Making More Effective Carrier Development Programs

A few weeks ago our very own CIO John Basso was interviewed for an article on Wired.com which focused on mobile app development programs sponsored by AT&T, Verizon and Sprint. Even though John’s ideas were well covered in the article, we’d like to expand on them a little bit here.

How Carriers Can Create Meaningful Development Programs

As discussed in the original article, phone carriers are working to distinguish themselves by building their own "app development foundries" in which independent developers can design, create, and test apps. Ideally this would create a sort of competitive advantage as apps would be designed for – or work better on – a specific carrier’s network.

The carriers also offer funding opportunities for app developers in order to provide seed money to get projects off the ground. But overall, it is still unclear exactly what these development programs offer for anything but local garage developers.

What we’d like to see

What enterprise mobile development companies like Amadeus Consulting are really looking for are programs similar to what Microsoft has been doing with supporting developer communities. This includes:

• OEM Programs for access to new hardware, and when possible, upcoming flagship products

• Reliable and accurate emulator tools

• Certification programs

In the case of Microsoft, once a company "proves" itself (through testing and certification) they will allow the developer generous access to use and test software internally. In the mobile space the challenge is mostly related to hardware and so what developers need is a way to test applications on every device possible.

Currently this is very hard to accomplish because of cost, complexity and the fact that carriers have no OEM programs at this time. Most phones go out of production so fast it is very hard to keep an up-to-date inventory of test phones for anything but the iPhone™. Worse, it takes anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours to purchase each device, which obviously does not scale very well as we’d need to buy 50+ devices each year in order to be able to physically test on each one.

A developer OEM program would make it easy by just charging a flat annual rate ($10,000 or whatever), and they would send you every new device that they produce. Also, handset manufacturers produce only 1-2 "flagship" products every year, which are promoted and produced more than "standard" handsets. Since the flagship handsets tend to sell more than other devices, it would be a nice bonus if app developers could get at least a small preview or early release (or at the very least, guarantee a device on launch day) so that developers can ensure apps will work properly and fix any bugs prior to launch.

Online services, such as Device Anywhere offer some relief but there are some security issues and many features cannot be tested. Specifically, there is no guarantee that data is erased after each test or that unfinished apps may be released to the public.

If these testing centers provide (even at a cost) a way for professional developers to "rent" devices for testing that would be a giant step in the right direction. Unfortunately even if this materializes there will be the issue with access, unless there is a testing center in every major city. A much better approach would have been to create a subscription program where enterprise developers could subscribe to a service that provided a test phone for each new model OR they could partner with companies such as Amadeus Consulting to host a facility with each device at a fraction of the cost they spent building their current facilities.

Honestly, we have the facilities and the local contacts to make it work, and we (and companies like us) would just need a little bit of carrier support to make it worthwhile to implement. Perhaps our opinion is a bit biased, but for the millions invested in creating and building one of these centers, the carriers could have contracted with hundreds of existing foundries and established app development companies and created the same thing in every state. Moreover, working with established companies would help give startups immediate access to experienced app developers.

Even so, the underlying problems could mostly be solved if development environments and emulators had the sophistication that developers expect. This would dramatically reduce the need for testing on actual devices and reduce the need for these centers almost entirely.