The iPhone has been top dog in the mobile world for the past two years. It’s apparent when you look at the App Store and how well the iPhone platform has fared, even amidst the economic recession the world has been experiencing. In the mobile developer community, the iPhone has been a holy grail. Apps can be built in short order, the UI is beautiful, some fantastic widgets and the App Store provides an awesome distribution channel (especially if you get in the Top Apps charts)

Companies of all shapes and sizes are looking to get their apps quickly built and listed in the App Store. Enterprises, who before didn’t even give mobile a second thought, are looking to build mobile strategies built around Apps for the iPod touch and iPhone. For example, it’s been reported Pizza Hut has made over USD $1 Million on their app (I wonder if they provide little wipes with each delivery so you don’t smear your beloved touch screen with your sticky tomato fingers)

However, as any iPhone developer would tell you, working the the Apple and the App Store can be a challenge. Recently, Joe Hewitt of Facebook has publicized his displeasure with Apple’s practices. While respecting Apple’s ability to run their App Store according to it’s rules, Hewitt has stopped developing the application out of frustration.

There is a silver lining for application developers. A year ago, the iPhone was by far the leading platform developers looked at, but the game has changed in recent months. And competition is good for everyone.

With the surge of the Android mobile OS, developers have a new platform that is lucrative and attractive. Android OS is based on languages and APIs that developers are already comfortable with and the operating system is fully open source. Also, the Android Market is much more democratic and allows developers to publish their applications in a much more fluid way.

The Palm Pre is another ‘alternative’ which runs WebOS – a platform based on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript – three technologies mobile web app developers are very familiar with.

While the Apple’s App Store has 100,000 apps, the app market places on the other platforms has yet to boast these types of numbers. The Android Market has around 10,000 applications and Palm Pre users have a few hundred to choose from. However, volume isn’t everything – many of the App Store apps available are repetitive and quality can vary.

Finally, Symbian is a platform that should not be overlooked, however many developers I talk to are frustrated with developing for this platform. While the number of handsets is staggering, developing for each individual handset (because Nokia tweaks S60 in so many different ways) can be a developer’s nightmare.

The one new facet with S60/Symbian development is the new Widget architecture that is popular on the Nokia N97 and N900 handsets. These new devices support homescreen widgets that bring web applications to your mobile handsets in a new way. Existing ones include Facebook, Accuweather, Amazon.com and so on. They’re relatively easy to build compared to full applications.

In conclusion, the Apple iPhone and the App Store is a highly effective way to build and distribute your mobile applications. However, there are other options available to developers that are now starting to become viable alternatives. If you’re a developer or company looking to build out your mobile strategy, give all these platforms a look, different strokes for different folks …

So, you’ve spent months working on your iPhone app and are finally ready to release it to the showcase that is the App Store. But wait – have you considered how it will look against your competitors in the App Store list view?

If you have  high-hopes, then you won’t just be competing against apps that provide a similar feature-set to yours – you’ll be competing against a diverse range of apps on the Top 25 page for a fraction of the user’s attention. We already know the App’s name, star rating & price have a big impact on downloads. But what about the Icon?

No doubt, a lot of the decision process is subjective. If you’re after a specific app then you’re going to try it out no matter how it appears in the App Store. The ‘A Fake Caller’ app is successful because it provides utility, but it’s no beaut. A quick once-over from a visual designer and the app would get even more downloads.

Differentiation from competing apps is key here – what’s going to make someone download your amazing Touch app from the ten other Touch apps that are out there? It must be stressed that first impressions are key. As with the packaging of food goods, a quality icon will yield a higher perception of quality of the product itself.

Of course, we still need to think about how the icon will look on the Home Screen.
iPhone app icons are like pin-badges on your jacket – they add a touch of decoration and add personality. They are digital jewelry – gems that I love to leave installed on my iPhone, even if just for cosmetics.

Need some help designing an app icon in context of the App Store or Home Screen? Here are some Photoshop templates we use when designing our app icons.

We spend a lot of time looking at iPhone apps these days and it’s very clear that the user experience can be the difference between someone buying an app or not.

Marc posted about the importance of creating the right impression within the App Store . I wanted to write here briefly about how the app itself then needs to continue with creating the right impression through its UX.

As example, lets take the simple ‘converter’ app – you know, the one you download because you need to convert Fahrenheit to Centigrade, or Miles to Kilometers? It could be seen as a ‘boring utility’ by many, but user experience design can still make one app stand out over another.

I’ve downloaded a couple of converters and one that I really liked was Convertbot. With Convertbot the designers have really crafted the user experience. They have considered everything from the icon onwards and made it feel seamless and clean to use.

When you start the app, the loading screen is a metallic/industrial-feeling ‘shutter’ with animation – this then leads nicely into a main screen which maintains the industrial feel and where users simply spin a wheel of icons to choose what type of conversion they want to make – length, weight, etc.

Putting that in the context of other converter apps its clear to see that Converbot user experience is more considered from a design perspective.

Take a look at the two screens here from two different converter apps. This is the main screen where the user chooses their conversion and enters what they want to convert.

Convertbot keeps it very simple – the user just flicks the wheel to select what they want to convert. Convertbot also reduces complexity by offering the user either the wheel or the keypad – depending on the context they are in. This reveals the complexity as needed rather than attempting to fit everything onto one screen.

Earlier this week, we launched our iPhone app with much excitement – it was the culmination of many months of work, so we couldn’t help being curious to see what people thought.

Ewan at Mobile Industry Review says:

“[Ed note: In the context of your average mobile search engine] It’s incredibly annoying to have to click, click, click on a mobile device, irrespective what type. There’s a cost in terms of time and battery (assuming you’re on an unlimited data plan) to every single tap or click.

So they’ve tried really hard to get it right first time. A total godsend for any mobile user. [...] Nice work Taptu!”

Scott at MobileCrunch says:

“Another great feature of the current version of the Taptu app are context sensitive search filters included beneath the default search filters. As you can see, my search for beer produced a number of beer-related links. Mmmmm…beeer.

Bottom line: Taptu is a pretty slick mobile search solution.”

What’s On iPhone says:

“Google works just fine on the iPhone, especially now that iGoogle is back on line. But is it the only choice of search engines for the device? NO WAY!

Taptu brings a unique aproach to web searches on the iPhone with its new search engine. Designed to be finger friendly, it is intended for small screen. And it shows.”

Now, we have also had a few bits of criticism from some iTunes reviewers, who have flagged up that our index isn’t up to scratch for every type of search term. That’s a fair comment – our index is growing every day and will continue to improve as we keep plowing more material into it. In fact, you can help improve our index by recommending the best mobile sites out there if we don’t already list them.

Our thanks go out to everyone who’s taken time to look at the app, reviewed or commented (positively or negatively constructively) over the past few months. Now, how about I go get one of ‘em new 3GS iPhones and test that Taptu works properly on it? Oooh shiny!

Another year at Mobile World Congress ends; the team comes home both exhausted from the long days (& nights) and energised by meeting so many interesting and enterprising people.

Looking at the mobile trends, many manufacturers have now jumped on the Touch UI bandwagon. For Taptu, that’s great news; we love a touchy-feely interface, since using your fingers to point at menus is so much more intuitive than having to scroll and click.

There are however a few cases where we couldn’t believe our eyes at how Touch UI can be used so poorly. Regardless, it’s encouraging that more manufacturers are considering the simplicity of touch; it’ll just take a while to polish it and make it most user-friendly rather than purely “flash, spin and float around” eye candy. Just before MWC, we published a whitepaper on Touch UI, which Bob Last mentioned on the TechCrunchTalk panel on Mobile Disruption.

The second noticeable trend was the clear focus on apps, apps and more apps. Everyone is opening their own app store, following Apple’s success. It’s exciting to see to think that every device platform could develop its own hub for applications, as it’s something I always felt was missing back in my S60 days, but the take-up will depend highly on the quality of the user experience in browsing the apps available. If every platform has a high quality app store, users will have more fun and developers will get the recognition they deserve. What could possibly go wrong?

Shiny gadgets and business exchanges aside, some of the other highlights of our week include the bear machine, which was so popular with visitors to our stand that it broke by the third day. Don’t worry, we still gave away the teddy bears for the rest of the week.

The team thoroughly enjoyed hosting drinks on Tuesday evening, and we want to thank everyone who popped by! Celia’s Killer Pink Cocktails were such a hit, we were asked for the recipe and we thought we’d share it here:

Celia’s Killer Pink Cocktail

• 1 part raspberry liqueur
• 2 parts triple sec
• Top up with chilled dry white wine

Serve with a pink stirrer and enjoy!

Twelve hours later, top up body with two headache-relief tablets, a glass of water and a bacon buttie.

Manning a stand for a few days can also lead to discovering new skills in your colleagues, as we did with Bob when he started juggling teddy bears to entertain people walking by!

In summary, we thoroughly enjoyed our time at Mobile World Congress and cannot wait to see what partnerships, funky app releases and friendships the next few months will bring as a result of this event.