Topic: History of Apps Author: Meghan Grosse Personalizing Mobile Consumption: A History of Smartphone Applications The development of mobile technologies has altered the way we function in both public and private spaces. The use of smartphones has further infiltrated both of these spheres as people can use their phones in any place at any time to access entertainment, retrieve information, or spur productivity. Applications have made it possible for users to personalize this experience more than ever before, quickly becoming an essential part of users’ mobile experience. Looking at the histories of the smartphone and mobile applications, this study looks for similarities and differences in the way smartphone manufacturers and application purchasing platforms have developed. What distinctions do we see between built-in applications versus those downloaded, and what does this tell us about the use smartphone developers envisioned? What kinds of trends do we see in app production and consumption? Do the guidelines set by certain mobile application stores create noticeable limits, or do all stores offer essentially the same thing (and perhaps more versions of that one thing than we'll ever want or need)? These questions will, hopefully, reveal some clear trends or shifts in our understanding of mobile technology as well as the development of personalized mobile consumption. Acting almost more like a computer than a phone, smartphones that feature flexible application downloads speak to the increased expectation for customization in our media consumption. The internet has allowed users to access information specific to their interest at any time from all over the world. Digital video recorders have allowed television viewers to record multiple simultaneously running programs and time shift their viewing. Podcasting has offered similar advantages to radio and audio consumption, and mobile phones and MP3 players have allowed individuals to reshape their participation in public spaces. Smartphones extend this tailoring of media consumption even further, offering a place for individuals to aggregate applications that serve their social lives, work lives, and private lives all in one place and available all at the same time. This aggregation of multiple functions as well as the portability of the device has taken the idea of customization to a whole new level, shifting the way users interact privately and publically. The use of application-based mobile devices allows for the “interlacing of activities” so that users can “vicariously participate in situations while we are still physically in a separate one” (Ling & Donner, 2009, 139). This interweaving of activities “can facilitate unwanted disruptions in our lives,” but “it can also save the day” (156). This expectation that we be constantly connected to all the spaces within which we exist (social, familial, work, leisure, etc.) increases the need to contain all the necessary tools to function in one or more of these spheres in a portable, easily accessible, and highly customizable device. Nowhere are these tools more accessible or customizable than in the form of a mobile application. Applications offer users a large and diverse set of options for navigating their day-to-day lives. No matter what the task, Apple promised users in an early commercial that “there’s an app for that.” The narrative of accessibility and choice on the part of the individual user has quickly infiltrated the way users understand mobile technology and mobile computing. Using the portability and connectivity of early, non-application-based smartphones as a foundation; applications accelerated the integration of mobile technology into every part of users’ lives. Unlike the focus on hardware that came with the introduction of other technology, applications notably pushed users to focus on the versatile, flexible software available. With access to any number of relevant tools also comes the presumption that users should take advantage of them in all these spaces at all times creates some shifts, potentially positive or negative, in the way users of these devices are expected to move around in the world. The application-based smartphone is highly user-centric, placing the individual in control of the function of their device. Not only can users manipulate the use of their device, users can participate in the creation of applications. The creation of mobile applications, like other new technology, “rel[ies] heavily on the consumer in ways that were not possible, or required before,” but it “remains unclear how multitudes of users will come together to steer change in their own interests” (Goggin, 2006, 209). Like other media, mobile media do not have “fixed natural” edges, but instead are “constructed complexes of habits, beliefs, and procedures embedded in elaborate cultural codes of communication” (Marvin, 1988, 8). Few places has this flexibility been more notable than in the changing conception of what cell phones can do. While the producers of mobile hardware and software may have preconceived notions about the way their technology will be used, at the end of the day, “technology needs to be received, completed, supplemented and found wanting, by the user” (Goggin, 2006, 208). This fragmentation of the users’ role - now acting as a potential producer, at times a passive consumer, and at other times a highly active consumer - is an extension of what has been seen online. Before the advent of the smartphone, users were accustomed to thinking of the mobile phone as a tool primarily for one-on-one communication. As the voice/telephone function of the mobile device got “as good as it needed to be,” network providers looked to expand, “developing better and faster data networks over cellular radio became the priority” (Farley, 2005, 32). This expanding data network made room for the increasingly popular smartphone and lead to “a bewildering and proliferating range of cultural activities” that “revolve around cell phones” (Goggin, 2006, 2). With these devices, users can “[stay] in constant contact, text messaging” and using phones as a cultural tool for “fashion, identity-construction, music, mundane work routines, remote parenting, interacting with television programs, watching video, surfing the internet, meeting new people, dating, flirting, loving, bullying mobile commerce, and locating people” (2). These uses, and many more, are made even easier with applications that can hone in on a single goal or task. The accumulation of these focused applications is based on individual needs, and the collection of apps one carries with them everywhere they go highlights the unique mobile identity that can be built with apps. With this range of uses, individuals are able to pick and choose the most useful tools to accommodate the way they use cell phones as mobile, customizable devices. Acting in some ways more like a computer than a phone, smartphones allow for software development in the form of mobile applications. Early versions of the smartphone added little to the function of a mobile phone when compared to the smartphones of today. As the cell phones became more portable, the business world was among the first to “[wake] up the enormous revenue potential in the field” of mobile phones (Klemens, 2010, 115). Even before the rise of smartphones, the mobile phone market was pushing towards devices that served multiple functions, sometimes offering an integrated calendar, camera, MP3 player, or minimal web browsing. Experienced as “a sort of ‘meta-device,’” mobile phones became “a device that includes a set of integrated technology devices with multi-level functionalities” (Aguado & Martinez, 2008, 8). No longer did companies make just a phone; there were camera phones or phones that were MP3 players or phones you could play games on. Recalling his challenge to buy a cell phone without all these bells and whistles, Henry Jenkins lamented the rise of mobile technology as the “electronic equivalent of a Swiss army knife” (2006, 4). The description was published just a year before the release of Apple’s iPhone, and while the iPhone may exemplify the type of media convergence Jenkins imagined, the smartphones of today are flexible in a way that early attempts at multi-function mobile devices were not. The ability to constantly modify the technology through software distinguishes application-based smartphones from those that came before. As smartphones and application development continues, the actual telephone function a mobile device becomes just one small piece in a highly customizable puzzle. No longer simply “a device for voice calls” mobile technologies have “undergone a radical shift” to become “mobile, flexible, and customisable” (Goggin, 2006, 2). The growth of data networks made the use of smartphones feasible, allowed for devices to “convey” a large variety of “data with a large bandwidth, “ while offering a “personalized service profile” and “truly global access capability” (daSilva et al, 2001, 129). Early visions of 3G data networks imagined a mobile device acting as a small computer, allowing users to “do anything that you could via the web, except that you’ll have to squint” (Agar, 2003, 170). While a functional web browser remains important to smartphones, it is with the development of mobile application software that these expanded data networks were able to offer more than just hand-held internet connections. The increasing adoption of smartphone technology has led to a proliferation in the development of software, a highly flexible system when compared to early cell phones. The flexibility found in this space allows for individual users to personalize their mobile consumption thereby highlighting culturally and socially determined use of this technology. Not all uses of mobile devices are tied to the technology, and there are no universal uses. While there are some constraints that will be discussed later, on the whole, the world of mobile app development is more open to users than was seen with earlier technology. Certainly some technical knowledge is necessary, but “consumer technologies for capturing and editing media are much easier to use” today than ever before (Manovich, 2008, 10). This ‘democratization’ of software development is both “shaping our culture” while simultaneously being “shaped by” it (10). Without “definite finite boundaries” to shape the use of software on mobile devices, users have developed increasingly personal “ways of representation and expression” (20, 28). As mobile web connections, the rise of apps, and the use of smartphones grows, ubiquitous computing, or “everyware” as Greenfield calls it,” is becoming omnipresent both in public and private spaces. The idea of everyware again emphasizes the role of the user in shaping the rituals built around the use of mobile technology. The software that seeps into all areas of our lives will not be “simply vended to a passive audience,” but will instead require their input (Greenfield, 2006, 163). Technology may be designed in anticipation of its uses and effects, but this does not mean its use is pre-determined. While users may wind up shaping developer’s decisions, developer’s decisions are in turn shaped by the guidelines for development laid out by hosts of application stores. The most notable example can be found in Apple’s “Human Interface Guidelines,” or HIG. As Apple states in the HIG “people expect to find iOS technologies in the apps they use.” Apple outlines principles relating to aesthetics as well as functionality. Buttons, menus, and icons are all expected to work in a certain way and remain consistent across apps. These guidelines on top of the technological constraints, such as the size of the screen or the difficulty to multitask on the device, may limit developers, but these boundaries also add a degree of precision to the design and use of applications. In a system that is so flexible, users need to find some common ground in functionality even as they personalize the device for their own use.
User experiences and expectations of applications are often based on the applications that arrive pre-installed on a mobile device. These applications also point to the uses that manufacturers expect will be shared by most, if not all, users. Focusing in on iPhones and Androids, as they were the earliest devices in the move towards applications, there is a fair amount of crossover in the built-in applications. For iPhone users, the number of built-in applications has grown as new version of the phone are released and as new technical features are integrated. Early iPhone users found on their devices a phone, email, web browsing, an MP3 player, text messaging, a calendar, photos, a camera, a calculator, stocks, maps, weather, notes, clock, YouTube, and setting button. The iPhone 3G added contacts, iTunes, and the App Store. The 3GS added voice memos and a compass, and finally the iPhone4 added a compass. These built-in features are relatively fixed when compared to downloaded applications. While an individual can move these features to more or less prominent places on their screen, they cannot be removed. Unlike the iPhone, there is less precise information about what exactly comes on an Android, stating instead that “many Android-powered phones come with Google applications pre-installed.” Some of these applications include Gmail, Latitude, Goggles, Goggle Talk, Google Contacts, Google Shopper, Blogger, Google Maps, YouTube, Google Buzz, Google Voice, Google Calendar, Google Finance, Google Earth, and an additional search box. For both iPhone and Android developers, the functions users came to expect on their cell phones (calling, texting, and contacts), was combined with applications that promote productivity (such as the calendar and financial information) and entertainment (like the camera and YouTube). While an individual may not find all these apps useful, it leaves a relatively blank slate for users to overlay applications of their own choosing. The preloaded applications that arrive with the smartphone point to the intended or imagined use envisioned by the developers of a mobile device. Like with any technology, “someone has to determine who needs it and what they’re going to do with it” (Brodsky, 2008, 1). However, application-based smartphones are unusual in that the goal is to remain flexible, even leaving the field open to third-parties to create options for personalization. Information about the built-in applications for any number of smartphones is not put at the forefront. Instead, information about application-based smartphones highlight what is possible with the addition of apps suited to individual needs and interests. It is this flexibility that sets applications apart from what came before, a distinction that has changed the way users understand mobile technology on the whole. No longer just a device for interpersonal communication, applications have transformed mobile technology making them the one device where a user can do everything they need or want to, no matter how diverse or specific those needs or wants are. Built-in applications now seem basic when compared to the countless applications that can be used to further personalize the use of a mobile device. Technologies are often “used in a variety of ways, including ones that were not envisioned by the people involved in the specification of the system” (Ling & Donner, 2009, 17). While the specific applications and their use is highly personalized, there are certain functions found in apps that are widely popular across a broad user base. According to the Pew Research Center, 35% of American adults have apps and nearly a quarter of all those American adults uses them. This report notes that while the term “app” has become increasingly popular and common in discussions around mobile technology, an industry standard as to what is and is not an app does not exist (Purcell et all, 2010, 2). For their research, Pew identified apps as “end-user software applications that are designed for a cell phone operating system and which extend the phone’s capabilities by enabling users to perform particular tasks” (2). With that definition in mind, app consumption was divided into twelve categories with the percentage of app users who recently used each type following: games (60%), news/weather (52%), maps/navigation (51%), social networking (47%), music (43%), food/entertainment (34%), banking/finance (28%), sports (27%), productivity (26%), communication(21%), travel/lifestyle (18%), and other (3%). Apple’s App Store identified similar trends in their “App Store Hall of Fame,” Apple’s own list of top apps. Games also ranked top here, making up nearly 38% of the listings. It was followed up by photography, news, productivity, entertainment, music, sports, lifestyle, education, travel, business, books, social networking, and healthcare & fitness each making up anywhere from 2% to 11% of the listings. Pew also identified a number of spaces or situations where apps are most widely used. The following ten scenarios were identified with the percentage of people who frequently use apps in these situations following: while alone (71%), waiting for something/someone (53%), at work (47%), while commuting (36%), to improve what I’m currently doing (29%), while socializing (27%), while finding a place to eat (24%), while shopping (23%), at school (13%), and other (2%). The situations that encourage mobile app use are, for Clark, “boil[ed] down to one of three mindsets: ‘I’m microtasking,’ ‘I’m local,’” and “’I’m bored’.” (Clark, 2010, 32). As smartphones increasingly act more like computers and less like phones, it is not surprising that users are “leaving [their] laptops behind, leaning instead on [their] trusty phones” to stay productive with they are moving about (32). Additionally, because of its portability, the smartphone is even better at “know[ing] tons about you and your surroundings” than a computer (34). Finally, with the popularity of gaming apps and the tendency to use an app while alone or while trying to kill, it is not a far reach to think of apps as a way to stay entertained. After all, for most people, a mobile device is “always with [them], at the ready to fill downtime with easy distraction” (37). While the motivation for app use may be shared across different smartphones, users must head to different digital stores to download applications. Mobile applications can be purchased through stores linked directly to the native operating systems of smartphones or through third party platforms. While there seems to be a growing number of these third party platforms, stores tied directly to specific smartphone systems remain central to application development and purchasing at this time. For iPhone users there is the App Store in Apple’s iTunes, for Android users there is Google’s Android, for Palm users there is the Software Store, for Blackberry users there is App World, for HP users there is App Catalog, for Nokia users there is the Ovi Store, and for Windows users there is Windows Marketplace. Recently, Amazon launched its own Appstore for Android, arguably becoming the most well known third party distribution platform for apps.
Application stores seem to function in relatively similar ways. Users can browse applications by category, view ratings, and download an application for free or sometimes for a usually minimal cost. Apple’s App Store is tied directly to its iTunes software though it can be access directly through an iPhone. It is through these channels that users download and rate their apps. Unlike other application distributors, Apple requires apps be submitted for approval before being put up in the store. Apple has not, outside of the information they give approved developers, published very specific criteria for acceptance or rejection, through do not on their developer page that “the app approval process is in place to ensure that applications are reliable, perform as expected, and are free of explicit and offensive material” (App Store Review Guidlines, 2011). Despite, or perhaps because of, these restrictions, early in 2011, Apple revealed that its App Store downloads reached ten billion (Apple App Store Downloads Top 10 Billion, 2011). Most of the other distributers have been relatively open about the submission of apps to their stores, with only the Widows Marketplace coming out to make notable restrictions on applications featuring any pornographic or sexually suggestive material (Jacobsson, 2010). Applications for the Apple and Android products are likely the first place developers are going to place their efforts. For this reason, these stores have the most options for downloads. However, very popular applications like Facebook, Twitter, Pandora, Angry Birds, and Yelp have crossed onto multiple devices. Smartphones offers users applications as well as web browsing. With the expense of developing on app for multiple platforms, developers have to make choices about where to spend their money and on what device. For this reason, some commentators have suggested that mobile technology is moving away form the app towards mobile websites. However, at this point, apps have been able to offer several advantages over mobile web browsing. Not only do apps typically offer more rich visuals and functionality than mobile sites, but they are also able to access Apps are able to utilize “hardware features on the phone, like its camera or compass” where websites can only gather location information. Additionally, apps are often able to run offline, helping users access the app’s function even where this is “a slow or spotty network connection” (Patel, 2010, ¶ 9). Rather than promising every feature or function imaginable, apps are typically limited to a smaller number of functions. Because of this tendency, apps also are often tailored more specifically not only to the user, but to the limits of the technology itself (i.e. the small, touch screen), yet another advantage over somewhat unwieldy mobile websites that require scrolling or typing or other involved maneuvers. Mobile devices and applications allow for users to act simultaneously as consumers as producers of content. The economic function of application development is becoming increasingly personalized as “the mobile network’s abilities to communicate with, and bill, individual customers” is able to recognize habits of use (Tuttlebee et al, 2003, 10). Still, as companies and organization consider the development of their own mobile app, there are some financial limitations. On the one hand, users of mobile technology have grown to expect apps from their favorite companies, but the process of development is expensive and mass circulation in such a crowded marketplace becomes difficult. The cost to research and staff the development of an app can be prohibitive (Lucia, 2010). App development is “expensive and time-intensive to get apps on different phones” and the “fragmentation of the market” will require app developers to closely examine where they spend their resources (Patel, 2010, ¶ 12). Still, even after spending all this time and money “the gatekeepers at Apple” can reject the app. Apple is attempting to limit the “marketplace clutter” found particularly in open-source markets like Android users find and push developers to create unique applications (Bascaramurty, 2010, ¶21). The proliferation of the app is specific to the development of smartphones, but the push towards convergence, constant connection, and personalization in media have been building for some time. Most obviously with the rise of the internet, the multimedia experience became the norm. Users began to expect all the content they once pulled from older media platforms be available on one device, a device that could also offer a new web features. Smartphones built on these expectations providing its users with access to the features of a phone, web features like email and browsing, and applications boosted the functionality and integration of this technology into everyday life as users could also view television, listen to radio, read newspapers, organize their calendars, and play games. In addition to these features users associated with the internet and earlier technology, smartphones also drew on the desire for local information as well as the desire to stay connected, even where an actual internet connection may be unreliable. It is through mobile applications that an expanded sense of connectivity was made possible. Unlike a web browser, apps can frequently function with a web connection, taking advantage of the downloaded quality of the app. Regular, dependable access to apps have transformed mobile technology for many people from a device of convenience to a device fully integrated into and sometimes necessary to the way they function as an individual, socially, and professionally. With Apple’s claim that for any need “there’s an app for that,” users and non-users alike built meaning into the technology. The strong desire for connectivity and choice became tied to the software found in apps and the hardware found in smartphones, making the social value of each even greater. Television, radio, and print have long been tailoring their content to suit more and more specific audiences. The internet, partially because of its multimedia capabilities, amped up personalization as users could pull in content, in some cases automatically, that suited their specific goals, needs, and interests. Still, with the rise of the smartphone and mobile applications, this process of personalization has further intensified. Users of applications are not only accessing the type of personalized content they have grown accustomed to, but because of the portable nature of smartphones, they are actually personalizing their experience in spaces that were once held as public. With mobile applications users can create a private bubble where they can choose not only to close themselves off from some of the audio and visual elements of public space, but also from the social elements. There are certainly benefits to having the connection to one’s preferred content and social circle at all times, but this shift also brings about some real changes. The same connectivity to social networks, entertainment, and tools for productivity that users love so much also create expectations that these features be utilized to their fullest, making it difficult for an individual to shut down or disconnect even when they may want to. The future of the app is not set in stone. While certainly all media are flexible, the app’s flexible past and present makes it particularly unpredictable. Likely to remain stable in app consumption are the changes in social ritual built around the increasingly present mobile device. When thinking about the idea of personalization, apps push beyond simply looking at individual consumption or use of an app or collection of apps. Because of its portability, the mobile device is affecting change in the way users function in private and in public and as an individual, interpersonally, and on a large group scale. Mobile devices, and particularly smartphones, keep users in constant connection -- connection to the technology itself, connection to their social circle, and connection to a larger social network of acquaintances and sometimes strangers. It is easier than ever to coordinate social activities and to coordinate oneself in a particular geographic location. The ease with which people can now do this has set up a new set of social norms for how we expect people in public to act with their smartphones and how we expect our friends and families to stay in touch. In public, even applications that highlight local geographic space, can absorb users into a bubble of private space. An app can often shift users’ attention elsewhere causing people to find new ways to move about and exist in public. The integration of mobile devices (especially smartphones and apps) into all areas of life changes the way we think about the telephone as a device for interpersonal communication. The mobile devices has gone beyond that function to become a “security device,” a device to “coordinate everyday events spontaneously,” and a device “used for a range of interaction” both private and social (Ling & Yttri, 2002, 139). The shift in the way an individual functions in public spaces as a result of smartphone and app consumptions changes the way we think about these previously ‘dead’ spaces -- spaces where an individual may have been cut of from their social circle, from entertainment, or from acting productively. These previously “No-where-paces” and “No-when-times” have been transformed from places “devoid of meanings and functions in social situations dedicated to the construction or the empowerment of … interpersonal relationships” (Coronia, 2005, 97). The option to personalize private and public spaces has its advantages and disadvantages. With the option to move towards a state of constant connectivity can also come expectations that people remain constantly connected. Users not only have access to the kind of interpersonal, one-on-one communication of traditional mobile phones, they also have access to groups of friends, co-workers, acquaintances and even strangers, access to which is pretty easy with popular social networking applications. Increasingly, users’ are expected to make use of this access. Smartphones are not a technology existing in isolation. The development of customizable applications on smartphones draws on the increased expectation for personalized media consumption while also pointing to the expectation that individuals remain connected and available at all times. No longer just available by call or text, a growing population of smartphone users has access to email, social networks, or work material -- even when they might not want it. This constant connectivity “resurrect[s] ‘dead time’” and rationalizes the “squeeze” towards “ever higher levels of productive work” (Agar, 2003, 83). This notion, a “mobile logic,” suggests that “we arrange our daily affairs with the assumption that one and all are available via mobile communication” (Ling & Donner, 2009, 143-144). Smartphones and applications relate not only to the way we experience our social networks, but also the way we experience media content at large. The personalization seen in older media has since extended into our hands, portable and accessible at all times. The growth of the app has shifted the way users experience and move about in the world. Even with discussions about the growth of the mobile web diminishing the importance of the mobile application, the app is still holding strong, offering users personalized, multimedia consumption, and social connectivity in a richer, more accessible way than the mobile web or any other technology has been able to at this time.
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Author: Meghan Grosse
Personalizing Mobile Consumption: A History of Smartphone Applications
The development of mobile technologies has altered the way we function in both public and private spaces. The use of smartphones has further infiltrated both of these spheres as people can use their phones in any place at any time to access entertainment, retrieve information, or spur productivity. Applications have made it possible for users to personalize this experience more than ever before, quickly becoming an essential part of users’ mobile experience. Looking at the histories of the smartphone and mobile applications, this study looks for similarities and differences in the way smartphone manufacturers and application purchasing platforms have developed. What distinctions do we see between built-in applications versus those downloaded, and what does this tell us about the use smartphone developers envisioned? What kinds of trends do we see in app production and consumption? Do the guidelines set by certain mobile application stores create noticeable limits, or do all stores offer essentially the same thing (and perhaps more versions of that one thing than we'll ever want or need)? These questions will, hopefully, reveal some clear trends or shifts in our understanding of mobile technology as well as the development of personalized mobile consumption.
Acting almost more like a computer than a phone, smartphones that feature flexible application downloads speak to the increased expectation for customization in our media consumption. The internet has allowed users to access information specific to their interest at any time from all over the world. Digital video recorders have allowed television viewers to record multiple simultaneously running programs and time shift their viewing. Podcasting has offered similar advantages to radio and audio consumption, and mobile phones and MP3 players have allowed individuals to reshape their participation in public spaces. Smartphones extend this tailoring of media consumption even further, offering a place for individuals to aggregate applications that serve their social lives, work lives, and private lives all in one place and available all at the same time. This aggregation of multiple functions as well as the portability of the device has taken the idea of customization to a whole new level, shifting the way users interact privately and publically.
The use of application-based mobile devices allows for the “interlacing of activities” so that users can “vicariously participate in situations while we are still physically in a separate one” (Ling & Donner, 2009, 139). This interweaving of activities “can facilitate unwanted disruptions in our lives,” but “it can also save the day” (156). This expectation that we be constantly connected to all the spaces within which we exist (social, familial, work, leisure, etc.) increases the need to contain all the necessary tools to function in one or more of these spheres in a portable, easily accessible, and highly customizable device. Nowhere are these tools more accessible or customizable than in the form of a mobile application. Applications offer users a large and diverse set of options for navigating their day-to-day lives. No matter what the task, Apple promised users in an early commercial that “there’s an app for that.” The narrative of accessibility and choice on the part of the individual user has quickly infiltrated the way users understand mobile technology and mobile computing. Using the portability and connectivity of early, non-application-based smartphones as a foundation; applications accelerated the integration of mobile technology into every part of users’ lives. Unlike the focus on hardware that came with the introduction of other technology, applications notably pushed users to focus on the versatile, flexible software available. With access to any number of relevant tools also comes the presumption that users should take advantage of them in all these spaces at all times creates some shifts, potentially positive or negative, in the way users of these devices are expected to move around in the world.
The application-based smartphone is highly user-centric, placing the individual in control of the function of their device. Not only can users manipulate the use of their device, users can participate in the creation of applications. The creation of mobile applications, like other new technology, “rel[ies] heavily on the consumer in ways that were not possible, or required before,” but it “remains unclear how multitudes of users will come together to steer change in their own interests” (Goggin, 2006, 209). Like other media, mobile media do not have “fixed natural” edges, but instead are “constructed complexes of habits, beliefs, and procedures embedded in elaborate cultural codes of communication” (Marvin, 1988, 8). Few places has this flexibility been more notable than in the changing conception of what cell phones can do. While the producers of mobile hardware and software may have preconceived notions about the way their technology will be used, at the end of the day, “technology needs to be received, completed, supplemented and found wanting, by the user” (Goggin, 2006, 208). This fragmentation of the users’ role - now acting as a potential producer, at times a passive consumer, and at other times a highly active consumer - is an extension of what has been seen online.
Before the advent of the smartphone, users were accustomed to thinking of the mobile phone as a tool primarily for one-on-one communication. As the voice/telephone function of the mobile device got “as good as it needed to be,” network providers looked to expand, “developing better and faster data networks over cellular radio became the priority” (Farley, 2005, 32). This expanding data network made room for the increasingly popular smartphone and lead to “a bewildering and proliferating range of cultural activities” that “revolve around cell phones” (Goggin, 2006, 2). With these devices, users can “[stay] in constant contact, text messaging” and using phones as a cultural tool for “fashion, identity-construction, music, mundane work routines, remote parenting, interacting with television programs, watching video, surfing the internet, meeting new people, dating, flirting, loving, bullying mobile commerce, and locating people” (2). These uses, and many more, are made even easier with applications that can hone in on a single goal or task. The accumulation of these focused applications is based on individual needs, and the collection of apps one carries with them everywhere they go highlights the unique mobile identity that can be built with apps. With this range of uses, individuals are able to pick and choose the most useful tools to accommodate the way they use cell phones as mobile, customizable devices. Acting in some ways more like a computer than a phone, smartphones allow for software development in the form of mobile applications.
Early versions of the smartphone added little to the function of a mobile phone when compared to the smartphones of today. As the cell phones became more portable, the business world was among the first to “[wake] up the enormous revenue potential in the field” of mobile phones (Klemens, 2010, 115). Even before the rise of smartphones, the mobile phone market was pushing towards devices that served multiple functions, sometimes offering an integrated calendar, camera, MP3 player, or minimal web browsing. Experienced as “a sort of ‘meta-device,’” mobile phones became “a device that includes a set of integrated technology devices with multi-level functionalities” (Aguado & Martinez, 2008, 8). No longer did companies make just a phone; there were camera phones or phones that were MP3 players or phones you could play games on. Recalling his challenge to buy a cell phone without all these bells and whistles, Henry Jenkins lamented the rise of mobile technology as the “electronic equivalent of a Swiss army knife” (2006, 4). The description was published just a year before the release of Apple’s iPhone, and while the iPhone may exemplify the type of media convergence Jenkins imagined, the smartphones of today are flexible in a way that early attempts at multi-function mobile devices were not. The ability to constantly modify the technology through software distinguishes application-based smartphones from those that came before.
As smartphones and application development continues, the actual telephone function a mobile device becomes just one small piece in a highly customizable puzzle. No longer simply “a device for voice calls” mobile technologies have “undergone a radical shift” to become “mobile, flexible, and customisable” (Goggin, 2006, 2). The growth of data networks made the use of smartphones feasible, allowed for devices to “convey” a large variety of “data with a large bandwidth, “ while offering a “personalized service profile” and “truly global access capability” (daSilva et al, 2001, 129). Early visions of 3G data networks imagined a mobile device acting as a small computer, allowing users to “do anything that you could via the web, except that you’ll have to squint” (Agar, 2003, 170). While a functional web browser remains important to smartphones, it is with the development of mobile application software that these expanded data networks were able to offer more than just hand-held internet connections.
The increasing adoption of smartphone technology has led to a proliferation in the development of software, a highly flexible system when compared to early cell phones. The flexibility found in this space allows for individual users to personalize their mobile consumption thereby highlighting culturally and socially determined use of this technology. Not all uses of mobile devices are tied to the technology, and there are no universal uses. While there are some constraints that will be discussed later, on the whole, the world of mobile app development is more open to users than was seen with earlier technology. Certainly some technical knowledge is necessary, but “consumer technologies for capturing and editing media are much easier to use” today than ever before (Manovich, 2008, 10). This ‘democratization’ of software development is both “shaping our culture” while simultaneously being “shaped by” it (10). Without “definite finite boundaries” to shape the use of software on mobile devices, users have developed increasingly personal “ways of representation and expression” (20, 28). As mobile web connections, the rise of apps, and the use of smartphones grows, ubiquitous computing, or “everyware” as Greenfield calls it,” is becoming omnipresent both in public and private spaces.
The idea of everyware again emphasizes the role of the user in shaping the rituals built around the use of mobile technology. The software that seeps into all areas of our lives will not be “simply vended to a passive audience,” but will instead require their input (Greenfield, 2006, 163). Technology may be designed in anticipation of its uses and effects, but this does not mean its use is pre-determined. While users may wind up shaping developer’s decisions, developer’s decisions are in turn shaped by the guidelines for development laid out by hosts of application stores. The most notable example can be found in Apple’s “Human Interface Guidelines,” or HIG. As Apple states in the HIG “people expect to find iOS technologies in the apps they use.” Apple outlines principles relating to aesthetics as well as functionality. Buttons, menus, and icons are all expected to work in a certain way and remain consistent across apps. These guidelines on top of the technological constraints, such as the size of the screen or the difficulty to multitask on the device, may limit developers, but these boundaries also add a degree of precision to the design and use of applications. In a system that is so flexible, users need to find some common ground in functionality even as they personalize the device for their own use.
User experiences and expectations of applications are often based on the applications that arrive pre-installed on a mobile device. These applications also point to the uses that manufacturers expect will be shared by most, if not all, users. Focusing in on iPhones and Androids, as they were the earliest devices in the move towards applications, there is a fair amount of crossover in the built-in applications. For iPhone users, the number of built-in applications has grown as new version of the phone are released and as new technical features are integrated. Early iPhone users found on their devices a phone, email, web browsing, an MP3 player, text messaging, a calendar, photos, a camera, a calculator, stocks, maps, weather, notes, clock, YouTube, and setting button. The iPhone 3G added contacts, iTunes, and the App Store. The 3GS added voice memos and a compass, and finally the iPhone4 added a compass. These built-in features are relatively fixed when compared to downloaded applications. While an individual can move these features to more or less prominent places on their screen, they cannot be removed. Unlike the iPhone, there is less precise information about what exactly comes on an Android, stating instead that “many Android-powered phones come with Google applications pre-installed.” Some of these applications include Gmail, Latitude, Goggles, Goggle Talk, Google Contacts, Google Shopper, Blogger, Google Maps, YouTube, Google Buzz, Google Voice, Google Calendar, Google Finance, Google Earth, and an additional search box. For both iPhone and Android developers, the functions users came to expect on their cell phones (calling, texting, and contacts), was combined with applications that promote productivity (such as the calendar and financial information) and entertainment (like the camera and YouTube). While an individual may not find all these apps useful, it leaves a relatively blank slate for users to overlay applications of their own choosing.
The preloaded applications that arrive with the smartphone point to the intended or imagined use envisioned by the developers of a mobile device. Like with any technology, “someone has to determine who needs it and what they’re going to do with it” (Brodsky, 2008, 1). However, application-based smartphones are unusual in that the goal is to remain flexible, even leaving the field open to third-parties to create options for personalization. Information about the built-in applications for any number of smartphones is not put at the forefront. Instead, information about application-based smartphones highlight what is possible with the addition of apps suited to individual needs and interests. It is this flexibility that sets applications apart from what came before, a distinction that has changed the way users understand mobile technology on the whole. No longer just a device for interpersonal communication, applications have transformed mobile technology making them the one device where a user can do everything they need or want to, no matter how diverse or specific those needs or wants are.
Built-in applications now seem basic when compared to the countless applications that can be used to further personalize the use of a mobile device. Technologies are often “used in a variety of ways, including ones that were not envisioned by the people involved in the specification of the system” (Ling & Donner, 2009, 17). While the specific applications and their use is highly personalized, there are certain functions found in apps that are widely popular across a broad user base. According to the Pew Research Center, 35% of American adults have apps and nearly a quarter of all those American adults uses them. This report notes that while the term “app” has become increasingly popular and common in discussions around mobile technology, an industry standard as to what is and is not an app does not exist (Purcell et all, 2010, 2). For their research, Pew identified apps as “end-user software applications that are designed for a cell phone operating system and which extend the phone’s capabilities by enabling users to perform particular tasks” (2). With that definition in mind, app consumption was divided into twelve categories with the percentage of app users who recently used each type following: games (60%), news/weather (52%), maps/navigation (51%), social networking (47%), music (43%), food/entertainment (34%), banking/finance (28%), sports (27%), productivity (26%), communication(21%), travel/lifestyle (18%), and other (3%). Apple’s App Store identified similar trends in their “App Store Hall of Fame,” Apple’s own list of top apps. Games also ranked top here, making up nearly 38% of the listings. It was followed up by photography, news, productivity, entertainment, music, sports, lifestyle, education, travel, business, books, social networking, and healthcare & fitness each making up anywhere from 2% to 11% of the listings.
Pew also identified a number of spaces or situations where apps are most widely used. The following ten scenarios were identified with the percentage of people who frequently use apps in these situations following: while alone (71%), waiting for something/someone (53%), at work (47%), while commuting (36%), to improve what I’m currently doing (29%), while socializing (27%), while finding a place to eat (24%), while shopping (23%), at school (13%), and other (2%). The situations that encourage mobile app use are, for Clark, “boil[ed] down to one of three mindsets: ‘I’m microtasking,’ ‘I’m local,’” and “’I’m bored’.” (Clark, 2010, 32). As smartphones increasingly act more like computers and less like phones, it is not surprising that users are “leaving [their] laptops behind, leaning instead on [their] trusty phones” to stay productive with they are moving about (32). Additionally, because of its portability, the smartphone is even better at “know[ing] tons about you and your surroundings” than a computer (34). Finally, with the popularity of gaming apps and the tendency to use an app while alone or while trying to kill, it is not a far reach to think of apps as a way to stay entertained. After all, for most people, a mobile device is “always with [them], at the ready to fill downtime with easy distraction” (37).
While the motivation for app use may be shared across different smartphones, users must head to different digital stores to download applications. Mobile applications can be purchased through stores linked directly to the native operating systems of smartphones or through third party platforms. While there seems to be a growing number of these third party platforms, stores tied directly to specific smartphone systems remain central to application development and purchasing at this time. For iPhone users there is the App Store in Apple’s iTunes, for Android users there is Google’s Android, for Palm users there is the Software Store, for Blackberry users there is App World, for HP users there is App Catalog, for Nokia users there is the Ovi Store, and for Windows users there is Windows Marketplace. Recently, Amazon launched its own Appstore for Android, arguably becoming the most well known third party distribution platform for apps.
Application stores seem to function in relatively similar ways. Users can browse applications by category, view ratings, and download an application for free or sometimes for a usually minimal cost. Apple’s App Store is tied directly to its iTunes software though it can be access directly through an iPhone. It is through these channels that users download and rate their apps. Unlike other application distributors, Apple requires apps be submitted for approval before being put up in the store. Apple has not, outside of the information they give approved developers, published very specific criteria for acceptance or rejection, through do not on their developer page that “the app approval process is in place to ensure that applications are reliable, perform as expected, and are free of explicit and offensive material” (App Store Review Guidlines, 2011). Despite, or perhaps because of, these restrictions, early in 2011, Apple revealed that its App Store downloads reached ten billion (Apple App Store Downloads Top 10 Billion, 2011). Most of the other distributers have been relatively open about the submission of apps to their stores, with only the Widows Marketplace coming out to make notable restrictions on applications featuring any pornographic or sexually suggestive material (Jacobsson, 2010). Applications for the Apple and Android products are likely the first place developers are going to place their efforts. For this reason, these stores have the most options for downloads. However, very popular applications like Facebook, Twitter, Pandora, Angry Birds, and Yelp have crossed onto multiple devices.
Smartphones offers users applications as well as web browsing. With the expense of developing on app for multiple platforms, developers have to make choices about where to spend their money and on what device. For this reason, some commentators have suggested that mobile technology is moving away form the app towards mobile websites. However, at this point, apps have been able to offer several advantages over mobile web browsing. Not only do apps typically offer more rich visuals and functionality than mobile sites, but they are also able to access Apps are able to utilize “hardware features on the phone, like its camera or compass” where websites can only gather location information. Additionally, apps are often able to run offline, helping users access the app’s function even where this is “a slow or spotty network connection” (Patel, 2010, ¶ 9). Rather than promising every feature or function imaginable, apps are typically limited to a smaller number of functions. Because of this tendency, apps also are often tailored more specifically not only to the user, but to the limits of the technology itself (i.e. the small, touch screen), yet another advantage over somewhat unwieldy mobile websites that require scrolling or typing or other involved maneuvers.
Mobile devices and applications allow for users to act simultaneously as consumers as producers of content. The economic function of application development is becoming increasingly personalized as “the mobile network’s abilities to communicate with, and bill, individual customers” is able to recognize habits of use (Tuttlebee et al, 2003, 10). Still, as companies and organization consider the development of their own mobile app, there are some financial limitations. On the one hand, users of mobile technology have grown to expect apps from their favorite companies, but the process of development is expensive and mass circulation in such a crowded marketplace becomes difficult. The cost to research and staff the development of an app can be prohibitive (Lucia, 2010). App development is “expensive and time-intensive to get apps on different phones” and the “fragmentation of the market” will require app developers to closely examine where they spend their resources (Patel, 2010, ¶ 12). Still, even after spending all this time and money “the gatekeepers at Apple” can reject the app. Apple is attempting to limit the “marketplace clutter” found particularly in open-source markets like Android users find and push developers to create unique applications (Bascaramurty, 2010, ¶21).
The proliferation of the app is specific to the development of smartphones, but the push towards convergence, constant connection, and personalization in media have been building for some time. Most obviously with the rise of the internet, the multimedia experience became the norm. Users began to expect all the content they once pulled from older media platforms be available on one device, a device that could also offer a new web features. Smartphones built on these expectations providing its users with access to the features of a phone, web features like email and browsing, and applications boosted the functionality and integration of this technology into everyday life as users could also view television, listen to radio, read newspapers, organize their calendars, and play games. In addition to these features users associated with the internet and earlier technology, smartphones also drew on the desire for local information as well as the desire to stay connected, even where an actual internet connection may be unreliable. It is through mobile applications that an expanded sense of connectivity was made possible. Unlike a web browser, apps can frequently function with a web connection, taking advantage of the downloaded quality of the app. Regular, dependable access to apps have transformed mobile technology for many people from a device of convenience to a device fully integrated into and sometimes necessary to the way they function as an individual, socially, and professionally. With Apple’s claim that for any need “there’s an app for that,” users and non-users alike built meaning into the technology. The strong desire for connectivity and choice became tied to the software found in apps and the hardware found in smartphones, making the social value of each even greater.
Television, radio, and print have long been tailoring their content to suit more and more specific audiences. The internet, partially because of its multimedia capabilities, amped up personalization as users could pull in content, in some cases automatically, that suited their specific goals, needs, and interests. Still, with the rise of the smartphone and mobile applications, this process of personalization has further intensified. Users of applications are not only accessing the type of personalized content they have grown accustomed to, but because of the portable nature of smartphones, they are actually personalizing their experience in spaces that were once held as public. With mobile applications users can create a private bubble where they can choose not only to close themselves off from some of the audio and visual elements of public space, but also from the social elements. There are certainly benefits to having the connection to one’s preferred content and social circle at all times, but this shift also brings about some real changes. The same connectivity to social networks, entertainment, and tools for productivity that users love so much also create expectations that these features be utilized to their fullest, making it difficult for an individual to shut down or disconnect even when they may want to.
The future of the app is not set in stone. While certainly all media are flexible, the app’s flexible past and present makes it particularly unpredictable. Likely to remain stable in app consumption are the changes in social ritual built around the increasingly present mobile device. When thinking about the idea of personalization, apps push beyond simply looking at individual consumption or use of an app or collection of apps. Because of its portability, the mobile device is affecting change in the way users function in private and in public and as an individual, interpersonally, and on a large group scale. Mobile devices, and particularly smartphones, keep users in constant connection -- connection to the technology itself, connection to their social circle, and connection to a larger social network of acquaintances and sometimes strangers. It is easier than ever to coordinate social activities and to coordinate oneself in a particular geographic location. The ease with which people can now do this has set up a new set of social norms for how we expect people in public to act with their smartphones and how we expect our friends and families to stay in touch. In public, even applications that highlight local geographic space, can absorb users into a bubble of private space. An app can often shift users’ attention elsewhere causing people to find new ways to move about and exist in public. The integration of mobile devices (especially smartphones and apps) into all areas of life changes the way we think about the telephone as a device for interpersonal communication. The mobile devices has gone beyond that function to become a “security device,” a device to “coordinate everyday events spontaneously,” and a device “used for a range of interaction” both private and social (Ling & Yttri, 2002, 139).
The shift in the way an individual functions in public spaces as a result of smartphone and app consumptions changes the way we think about these previously ‘dead’ spaces -- spaces where an individual may have been cut of from their social circle, from entertainment, or from acting productively. These previously “No-where-paces” and “No-when-times” have been transformed from places “devoid of meanings and functions in social situations dedicated to the construction or the empowerment of … interpersonal relationships” (Coronia, 2005, 97). The option to personalize private and public spaces has its advantages and disadvantages. With the option to move towards a state of constant connectivity can also come expectations that people remain constantly connected. Users not only have access to the kind of interpersonal, one-on-one communication of traditional mobile phones, they also have access to groups of friends, co-workers, acquaintances and even strangers, access to which is pretty easy with popular social networking applications. Increasingly, users’ are expected to make use of this access.
Smartphones are not a technology existing in isolation. The development of customizable applications on smartphones draws on the increased expectation for personalized media consumption while also pointing to the expectation that individuals remain connected and available at all times. No longer just available by call or text, a growing population of smartphone users has access to email, social networks, or work material -- even when they might not want it. This constant connectivity “resurrect[s] ‘dead time’” and rationalizes the “squeeze” towards “ever higher levels of productive work” (Agar, 2003, 83). This notion, a “mobile logic,” suggests that “we arrange our daily affairs with the assumption that one and all are available via mobile communication” (Ling & Donner, 2009, 143-144). Smartphones and applications relate not only to the way we experience our social networks, but also the way we experience media content at large. The personalization seen in older media has since extended into our hands, portable and accessible at all times. The growth of the app has shifted the way users experience and move about in the world. Even with discussions about the growth of the mobile web diminishing the importance of the mobile application, the app is still holding strong, offering users personalized, multimedia consumption, and social connectivity in a richer, more accessible way than the mobile web or any other technology has been able to at this time.
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