With BuildFire and Simblee for mobiles apps development, the future of “Develop-Publish-Use-it-Yours
In 2014, over 138 billion apps were downloaded worldwide. According to Statista, one of the leading statistics companies on the internet, the projected total number of apps downloads in 2017 would be 268 billion.
Who doesn’t want to download a mobile app especially when it’s free? Mobile apps are what give life to our devices. We used to check our smartphones more than a hundred times a day because of apps.
Mobile devices were designed for apps. There are built-in apps in Apple iPhone 6 Plus, Samsung Galaxy S6 and HTC One M9 when you buy them. More interestingly, there are mobile app stores where you can download free or paid mobile apps whenever you want to.
For mobile app developers, individuals or companies, making mobile apps is always a big deal. A free app can be marketed and make thousands of profit in a month, with in-app purchases and ads. A paid app can be sold as high as $1 million, on the case of enterprise apps. Why that much? According to an article published in AppMuse – one of the leading sources for finding mobile app developers for hire, the total cost of app development ranges from $3,000 to $150,000 or more. With that said, mobile app development is really a big business. Just imagine paying an app developer of $100 an hour.
[if gte vml 1]><v:shapetype id="_x0000_t75" coordsize="21600,21600" o:spt="75" o:preferrelative="t" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" filled="f" stroked="f"> <v:stroke joinstyle="miter"/> <v:formulas> <v:f eqn="if lineDrawn pixelLineWidth 0"/> <v:f eqn="sum @0 1 0"/> <v:f eqn="sum 0 0 @1"/> <v:f eqn="prod @2 1 2"/> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelWidth"/> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelHeight"/> <v:f eqn="sum @0 0 1"/> <v:f eqn="prod @6 1 2"/> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelWidth"/> <v:f eqn="sum @8 21600 0"/> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelHeight"/> <v:f eqn="sum @10 21600 0"/> </v:formulas> <v:path o:extrusionok="f" gradientshapeok="t" o:connecttype="rect"/> <o:lock v:ext="edit" aspectratio="t"/> </v:shapetype><v:shape id="_x0000_s1026" type="#_x0000_t75" style='position:absolute; margin-left:0;margin-top:.35pt;width:180pt;height:180pt;z-index:-1' wrapcoords="-90 0 -90 21510 21600 21510 21600 0 -90 0"> <v:imagedata src="file:///C:\Users\AHXIAN~1\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtml1\01\clip_image001.jpg" o:title="small image mobile apps"/> <w:wrap type="through"/> </v:shape><![endif][if !vml][endif]There is always something new in the mobile app market. Everyday there are new apps developed and published on app stores like Google Play and Amazon Appstore. The numbers are amazing and this somehow convinced me to find out what’s going on inside the mobile app developer’s tanks and dens. There are two things that surprised me as well as triggered me to coin the term “Develop-Publish-Use-it-Yourself”.
Click and Edit Technology
I tried searching for the top mobile app development platforms to-date and I was lucky enough to discover BuildFire. Curious about the good reviews of the company, I explored its “do-it-yourself” mobile app development platform. Just to give you a background, in website development, there is what we call “drag and drop” technology which allows anyone to easily create a website even without knowledge in programming. CMS sites like Weebly and Wix are well-known for these development platforms.
BuildFire has a proprietary “click and edit” technology that literally allows anyone to both build and maintain high quality and highly engaging apps – with no coding required. I tried the web-based development platform myself and I find it really easy to use. Another company that offers the same solution is AppMakr. They also provide developers with a free DIY app-creation platform for building robust, native apps for iOS and Android — with no coding required.
Simblee Technology
This technology is making big headlines today. Simblee is a chip (more specifically a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) 4.0-enabled embeddable controller module) designed by RF Digital that makes it possible for RFduino device developers to embed mobile application behaviours in their devices. Here’s how it works on mobile apps. After the BLE passes the interface information to the Simblee app in the mobile device, the mobile app is ready to use. This technology eliminates the app approval process most developers are going-into if they want to build apps for iOS and Android. With BLE technology, no more app download from an apps store is necessary. Developers can directly upload their working apps on their mobile device or on RFduino powered device.
Now, let’s put everything into context.
If the click and edit technology makes mobile app development easy for everybody and BLE technology allows you to publish apps in mobile devices instantly, then what does that mean to the mobile app development business?
Here’s what I can sense.
Mobile app-making will soon become low-cost, if not zero-cost. A more likely scenario is this: Just go to BuidFire to build the app and then publish it on your Samsung Galaxy S6 with Simblee right away. This could mean that more and more apps will be developed and published without the need for third-parties (developers, app stores, IDE software providers). It is going to be like “develop-publish-use it yourself”. If that happens, it is going to be very exciting for millions of app users.
