What is the definition of Mobile Applications?
In the online world, the word 'Mobile Applications' or Mobile Apps in short, has started appearing quite frequently. Especially so with the advent of SmartPhones that run on Google Android or phones like Apple Inc's iPhone. So, what exactly does the word 'Mobile Apps' mean?
To give an analogy, look at the screen of your computer. The icons that you see on the screen or what is referred to as the desktop are clickable. Each is a kind of software. When you click on an icon, it opens into that software. Mobile Apps are similar software packages for hand-held devices beginning with the cellphone. Any such mobile device which you can use to get online now has one or several Mobile Apps on it. Now, there are over a half million such Apps currently in the mobile world, and the list is only growing, as more and more people become aware of their existence. Each App is clickable, it is a software package that allows you to do certain things. For example: There could be a weight watching Mobile App, which when clicked, will help you monitor your daily intake of calories, besides giving you other Health tips....and so on and so forth.
So, what was the need to develop Mobile Apps in the first place? One of the several reasons was of convergence. With mobile phones and other handheld/portable devices becoming inreasingly Internet ready/friendly, and with the advent of 3G and 4G technology, it is said that your Personal Computer may soon become reduntant and that all your computing and everything else that you do on the Internet will be through your mobile phone. So, these Apps were developed to allow you to do a host of things on the Internet. Mobile Apps can be just gateways to already existing websites on the Internet or stand-alone ones, or a mix of both.
There was a time when the tech guys were the only ones able to develop Mob Apps but today, the scene has changed. Just as in websites, you get ready to use templates for ready-to-use websites or blogs, there are software companies that have started offering what are called as WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) software to develop the Apps. Even a user completely clueless about any kind of coding knowledge can use this to make his own Mobile App.
Mobile Apps come either pre-loaded in mobile phones or are available in the respective "online" store of that particular provider. So, there is an Apple Store where you can "go" and download the Apps you are interested in. Just recently, Google announced that there were now around 200,000 Android Mobile Apps. Some of these Apps are free to use while you need to pay a one time fee or monthly fee for others. The importance of Mobile Apps is expected to keep increasing as world over, everybody starts switching from the regular mobile phones to Smartphones.
©Ask Bob December 31, 2010
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