The Business Case for Writing Good Mobile Applications

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The Business Case for Writing Good Mobile
Applications
San Francisco 2005 February 8th

• Michelle McKelvey
• Mobile ISV Architect

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Agenda

• What is the Mobile PC Market?
• What Features Do Mobile PC Users want?
• The Mobile PC Development Roadmap
• Windows Codenamed Longhorn The Future of
  Mobile PC Development

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Mobile Platform Choices

• Pocket PC Phone
• View and some data entry
• Integrated PDA with phone
• Interoperability with Office, Exchange and SQL
  Server
• .NET Compact Framework
• ASP.NET mobile controls

• Smartphone
• Integrated phone with PDA
• Primarily data viewing
• Interoperability with Outlook Exchange
• .NET Compact Framework
• ASP.NET mobile controls

• Mobile/Tablet PC
• Complex document authoring, editing and active
  reading
• Note taking and ink annotating
• Keyboard centric at the desk, pen keyboard away
  from the desk
• Keyboard, mouse plus pen, ink, and speech input
  methods
• Full .NET framework preinstalled
• Pen, ink, handwriting and speech recognition APIs

• Smart Personal Objects
• One-way network
• Information consumption

() Portability (-)
Windows Mobile
(-) Functionality ()
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Tablet PC And Mobile Platforms Roadmap
Tablet the premium Ultra Portable PC Tablet as a
Vertical Success
Tablet technology as a feature Microsoft focused
on Mobile PC
Mobile gets personal PC form-factors for everyone
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The Market Goes Mobile

• Notebook PCs, with a compound average growth
  rate of 15 worldwide through 2008, will outsell
  desktop PCs as business and consumer users
  upgrade or complement their desktop PCs.
• Strategy Analytics 8-03

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Growing Mobile Workforce

• IDC estimates that between 2002 and 2006 the
  number of U.S. mobile workers will grow by almost
  13 million, from 91.8 million to 104.5 million
  individuals.
• This growing mobile workforce will embrace a
  variety of hardware, software, and services
  technologies to enable them to work more
  efficiently in a wide variety of locations.

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U.S. PC Unit Shipments Total PCs

• Source IDC, 2004

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U.S. PC Unit Shipments - Growth

• Source IDC, 2004

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Mobile Solutions

• Market opportunity to meet the needs of mobile
  workers.
• Provide advanced technology
• Optimize wireless solutions
• Increase productivity and efficiency
• Wireless and mobile technology has expanded the
  appeal of cell phones, PDAs, and other mobile
  devices.
• Users expect similar experience from all platforms

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Mobile Worker Segmentation

• Source IDC, 2002

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Mobile Worker Segmentation

• Office-Based Mobile Workers
• 56 of the total U.S. mobile population.
• Includes heavy regular travelers.
• Most enthusiastic of technologies designed to
  enable them to stay connected and increase their
  productivity
• And those who travel occasionally, bring work
  home, mobile at work.
• As technology improves mobile so does worker
  productivity creating more and more mobile
  workers.

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Mobile Worker Segmentation

• Non-Office-Based Mobile Workers
• Mobile field workerstravel from job site to job
  site
• IDC estimates that the mobile field worker
  population will grow from 11.6 million
  individuals in 2002 to 13.3 million by 2006.
• Key opportunity for a variety of ruggedized,
  vertical-specific and horizontally-focused mobile
  devices
• Data capturing, tracking, and location-based
  tasks
• Mobile on-location workersmove around specific
  job site
• IDC estimates that there are 18.7 million mobile
  on-location workers in the United States.
• Food Service, Hospitality.
• Not first wave of adopters of mobile technology.

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Mobile Worker Segmentation

• Home-Based Mobile Workers
• IDC estimates that there are currently 10.5
  million home-based mobile workers and that this
  number will grow to 11.8 million by 2006.
• Those who work at home for an outside employer,
  telecommuters, and those who work for a home
  business - mobile home-based business workers.
• Needs comparable to those of office-based
  workers, but need home connectivity

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Mobile Consumer

• Consumer Market
• Prefer form factor of Mobile PCs
• Have wireless broadband at home
• User at desk or coffee table
• Need offline data solutions
• Read e-mail
• Browse Web
• Play games
• Appreciation of long battery life and network
  awareness

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Understand Your Market

• Analyze the entire mobile population as a whole.
• Integrating solutions with existing systems,
  software, hardware, and whatever else.
• Interoperability across multiple types of
  wireless networks.
• Allow mobile workers to move across corporate
  campuses into the wide area, back to the home,
  and then out into public areasall locations in
  which access is required and in which different
  modes of access can improve efficiencies.
• Security has become increasingly central to
  corporate thinking about support for mobile
  workers.
• Fundamental part of data communications.

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Windows Client Vision

• Make Windows computers more valuable to more
  people more hours of the day by enabling them to
  use computers in new physical and social
  settings.

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When to Consider Mobile PC Features

• In the design stage of your projects.
• Allocate time and resources for design,
  development and test of Mobile features.
• Dont assume desktop power, connectivity and
  display when creating your application.
• Similar to accessibilitythe sooner you plan for
  the features, the better integrated they will be.

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What Features to Consider

• Four Pillars of Mobility
• Data Management
• Power Awareness
• Network Awareness
• Display

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Data Management

• Dont assume access to data.
• Utilize WebServices for middle tier.
• Consider disconnected scenarios.
• Utilize local storage.
• Two way sync when connected.
• File and Database handles can be lost at any
  time. Your application should recover gracefully.
• Handle online/offline sync gracefully.
• Markus Eggers talk today and tomorrow.

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Power Awareness

• Application should not assume AC power.
• Consider batter life when doing large transfers
  of data, polling status, writing files to disk,
  heavy display, and computations.
• Have a low power option for you application.
• Download only headers
• User initiated Display Mode
• Check power level before long operations
• Handle suspend and resume gracefully.
• Dale Taylors talk later today.

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Network Awareness

• Applications should not assume connectivity.
• Consider bandwidth of connectivity when doing
  large transfers of data, background transfers,
  and database updates.
• Have a low connectivity option for your
  application.
• Download only headers
• Postpone data sync
• Handle connected/disconnected events gracefully.
• Dr. Neils talk later today.

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Display

• Applications should not assume previous display
  configurations.
• Monitors may come and go from users
  configurations.
• Need to support both landscape and portrait
  display.
• Sris talk later today.

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Whats Coming in Longhorn

• Data Management
• Improved Sync Manager UI and control
• SQL Lite
• Power Awareness
• Better APIs
• More fine-grained information and control
• Network Awareness
• Better APIs
• Notification Model replaces polling
• Display
• Better support of multi-mon
• Auxiliary Display

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Questions?