Mobile applications draw the attention of hackers more and more each day because they have something that the attackers want: user data. Hard-coded secret keys, personal information stored in plain text on SD cards, usernames and passwords found unencrypted in databases, analytics collected and sent in the clear to remote servers, are just a few cases.

This may be the year when the mobile web apps finally go mainstream. Or, at least, their hybrid cousins will. Not because the technology will finally be ready. For most apps, it already is. Rather, the web will finally hit the big time with mobile apps precisely because we’ll talk about it less and use it more.

Softeq Development is involved in everything mobile: from business apps, digital imaging and utilities to mobile games, wearable technology, sensor-rich equipment and its remote management. They have built dozens of embedded solutions, web, and mobile applications for such clients as Nike, NVIDIA, Omron, AMD, Atlas Copco, EPSON, Disney Parks and Resorts. T. Our associate author, Alkis Polyrakis, discussed with Softeq’s CEO, Chris Howard.

WillowTree is a leading app development company that has produced over 300 titles since 2007, such as My Pregnancy Today that has seen more than 12 million downloads. Our collaborator, Alkis Polyrakis, discussed with their Systems Architect, Alex Shafran, who led the development of projects for GunBroker, Quintiles, the Red Cross and the NBA, about their strategies and tools of preference.

Augmented Reality (AR) is about overlaying pieces of a virtual world over the real world (in contrast to Virtual Reality (VR) that is about replacing the real world with a virtual one). On mobile devices, this simply means enhancing what you can see through the device’s camera with multimedia content (e.g. you can point your camera at a movie poster and watch its trailer, or you can point it at a star in the sky and learn its name). So, basically AR comes down to the following three fundamental questions: where to display what and how.

In the first part of our JavaScript MV* framework comparison we introduced AngularJS, Ember, Backbone.js and the newcomer React, we showed some code examples and discussed their strengths and weaknesses. In this second part we are going to have a look at their market share, community support and estimated growth to help you make the […]

For the last two and a half years I’ve been building and selling apps directly on the iOS App Store, however only in 2014 I committed to some substantial effort on this. I’d like to share some numbers about my experience last year and draw some insights about what things went well and which ones didn’t.

Hopefully this analysis will be useful to others and will give me some insight about where to focus in 2015 to grow my app revenue.

There are quite a number of important metrics that you need to be tracking and improving upon in order to make your app a true success. Always be looking at the wider picture, and evaluating how each metric has an effect on one another.

If your team is small, or you are an indie developer working alone, then I’d recommend starting by iterating your product with the focus on increasing engagement, retention, and your average user LTV. You don’t need to have millions of users on board in order to build a truly great mobile app. Test heavily, and make data driven decisions in order to position yourself in a place where you can start to invest in acquisition with the confidence in your product’s quality and monetisation.

Finding a comprehensive comparison between any kind of JavaScript Frameworks, Libraries or Extensions is not hard these days. Especially when it comes to Javascript MV* Frameworks, which are used to develop single-page applications (SPAs), and their notorious representatives, i.e. AngularJS, Ember, Backbone.js and newcomer React. A simple Google Search offers a plethora of technical comparisons to choose from. What they don’t usually mention, though, is the overall features those frameworks provide and how they compete for different use cases.

2014 was quite an eventful year in our industry. Apple finally gave in to the big screen but also teased us with the small screen of the upcoming Apple Watch, and even surprised developers with Swift. Google wasn’t quiet either, revealing their vision for the future of UI with Material design and tackling wearables head-on. […]