An addict’s guide to iPhone applications
by Natalie Cooke
It’s staring at me on the arm of the sofa but I have promised that I won’t use it. I even turned it face down so I am not tempted to check my Facebook to see who has commented on my status in the last fifteen minutes, or to download the “Fish Tycoon” application I have heard my friend talking about. You can nurture and breed your own fish then sell them for virtual money. Truth is I hate fish, but the iPhone application looks fun…!!
An addiction?
Needless to say, my iPhone has become a worrying addiction – and the application store on iTunes is starting to cost me a lot of money! The store is what really makes the iPhone so unique and is the biggest advancement in mobile technology in recent years. It’s accessible via iTunes and holds over 25,000 applications ranging from the really useful to the completely pointless and bizarre.
Over 6,000 of the iPhone applications are completely free, with the rest costing from 59p up to £10! The majority of the applications are games, closely followed by entertainment and utilities.
The applications are so popular that iPhone users have downloaded almost a billion applications since June 2007… over 1,200 iPhone applications are downloaded every minute!
Some of the earlier ones…
One of the first branded applications to arrive was Carling’s iPint which quickly became one of the most downloaded applications and won the Silver Cyber Lion award last year, You can hold your iPhone to your mouth and tilt it so that it appears that a pint is trickling down your throat… totally pointless but hugely successful and surprisingly cheap to produce.
Of course there are some useful applications too, such as the ingenious Ruler Phone that lets you measure most things quite accurately. You place a credit card on the object you want to measure and then take a photo. You then resize the photo over an image of a rectangle and then measure. This app takes advantage of the fact that a credit card is a fixed size.
Social networking applications on the iPhone
Social networking applications are big business on the iPhone and Facebook is most downloaded free social network application with over 6.7 million downloads. Another social networking tool that is becoming increasingly popular on the iPhone is Twitter… there are over 20 different Twitter applications available for download. This includes Twittervision, a free application that incorporates an almost useless but nevertheless impressive world map feature, allowing you to watch people ‘tweet’ live across a map of the world. It’s a bit strange but also worryingly addictive.
The top 5 free downloadable iPhone applications
JustUpdate is also free to iPhone users and is perhaps the most simple and straightforward Twitter style application. If you use Twitter already and are sick of the constant update feed and only want to know about the important things then this is probably the best application to download. It’s very basic and has no follower feed, no friends, no features: just a text box for you to post directly to Twitter. Perhaps the most efficient way to tell the world about what you just ate for dinner!
Branded Applications
Whilst there are many weird and wonderful applications there are currently a limited number of branded ones available for download. The iPhone is still an early adopter craze but for more well known brands the it is a great opportunity to tap into the fast growing mobile technology market.
Most recently Travelodge has become one of the first hotel chains to launch a GPS application that enables people to book hotel rooms through their iPhone. The Travelodge iBooker allows iPhone users to find and book a room in Travelodges and Travelodge-affiliated hotels throughout the UK. And it’s a simple process: just click on the Travelodge logo and the GPS service locates the nearest five Travelodge hotels to the user, complete with images, room availability and rates.
Even a 9-year-old can create iPhone apps
The applications functionality of the iPhone has proved attractive to thousands of programming and software developers. Applications can be very simple and cheap to produce – so simple that even a 9-year-old has had a go!
Lim Ding Wen, who is fluent in six programming languages and started using a PC when he was two-years-old, created a finger painting program called Doodle Kids.
The program allows iPhone owners to draw images on the handset’s touch screen using just their fingers, then clear the screen by shaking the iPhone. The application has now been downloaded more than 4,000 times.
Video Content
YouTube is included as standard on the iPhone, with a customised interface bringing up a shortlist of most popular videos. YouTube runs in landscape mode and looks very nice indeed thanks to the site converting much of its content to the high quality h.264 video standard. You can even access the website via a Wi-Fi connection.
Laptop in my pocket
In addition to all hours of entertainment that you can have with the thousands of different applications I have become quite dependant on my iPhone for work too. Not only can I check my emails on the go via Microsoft Exchange, Gmail, Yahoo or AOL, but there is also the facility to view Microsoft Word and PDF files.
Email usage on the iPhone is big business and recent research carried out by comScore found that some 75.4 percent of iPhone users accessed emails, compared with 35.4 percent of other smartphone users and 13.1 percent of all other mobile phone users. This may be due to the touch screen keyboard which is seen to be much easier and quicker to use than the keypads on other smartphones.
Whenever I am out of the office my iPhone comes with me, and for when work becomes dull there’s now even an iBeer in my pocket too!
If you’d like to know more about using iPhone applications for marketing purposes… why not give Red C a call on 0161 872 1361 or click here
Tags: Apple, apps, branded applications, Direct Marketing Agency in Manchester, Facebook, fish tycoon, iPhone, iPhone Applications, ipint, itunes, justupdate, mobile, Mobile Marketing, mobile technology, Smartphones, Social Networking, travelodge ibooker, Twitter, twittervision, Youtube
