Branded apps are often just adverts wrapped up in an app. Sometimes brands can do far better by incorporating customer service functionality. There’s a great infographic created by Nuance that reveals some of the issues.

Nuance found that consumers want more from their customer service apps. In particular they want them to…

• Be easier to use
• Provide more self-service tasks
• Better meet needs
• Provide effortless transition to a live agent

I tend to ignore most of the noise coming out of anti-virus companies as it’s often biased self-supporting PR. However, the Sophos news site has a great article on how Facebook logins aren’t being properly protected on iOS and Android. In summary, auth tokens are being saved to files that can be read into other apps or in some cases simply read via a USB connection. It’s a type of information leakage I previously mentioned when I wrote about safe coding.

There’s a useful article on Papermill’s first few weeks that offers yet another example of how Android users are not willing to pay for apps. The author concludes that this has resulted in…

"applications that either compromise on quality or have not had the necessary time invested in their design"

and

"Applications for larger companies that are developed for multiple platforms are also not developed with quality in mind. The Android version in this scenario is often turned out as quickly as possible simply so that company can advertise as being on the platform. In the majority of such cases, the Android is either a direct port of the iOS app or is a copy of it, with UI elements and UX principles from iOS clearly present."

This is true for some apps. Only yesterday, the much anticipated Instagram for Android released looking more like an iOS app than an Android app.

However, the Papermill example does offer a glimmer of hope for paid apps. If you look at the chart of people who did pay, you can see it’s mainly high end Galaxy Nexus devices…

I suspect that people with high end phones are less cost sensitive. These people act more like iOS purchasers. This makes me wonder if there’s a market for paid apps that targets just high end Android users. It’s much easier to write, support and even finely tune for a few high end devices. It’s also much easier to market to a smaller market segment. As the number of shipped Android phones becomes ever larger, the possibilities for targeting niche sub-sectors becomes more viable.

Sony has a revealing article educating consumers about the technical differences between Android Gingerbread and ICS. In summary, users might prefer to stay with Gingerbread because ICS needs more powerful hardware. Those that upgrade might experience performance related problems.

This takes me back to last year when Google announced their handset unity initiative. At the time I concluded that consumers had expectations that probably weren’t viable. I mooted the idea that maybe OEMs should abandon major upgrades and only provide bug fixes. This wasn’t taken very well and I received lots of angry feedback.

Personally, having upgraded both iOS and Android devices in the past, both operating systems have exhibited much reduced performance after upgrade. I still question the merits of major upgrades.

I was especially surprised that one of the main problems Sony uncovered is very poor coding. Many developers have accessed SQLite databases synchronously rather than asynchronously. This means that, under ICS where SQLite is slower, you are more likely to get a fatal application not responding (ANR) error. This shows how dumb some developers are and in another way, begs the question why such API calls aren’t mandatory asynchronous calls by design.

The Wall Street Journal has a great article today on "Here Come Tablets. Here Come Problems". They provide a rundown of the five largest mistakes companies are making…

1. Failing to have a plan before rolling out the devices
2. Not understanding what tablets are—and are not—good for
3. Expecting to easily obtain all the apps you need
4. Thinking tablets are cheaper than laptops
5. Misjudging the ease of support and security

From a developer viewpoint, I am seeing the need for variants of the OS (iOS and Android) that provide more control over what’s installed and used on the devices. There’s a growing need to use these devices for captive or ‘kiosk’ type solutions that remove many of the facilities expected by typical non-business consumer.