing a business. But that’s not the case when it comes to mobile apps. While we have thousands of apps built on different categories already and there are new innovative ideas to which people are trying to mull over to explore and claim a successful endeavor, we have this very obvious trend coming in that separates those who build and innovate and those who play it all through investment channels and rotate opportunities.

These two business mindsets and approaches to mobile apps are different and we see an equally competent platform and thick opportunities, paving a way in the mobile apps bazaar quite compellingly.

Mobile apps reselling is becoming a big slice of the fruit. As we enter a different generation of mobile app development with a lot of automation and technology coming in, in the form of novelties like IoTs and NFCs, it is playing an increasingly vital role in transcending that arc of choice and trait to a different level of arrangement and opportunity, resourcefully generating possibilities and connecting the dots of buying and selling in the domain of mobile apps.

But while you choose to enter the tangent of mobile apps reselling, there are a few things to remember to help you aim and execute it right.

Having a mobile-optimized website

Before you even try to pitch your app to your prospective buyers make sure you have a convincing mobile website in place. This is because every buyer who looks to consider your app would first look through the fact that how your website works on a mobile device. This allows them to have an idea of how well you put up with mobile resources and properties and let them decide if they would look further into the proposal. And that’s where you acquire more than half of their trust!

Be polite and considerate

This seems to be a little off-track but has a far-reaching implication on how you create an overall impression on the prospect. Be courteous and show them how you value their time and efforts in their business by starting an empathetic conversation. Approach them with chats like, “I know how valuable your time is” or “we really appreciate your kind attention”. These words play a decisive role in grabbing the attention making them receptive to your talks and making it easy to for you to pitch your mobile app idea well.

Leverage through relevant social network

We all know how important social networks are and what role they play in accentuating and broadening your reach to your audiences. You just have to find relevant social media that perfectly represents and defines your idea of reselling mobile apps. To that, work on validating your apps resource fulness, brand value proposition, market authority, before pulling in a series of network options and channelizing resources to help you start with the social campaign.

Stay abreast with mobile app trends

Just keeping up with the latest news and information isn’t enough to be able to strike right with reselling. You need to keep close with the newest trends and adapt to the changes as they happen. This is important to be able to acquire, furnish and exhibit the best of mobile practices. In order to allow your users to have the best of advantage from your mobile app reselling attempt, you need to infuse in them latest knowledge resources and refined strategic details to help your users get the insights about the industry and product line your app belongs to.

Perfection is always on the horizon

You should never be aiming at providing your users the best app. This would make situation messy and you would end up wasting a lot of time to achieve those ‘extra’ details. Instead, you must try to offer a viable product that helps businesses attain a solution they are seeking. Hit hard on value propositions and focus on building a comprehensive utility that serves a purpose keenly and resourcefully. If you go by this approach, you would anyway reach that mark of perfection steadily working on those elements that help you eliminate flaws and hone and refine your presence and cogency with time.

Test it well

Before you even think of putting it into the Beta phase or passing it onto the launch tube, make sure you have tested your app well. Because this is the phase (it is when you have already developed your app and it has taken a full-fledged shape) when you get to assess and tune-up the quality of app from different perspectives before actually allowing people to find glitches, no matter how little or trivial they are. Once you are satisfied with your testing process, arrange for an internal feedback session and make sure you get enough heads-ups to let it flow through to the other end.

Utilize an analytics solution

It’s always a good idea to track and measure your performance rather than depending on sheer assumptions and estimations. To make sure that you are receiving enough users and qualifying leads you should use tools like Google Analytics to facilitate value traction and source reporting. For this, you should be regularly looking into the data and numbers that are fetched through different performance tracking parameters and quality evaluation systems set for assessing results. This will ascertain you of your app’s position and affirm its value as a product.

Create your online portfolio

Any sales pitch is incomplete without work credentials. And the best way to get it is by displaying your mobile app portfolio and the past work you have done for your clients. Better if it is supported by user testimonials and other accreditations. If you really look to impress your audience with the work you have done, create an attractive showcase where you provide crucial facts and functional screens to be easily seen and referred by them. Provide them with all important details and club similar apps together and go with a smart merchandising and presentation approach to help you pass your word effectively.

Final words

Reselling mobile apps is easy if you have a clear purpose in mind from the beginning. And all you need to do is keep these points in mind before you assign your app a presentation platform or communicate with your prospects. Always consider having a perfect product first and then presenting it well and then having that perfect dialog with your customer. For all obvious reasons, you need to keep changing your strategies looking at the changed needs and market developments happening around. Focus on your preliminary ideas and translate them into a user-driven product and while you consider reselling mobile apps act as per trends and take dynamic steps towards placing them right at the sight of your target customer.

10 New Trends in Mobile Applications

Currently For Main mobile apps are available on platforms like Android, iOS, Windows & others. (Statistic)The apps are becoming more complicated, feature rich & informative. With increase in devices at the front end, improved app platforms to collect, store, process & offer visibility of data. It will allow brands to take real time decisions to improve performance.

1. Big data visualisation

   IoT estimated to connect 50Bn devices by 2020. Mobile app developers will continue to focus on adding new data collection methods. They will add data management & data visualization tools & solutions for proper organization of data. Connected devices through platforms to provide visibility of user data via apps to enable more meaningful & differentiated interactions, create personal customer experiences.

2. Mobile Security

   Information security remains a big challenge on mobile devices especially for sectors like banks & healthcare. Developers need to adopt latest security practises to secure their apps & data it possesses.

3. Enterprise Apps

   App developers to work on building and managing applications/ platforms for Enterprise market to improve productivity & efficiency.

4. Wearable devices

   The focus will shift additionally towards integration of wearable devices with phones/ tablets via apps with better interfaces & performance.

5. Payment integration

   Using a mobile phone to pay will allow developers to build apps that can process transactions without the need of cards or cash.

6. E commerce Merger

   Apps, Social platforms & E commerce to merge. Social platforms like Instagram with “Shop Now” & Pinterest with “Buyable Pins” are integrating E commerce.

7. App development

   Hybrid HTML5 as a development option getting preference from enterprises. The cross platform frameworks like Xamarin are also preferred to bring down time & costs. However native is a 1st choice for best quality apps.

8. Do it Yourself platforms

   Cloud based “DIY” platforms to help our customers build mobile apps rapidly/ economically without any technical knowledge.

9. Mobile games

   Have gradually started to move from single player to multiplayer with integration of social media. The need for frequent and regular updates in the games created demand for cloud based mobile games. Gamification is a way to go.

10. Monetisation of App

    Mobile app advertising and purchases will drive the monetization of the app. While download charges will be negligible or free.

Mobile Security – An Ignored Reality

With the handset becoming the all in one device in our lives – Mobile Security becomes an important area of concern. Mobile become no. 1 device to manage our personal & business life. Enterprises are happily connecting employee smartphones to their business systems under Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) scheme.

Its benefits are as follows:

• Access to e-mails, apps & WiFi improve productivity
• Ability to work on the go
• Store important data

Mobile phone hacking incidences doubled in Jan- Jun 2016 over Jan- Jun 2015 as its security is almost non-existent. Gartner claims that by 2018, a quarter of corporate data traffic will flow directly from mobiles to the cloud, bypassing any enterprise security completely.

Challenges to Secure Mobile Data

1.   Network – Information can be hacked over networks
   1.  Employees tend to sometime connect to unsecured Wi-Fi networks
2.   Device – Under BYOD scheme
   1.  Employees prefer to protect privacy avoiding intrusive IT security measures from corporates
   2.  Neglect download of latest version of Operating System
   3.  Mobiles can be lost or stolen
3.   Mobile apps – Mobile Malware
   1.  3 out of 4 apps have security gaps for which traditional security measures difficult to enforce.
4. Mobiles can’t detect threats or self-repair once under attack.
5. Even one Mobile device hacking is enough to breach enterprise data security.

Some common types of Malware

• External attacks –

  Viruses can enter via Wi-Fi/ Bluetooth connections, Downloading files, receiving mails/ SMS’s/ cookies. It install itself without user consent.

• Worms –

  Standalone software program which replicate its functional copies and spread quickly to other devices.

• Phishing screens –

  Unknowingly accessing fake mirror sites exposes information & passwords

• Hidden Spyware –

  Collect information & passwords without leaving a trace

• App stores –

  Some apps, especially free ones may have a malicious coding

• Trojan Horses –

  Seemingly harmless programs, trick you into installing, infect devices

Symptoms & Actions

• Symptoms of Mobile attacks

  –   Phone sends messages by itself/ attacks other phones
  –   Data disappears/ breached to create new accounts
  –   Suspicious bank activity

• Actions – Immediately stop using it

  –   Change passwords to all linked accounts from a different device
  –   Alert Friends & family of potential Malware texts
  –   Consult OEM for advice & service
  –   Google 2 steps authentication process

Common Precautions

• All latest OS/ mobile antivirus/ Mobile Device Management (MDM) software should be updated frequently
• Use password protected access controls – keep strong & different passwords
• Control application access & permissions, check app reviews before downloading especially free apps
• Never store personal financial data on your Mobile phone
• Control accessing public networks & close Wi-Fi/ Bluetooth connections when not in use
• Back up your data to the cloud
• Wipe devices data automatically if lost or stolen
• Avoid Jailbreaking a Mobile phone
• Never leave your Mobile phone unattended

How to Make an Emoji App and Sell It

An Emoji is, according to almighty Google, “a small digital image…[that] express[es] an idea, emotion, etc., in electronic communication.” These little ideograms have become quite notorious in the last few years, but actually are as old as mobile phones. They first began back in the 1990s, appearing on early cell phones in Japan (Emoji is actually the combination of 2 Japanese words “Picture” and “Character”).

However, Emojis achieved true fame after Apple – and then Android – began to include Emojis on Smart Phones. For over 30 years, Emojis have delighted and amused. Emojis easily made the transition into mobile apps and today Emoji apps are some of the most downloaded apps in the world. More importantly to the entrepreneurs out there, Emojis are now an exceptionally common way of digital communication.

Apple and Android are adding more Emoticons and Emojis everyday. As SmartPhones begin to pervade most of the planet, Emoji apps are actually growing in popularity. Believe it or not, Emoji Apps alone represent millions of dollars in annual revenue. When you factor in Emojis as part of Messaging Apps more broadly, it becomes a multi-billion dollar industry. Messaging Apps also represent the largest app user market in the world, with more engagement than even Social Media Apps.

That all sounds great, right? The best part is that making an emoji app is actually pretty simple. With the right development team, a clear and easy to use interface, and the right engagement strategy, an Emoji app can easily top the App Store charts. Plus, with the right guide to App Store Optimization, marketing an app is a cinch.

There are plenty of tricks that can help improve engagement, but the crux of this post won’t be about engagement. If you want to learn more about how to create a winning engagement strategy, please reach out to our team of expert designers. This post, however, will discuss two separate strategies on how to make money off an Emoji app.

How to Make an Emoji App and Sell It

The App Exit Plan is a time honored strategy in our business. Essentially, the idea here is to develop an app with the sole intention of selling it to the highest bidder. While this sounds like a joke, it’s actually one of the most effective ways to turn a quick and tidy profit; sometimes, as the case with Walmart’s 3 billion dollar purchase of Jet.com.

If done correctly, an app owner can go from conception to massive profits in 2 years or less. But what does “done correctly” entail? As with most of life, a fishing analogy sums this up best: if Walmart is a fish, a baited hook is necessary to catch it. But the bait changes depending on the type of fish you want to catch. The first step in developing a successful app exit strategy is to figure out who the big fish are in the Messaging App game.

But the bait itself also has to be attractive, which means an Emoji app has to have a substantial userbase and a unique approach to highly competitive market. The app’s uniqueness can be a feature that can give a potential buyer a leg up on other large competitors; or it can simply be that it has a massive, engaged userbase.

Other Revenue Generation Tricks

An app exit plan is an effective way to make money, but it’s not the only way. More than that, there is no reason an emoji app can’t be generating money while you’re waiting for the right fish to bite. So here are some other ways the Savvy Emoji app owner can generate some cash:

♦ Ad Modules are a difficult monetization strategy at the best of times. While a favored revenue generation tactic, when done wrong, Ads can be intrusive, ineffective, and actually harmful to your business. Messaging/Emoji Apps in particular are a hard nut to crack for advertisers. However, Swyft Media has done an excellent job of creating a new approach: turning iconic brands into hit Emojis.

♦ In addition to creating an app, you can also sell the emoticon font itself. Successful emoji apps generally contain both standard “unicode” emojis (which can be packaged and sold to other Messaging Platforms) and the ability to create custom images, which can be sold as a simple image.

♦ Emojis and their close cousin Stickers can be sold as packets as well – i.e. improvements or updates to existing Emoji Libraries. This is an effective way to not only improve your own online presence as an Emoji expert but to generate a continual revenue stream.

Devify – server A set of light weight application server for IoT devices

What is Devify-Server?

All IoT devices need to consume and transmit some data and need to process some data. In many situations the IoT devices needs to communicate between them, they need to communicate the centralized server etc., So, we need a light weight application server for IoT devices. Devify helps you to create and deploy IoT application servers. Devify provides some boilerplates that can be used in your project instantly. Devify supports a lot of web technologies.

Technology of Devify

Devify is a broker server which implements REST-style RPC (Remote Procedure Call). Devify provides a light weight server which can run on laptops, mobile devices, wearable devices and resource constrained IoT devices.

Boilerplates of Devify – server

Devify-server provides you 5 boilerplates. By using them we can start any IoT project Instantly

1. Air Quality sensor console print – Connected to an air sensor to Node MCU and send data to an IoT device locally

2. Air Quality sensor sends message via twillio – IoT device sends alert message by sms when air quality is not good

3. Air quality sensor and dropbox integration

4. Air quality sensor with email integration

5. Real time dashboard for IoT devices using WebSockets, CoAP and Web of Things

• Devify – Server deployment
• Devify server supports Azure. Deploying devify in an Azure server is very easy and faster.

How to use Android Parcelable to pass Objects between Activities

Android as a mobile platform, is more memory constrained. So app developers are pushed to write code that consumes less memory without compromising on performance. Even though Java provides several ways to accomplish works, it sometimes comes with lot of memory usage.

For example, unlike integers and strings, you can’t pass objects between activities. For this, you have to flatten the data. There are two options available: Java’s Serializable interface and Android’s Parcelable interface. Which is better? We’ll look at each of them.

Serializable is a java marker interface with no methods, which helps serialize and deserialize Objects. Actually, ObjectInputStream and ObjectOutputStream are the classes that serialize the Object into a stream and deserialize back into an Object. The class that implements Serializable are meant to be serialized.

The putExtra method serializes the User class into a stream and getSerializableExtra deserializes the stream into User.

Even Though it looks easy to implement this, there are some memory issues associated if the Object class stores lots of data. This serialization process creates a lot of temporary objects and since it also uses reflection, this process tends to be slow and causes more Garbage Collection.

A better way to do this is using Android’s Parcelable interface. It is an interface used to marshal and unmarshal Objects in Android. The main advantage of using Parcelable is it requires us to explicitly serialize the Objects, so there is no reflection involved and less garbage collection. It is said that Parcelable takes on the order of 10x less time to both serialize and deserialize, compared to Serializable.

To use Parcelable, just implement the interface and override the writeToParcel method. In this method, you explicitly write the data to Parcel, which is a container for all the data. You must also implement a non-null static field called CREATOR of type that implements the interface Parcelable.Creator.

As you can see we override the writeToParcel method to write the name and age to Parcel. This way the User is flattened. To deserialize, the CREATOR field’s createFromParcel returns a new instance of the Parcelable object, by initializing the variables from the Parcel.

Note that the values should be read from the Parcel in the same order they are written into it using writeToParcel.

To write an Arraylist of Objects into parcel, you can use parcel.writeList(objectName);
To read the ArrayList, use parcel.readArrayList(classLoader);

The main disadvantage is that you have to write all the boilerplate code yourself. But there are libraries you can use to make it easy. Parceler is such library that uses annotations to reduce boilerplate. Typically, to make a class Parcelable using this library, just add @Parcel to the class.

To pass the Object use

intent.putExtra("user", Parcels.wrap(user));

and to get the Object use

User user = Parcels.unwrap(getIntent().getParcelableExtra("user"));

You can find a demo of manually implementing Parcelable on my github page

Do You Have A Growth Strategy In Place For Your App?

While creating an app is a project in itself, the work is not done once the app is released; in fact that is just the first part of the process. Taking an idea and developing it into something tangible and real is something mobile application companies excel at, but after all the code is written you need to have a growth strategy in place for your app to help it along with the next part of the process which is getting it downloaded by users who want or need it and then retaining those users.

If you build it, they will come?

This isn’t the Field of Dreams. It’s not 2008. Just building an app and placing it on Google Play or iTunes does not mean people will flock to your creation and then download it in mass numbers. Sure, that is a nice fantasy and one that hundreds of mobile app developers have, but it is certainly not reality. You need to develop a growth strategy for your app that focuses on user acquisition and user retention to truly consider your project a success. Building it simply isn’t enough. You need people to download and use it, and then you need to work hard to retain those people you worked hard to acquire.

A growth strategy blueprint

User acquisition is the first step because if people aren’t downloading the app then there is nobody to worry about retaining. Your focus should be on:

• ASO – App Store Optimization (ASO) is an important step as often this is the first insight people have into both your app and the company behind it. Time and testing needs to be used to ensure you have the best name, icon, descriptions, screenshots, and screen shots so that users see the genius you have created and understand the value this app will provide to them.
• Organic – Organic acquisition is popular because it involves time and effort versus money. Part of this plan should include branding along with a strong public relations push before, during and after launch. You can also listen to and respond to communication from users. Last but not least regularly check on your app indexing in stores to ensure it is being categorized properly.
• Paid – For those who can afford it, paid advertising is a good way to fuel acquisition. Facebook ads, paid featured content, and creating content that promotes your app are all good ideas. Paid marketing needs to be tracked and analyzed to ensure you keep what is working and discard what isn’t.

After people are downloading and using the app you need to ensure they stick around which means focusing on user retention. Your focus should be on:

• Performance – In theory you want your app running at 100% however crashes happen and bugs occur. The key is to have plans in place for bug/problem reporting and resolution so that your app is up and running and not crashing and disappointing new users.
• Experience – User experience needs to be a retention target. Are people having problems downloading or using the app? Are there sticking points in the app that cause frustration and app removals? Testing should be thorough prior to launch. Pay attention to feedback and focus first on fixing what isn’t working or isn’t working well after launch.
• Re-engagement – Re-engaging people is a process on its own. By using push notifications you can help automate your engagement which is highly effective when you take the time to use focused messaging. Also listed to users’ feedback and add new features that users are clamoring for to increase their enjoyment and experience.

Of course when creating your blueprint both user acquisition and retention needed to be planned for so that each new person acquired will then be part of your retention plan. Some app developers focus a lot on acquisition and then only on retention after users have left the app which is too late in our opinion.

Part of your blueprint should also include how you will collect information and utilize analytics, as both of these aspects are important to continually adjusting and developing your strategy. As you measure user behavior, comments and feedback you can then adjust your plans for acquisition and retention to maximize both.

The bottom line is that you need to have a growth strategy in place for your app. Just making it is not enough. If you build it they will come, but only in two’s and three’s unless you launch a user acquisition plan and they are not very likely to stay unless you are implementing a user retention plan.