How Hot Is The iPhone Application Development Market?

We've just returned from the STARWEST 2009 software testing conference. While there we talked to hundreds of testing and QA people. And as we shared with them our outsource testing services and our new product, myQMT, we asked them what their iPhone development plans were. Since we both develop and test iPhone applications, we were interested in how many were developing for the iPhone market. What we found out was that most companies were planning an iPhone app. And this information was coming from their QA folks.

Today I have some links to articles that provide some insight on how hot this market is becoming:

39% average growth was experienced by most developers from adding mobile application development to their business models. NATIONAL SURVEY RESULTS: Developers Shift Business Model To Ride iPhone App Wave Developers and entrepreneurs change course and thrive as iPhone app development increases

University of Utah researchers created new iPhone programs. iPhone the body electric

The exploding iPhone Application development community. iPhoneAppQuotes Forges Strategic Partnership with Appular

American heavy metal band Metallica has launched a new iPhone application to allow fans to listen to its live show recordings on the move. Metallica launches iPhone application for fans

The App Store taps the creative energy of entrepreneurial developers. From cars to TVs, apps are spreading to the real world

Mercedes-Benz joins other consumer-oriented companies, including Pizza Hut, Kraft, and Whole Foods, in developing apps for customers. Mercedes-Benz Launches iPhone App

Technology Advisory: Apple Releases iPhone OS 3.1.2

Apple released iPhone OS 3.1.2 today. According to Apple, this update contains bug fixes and improvements, including the following:

- Resolves sporadic issue that may cause iPhone to not wake from sleep
- Resolves intermittent issue that may interrupt cellular network services until restart
- Fixes bug that could cause occasional crash during video streaming

iPhone users can download the update by connecting to iTunes and pressing Check for Update.

According to www.macrumors.com, a corresponding update is also available for the iPod touch, and the iPhone OS 3.1.2 update for iPhone in U.S. is accompanied by an update to AT&T's carrier settings file, which brings the settings to version 5.6.

iPhone Development Basics - Memory Management Part 1

For those of us involved in iPhone applications testing, it's useful to understand how memory management works on the iPhone OS. Most of the problems we see that result in some sort of application crash or failure are related to memory problems. Understanding how these memory problems can occur can help with trapping memory related defects so you can report reproducible defects.

We've discussed memory management issues in previous articles. In this series of articles, which will be posted each Monday, we have video presentations from Mark Johnson that introduce the basics of iPhone memory management in Objective-C for programmers starting out with the iPhone. These videos are very instructive for both developers and testers.

Tips for Testers: if you've never done any programming, the terms discussed by Mark may be new for you. I suggest that you use this information to develop a curiosity about iPhone app memory management so that when you talk with the developers, you can ask probing questions. And, as developers answer your questions, it often helps them sort through the complexity they deal with, as well as giving you more insight as to what may be cause the bugs you're seeing.

Suggested developer question for Part 1:

(2:50min) What is a NSMutableString object and why would the app ever release this object after it has been deleted? Would this cause a crash?

Hello MonoTouch - .NET and C# Developement For iPhone In Action

Last week we wrote about MonoTouch for iPhone (Five Million .NET Developers Can Now Cross Over To The iPhone). This week we found a video of a quick screencast showing how to make a simple iPhone Hello World type app in MonoDevelop with MonoTouch and C#. This was done using the MonoTouch preview.



There's also a 3 part series that goes more in-depth on installing and using MonoTouch. Here are the links for that series:

Getting Started with MonoTouch - Part 1
Getting Started with MonoTouch - Part 2
Getting Started with MonoTouch - Part 3

Five Million .NET Developers Can Now Cross Over To The iPhone

Novell released MonoTouch on September 14 2009, that allows developers to create C# and .NET based applications that run on the iPhone while taking full  advantage of the iPhone APIs as well as reusing both code and libraries that have been built for .NET as well as existing skills.  That means the door is opened to a lot more developers. "...the big win with it is that it opens the door for some 5 million .Net developers to begin to do iPhone applications" according to analyst Al Hilwa, program director for application software at IDC, as reported in the ComputerWorld article Novell offers iPhone .Net app development kit.

Mobile Device/Smartphone Testing News: Apple, Palm, Android, and BlackBerry

This week has been eventful for all the mobile device platforms with news from each of the major players.

Apple is now at over 75,000 apps in the App Store and shows no sign of slowing down. This week brings plenty of mobile device compatibility testing news with the announcement and shipping of iPhone OS 3.1 and iTunes 9. Apple announces iPhone 3.1



Palm's second webOS-based smartphone was announced this week. A new form factor, both with the keyboard and screen, should present some interesting testing challenges.
Palm debuts Pixi smartphone, its second using webOS





New and very popular apps appear on Android. Is this an indication of app development and testing growth for this platform? Facebook, Pandora Apps Hit Android (Just added: iPhone users aren't the only ones to get cool apps)


RIM's Blackberry is still in the fight for app development market share with news this week. Yahoo announced Finance for Mobile for the BlackBerry Bold, Tour and 8900 series, as well as Yahoo Fantasy Football for Mobile. It's interesting to see specific models listed instead of just "BlackBerry". That means the development and testing compatibility issues are only compounded when you offer diverse form factors. Yahoo intros new iPhone and BlackBerry apps

Free iPhone Simulator - No Assembly Required

The image on the left is a view of yesterday's article on USB 3.0 and was produced by TestiPhone.com, a clever web-based tool for testing content as it would appear on the iPhone. It's intended use was to test iPhone web apps prior to the advent of native apps.  Now that the SDK is out, which provides a full blown simulator (with some limitation), this free online tool would seem to be obsolete.  But I think it and others like it (iPhoney: iPhone web simulator) can still be of service for browser compatibility testing. With iPhones accounting for most of the US mobile browser web traffic, website developers need to pay attention to how their pages look on mobile Safari. Hence testers need to add mobile Safari to the browser compatibility test matrix. And by having a tool that simulates the iPhone running on the same system with desktop browsers, you can view web page rendering side-by-side. And best of all it doesn't require installation of the iPhone SDK.

Certainly you'd want to do at least one pass on an actual iPhone, but during most of the development cycle, having a quick and easy way to check how your website looks on mobile Safari, makes these simulators worth adding to your tester toolbox.

Why Are iPhone Application Developers Doing This?

iPhone application developers have been adding functionality that allow users to "free memory" on demand.  Unfortunately, Apple has begun telling these developers to remove this functionality from their iPhone applications (Apple Forces Removal of 'Free Memory' Functionality From iPhone Applications).  This has forced companies like Recession Apps, to remove their app from sale.

I talked to an iPhone app developer about this and asked him why this sort of functionality is needed.  He told me that memory management for the iPhone, or lack thereof, is woefully inadequate in some situations.  He did say that Apple provides plenty of information as to what can happen under low memory conditions and what to do about it.  And there are numerous examples provided, as well as advice (from real Apple engineers) given in the developer forums.  The problem is that the guidance given does not work in all situations, especially in very critical memory situations.