Category Archives: Research Studies

Best in Native: These Apps Are Using Your Phone’s Best Features

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Native Apps

Quick Summary

  • Yapp highlights native apps that show off some of the best features of modern smartphones.
  • The post connects everyday mobile tools with the hardware strengths that make them useful.
  • Readers looking for practical app inspiration and mobile feature examples will benefit most from this roundup.

Smartphones are powerful. As they grow smarter and smarter, the apps that are developed to fill them up do, too.

In fact, Flurry Analytics found that mobile app use has grown 115% in the past year. They define “app usage” as every time anyone opened an app, and tracked a record 4.7 Billion app sessions in a single day on December 31, 2013 (and 1.1 Trillion for all of 2013).

In short, apps are a becoming a bigger deal in every category. With apps built specifically for your phone’s operating system, you can go beyond web apps to take advantage of the exciting and powerful features on those phones. Native apps have access to all of the cool things built in, and add another level of connectivity and usefulness.

When your phones are built, they incorporate a lot of technologies no one ever really thinks twice about. Things like GPS, camera, and contacts, accelerometer, motion co-processors, and iBeacons (plus a million little things in between) are known as native features; they’re built into your phone at its birth and are available for developers to integrate into their own creations.

Take a look at some of our favorite uses of native features below.

Varsity Hues: A Study of the Top Downloaded Apps by Color

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Quick Summary

  • Yapp shares a roundup tied to top-downloaded apps and mobile design or platform trends.
  • The post gives readers a quick look at what people were using and noticing across iOS and Android.
  • Readers interested in app popularity and platform trends will benefit most from this article.
Varsity Hues: Studying the App Store Downloads by Color

From Mashable, Statista: smartphone apps have redefined the morning routine

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Quick Summary

  • Yapp shares app ideas that can improve or streamline a morning routine.
  • The post connects everyday mobile tools with practical daily habits in an easy-to-read way.
  • Readers looking for useful lifestyle app inspiration will benefit most from this roundup.

The morning routine — once defined by an alarm clock, a cup of joe, The Weather Channel and a newspaper — is now run by smartphone apps.

Mashable and Statista published this graphic, showing that 84% of smartphone owners use apps first thing in the morning: 67% check email, 45% the weather and 35% the news.

Teachers’ Appetite for Tech

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Quick Summary

  • Yapp explores teachers’ growing interest in technology as a tool for communication and learning support.
  • The post highlights how digital tools can fit naturally into education settings.
  • Educators and school leaders interested in classroom tech adoption will benefit most from this article.
A survey by PBS LearningMedia published on Mashable says that teachers have an appetite for more inexpensive technology to engage students. We agree!
Teachers, here are a few ideas of how Yapp can work for you:
1. Class parties and after-school activities — Need to remind parents who signed up to bring what snack? Want to make sure parents know to pick up their kids at 5 sharp? We know parents sometime need as much schooling as kids do. 🙂
2. School assemblies, field trips, plays and special days — You can send push notifications with Yapp, which means Johnny won’t wear flip-flops on field day. 
3. PTA, school board meetings — Keep the meetings that impact education top-of-mind for participants. 
These are just three of the endless possibilities of how teachers can use Yapp, what are your ideas?

How mobile should you be?

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Quick Summary

  • Yapp explores how important mobile strategy is for modern communication and event experiences.
  • The post encourages readers to think more seriously about mobile-first access, convenience, and engagement.
  • Organizations deciding how much to invest in mobile experiences will benefit most from this article.

Today’s “service announcement” by Google http://dthin.gs/rFD515 that businesses need mobile websites brought me back to 1996.  Agencies were telling and selling companies they needed a web presence and the first self service platform, Geocities, launched.  It was the dawn of the web as marketing and today Google reminded companies that the dawn of mobile marketing for SMBs has begun.  Today, more than half of SMBs (http://bit.ly/vV9KBI) still don’t have a web presence of any kind so the journey will be long.

“Apple has sold the concept we need an app for everything on the Internet,” says All Things D.  Do companies need a mobile website or a mobile app or both?  That of course depends.  If a company wants their basic brochureware to work on mobile devices, they need a site that is optimized for mobile of the kind Google is pitching.  If they want deeper, more sophisticated, direct relationships and interactions with their customers or partners, they probably need an app.  Look at SunPac, a mobile site Google focuses on.  Now look at the native iOS app.  The latter is baked with native specific functionality and more engaging design.

So the question isn’t really should you be mobile?  It’s how mobile should you be.

—Maria