Comparing mobile apps platforms from a provider perspective

Status

This is a draft, work-in-progress analysis derived from the “Closing the Gap with Native” Headlight task force.

Introduction

To compare the various existing mobile apps development approaches, two main perspectives can be taken:

from the end-user perspective: how well the said development approach will make it possible to provide the best possible user experience;
from the content and service provider perspective: how well the said development approach will optimize their costs and benefits.

This document proposes a model to analyze a give mobile app development approach from provider perspective. To that end, it identifies the various high level operations a provider will be confronted to create, deploy and maintain a mobile application on the market.

A Framework for comparing mobile apps approaches from a provider perspective

To make it sustainable to provide a given application, content and service providers need an environment that reduces as much as possible the costs of developing, deploying and maintaining a given application, and maximizes the expected outcome, which can be, but is not necessarily, of monetary nature.

The following parameters are taken into account to assess the costs:

Development cost

Hiring / training developers
Writing code
Finding documentation and guidance
Finding libraries
Reporting platform bugs
Debugging and diagnostics
Testing

Deployment cost

Getting authorization to deploy
Uploading the app
Advertising the app
Protecting the app code

Maintenance cost

Getting user input and feedback
Keeping up to date with changes (in particular incompatible ones) in the platform
Getting visibility into future evolutions of the platform

Expected outcomes

Reaching out to as many users as possible
Getting paid
Getting recognition
Enabling social change

Expected outcomes is a bit hand-wavy: is there another better way to phrase this? Are there other high level outcomes we should include?