RISMEDIA, May 16, 2009-While mobile media is still in its early stages, the growing consensus is that it will become lucrative to those that master it. As home buyers continue to look to the Internet in search of homes, it is crucial that real estate professionals stay ahead of this trend in order to offer their clients the information they need. Here, Marlon Rodrigues, director of Account Services, Polar Mobile Group discusses how mobile media will shape the future of information sharing.
Marlon Rodrigues
Director of Account Services
Polar Mobile Group
www.polarmobile.com
The popularization of downloadable mobile applications, especially for smart phones, has meant a sharp democratization in who can reach a mobile device user. Most in the mobile industry are left scratching their heads, or scrambling to catch up to the explosive success of the Apple App Store as an efficient distribution mechanism.
Nearly every device manufacturer has planned or launched their own mobile app center to capitalize on the revenue potential and value-boost that good apps will provide to their end users. To achieve this, device manufacturers are also launching more robust SDK (software development kits) so that more and more people can attempt to build their own applications.
With a $200 registration fee and a few hours on the weekend, nearly anyone with some programming experience can develop and deploy mobile applications. There are currently over 20,000 applications in the App Store, so how do you plan on capturing your share of voice in this growing market?
Consider this:
How big is a mobile device screen? Hold three fingers up-that’s how big (and those are the big ones). Going mobile is more than simply an exercise in porting over the content and layout of your website. To succeed in this medium, it takes an intimate understanding about how your intended user will interact with your content and what each device platform can add from its own set of unique capabilities (i.e.-the iPhone’s multi-touch).
The battle between cool and useful-cool is good, but not at the sake of useful. Too often, mobile applications are created simply attempting to wow the user. These apps enjoy a short-term burst of usage, but tend not to have a sustained place in the user’s mind and regular habits. Creating long-term value for an end user through mobile applications is about matching a smart form to the intended function of your content.
What you don’t see is what you get-Most of your mobile application is hidden away from the user, so it’s easy to forget that there’s much more to creating a good experience than what is on the surface. Subtle details like efficient data, memory and battery usage, and determining what elements are stored on the device versus pulled from a server create endearing experiences. Any good development team spends more time thinking about what happens behind the scenes than what they put on stage.
The need to monetize-Mobile media is in its early stages, but the growing consensus is that this media will become lucrative to those that master it. Think about how you will monetize, or whether you need to, early on to give your new venture a fighting chance of succeeding.
Learn about how RISMedia went mobile at m.rismedia.com.
