The iPhone is considered to be the most prefect convergence of communications and entertainment in a single device. Apart from regular features like an integrated camera, Bluetooth, WLAN, GPRS, etc, what makes the iPhone stand apart are iPhone applications. iPhone applications have become a hot topic in the mobile phone application design community. Virtually everybody comes up with a creative idea, integrate with an iPhone-like application and sell it to thousands of users through the iPhone app store.

The iPhone SDK (Software Development Kit), launched by Apple in 2008 gave iPhone application developers a global development environment to come up with unique applications for iPhone users. The iPhone SDK consists of Xcode, Interface builder, and Instruments. The applications are written in Objective C language and run on Mac OS X1.5.

Key Factors for Successful iPhone Applications

Before creating an iPhone application, it is important to know the business objectives, how it will be measured, the key performance indicators, and other metrics.

The first objective is to build and drive the brand. While traditional means to drive the brand is by brand recall, download data¸ usage data, stickiness, etc, newer methods tie with social media, and analyze the overall impact of the application within the social media circles. In addition, the application has to be an enabler and has to add value. Thus, it usually falls under one of the two categories; entertaining or useful. Entertaining iPhone applications have wider adoption, but less engagement. On the other hand, useful applications have a smaller reach, but a higher degree of engagement.

The second objective is to drive revenue either directly through the application, or indirectly through third parties. Direct revenue can be generated through advertising or downloads. Indirect revenues are generated with the help of multi-channel tie-ins with retailers or at the point of sale.

Future iPhone Applications

Many analysts have identified the following mobile apps as most likely to be popular in coming years:

Money Transfer: It will allow users to send money using SMS. It will appeal to the developing markets because of lower costs, convenience, and speed of service.

Location-Based Services (LBS): According to Gartner, LBS will grow globally from 96 million in 2009 to 526 million in 2012.

Mobile Health Monitoring: It will monitor patients remotely and will help healthcare institutions to cut costs and improve patient care.

Apart from these trends, innovations in car computers will be synched with iPhone apps with bigger touch screens, faster processing times, accurate voice controls, and biometric measurements.

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