BlueStacks recently published an infographic illustrating the main characteristics of the typical user profile of Android. Although the results cannot be considered as scientific, they provide interesting insights to contextualize the average user of Android.

Concerning the triple User, Platform, Environment, typically applied to define context information, from this infographic, some of the main characteristics of an Android user can be highlighted:

• User: 37% reported to wear glasses; 62% reported to use Android to play, and 38% to work; 13% reported to have more than 50 applications on their phone, 33% have only free applications on their phone
• Platform: 9% reported to own an Android tablet, but not an Android phone
• Environment: 36% reported to be Americans, 28% Asians and 27% Europeans

The average monthly data usage of an Android user is 582 Mb. Furthermore, the graphic also reports more specific information about the users, such as clothing style, and biometric data.

The infographic, generated by BlueStacks, was originally published at: http://bluestacks.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/mr-android-big-new.jpg in December 2011. The data used were obtained as a courtesy of Nielsen research in collaboration with Facebook users that are fans of BlueStacks App Player for PC.

Vision Mobile has just published a technical report entitled  ”Mobile Platforms: The Clash of Ecosystems”. In this report the most important mobile platforms are presented and trending topics, ranging from technical to marketing domains, are discussed.

Here we will briefly highlight some of interesting points of the report, however the complete document is freely available online.

• Smartphones represent a growing proportion of device sales in global markets. Although there is a wide variation: smartphones shipment penetration varies from nearly 65% in USA and over 50% in Europe to 17% in Latin America and 18% in Africa / Middle East, smartphones are taking a growing proportion of device sales in more cost-sensitive markets all over the world.
• App stores (e.g. Apple App Store and Google Android Market) control ecosystems and not profit from content: app stores have become the main distribution channel between developers and consumers in recent years. App stores are not only able to reach more consumers, but also to accelerate the applications delivery and payment.
• HTML5 has potential to work as a cross-platform technology for smartphones: HTML5 along with the recently launched CSS3 and more efficient JavaScript engines, has the potential to greatly increase the functionality of web applications requiring fewer lines of code
• App innovations chosen by users pushes mobile operators around value-added services, core messaging, and voice services: more and more people are able to start to write mobile applications, and communication applications pushes telecom services
• Consistency is key for the success of an application platform: applications must run on all implementations of the platform. A software platform, in contrast, needs flexibility, allowing it to fit the requirements of a wide range of product variants and reach supply-side economies of scale
• The user interfaces and applications, and not the hardware features, are driving the handset sales
• Application platforms (e.g. iOS and Android) are able to attract huge financial investments of developers, investors and brands

The smartphone OS market leadership is currently divided between Apple iOS and Google Android. iOS and Android triumph not only because of technological sophistication, but also because of the strength of their application ecosystems. They exemplify successful application platforms because they were carefully designed to connect both: users and developers. Apple is pointed as the staple for smartphone device specifications, user experience, ecosystem, browser capabilities and content. Android, on the other hand, comes from a company experienced in connecting online users and advertisers.

“For end-users, the new applications add value to the platform. And for developers, the platform gains value with each and every new end-user.”

Joshfire is a french company that offers an open source framework targeting multiple devices, such as mobiles, tablets, TVs and desktops. This framework uses only standards like HTML5 and JavaScript, and allows developers and integrators to quickly create native and dedicated web apps for browsers, Node.JS, desktops, smart phones, smartTVs and connected objects. The applications can run on server or client side depending on the device capabilities. Currently the framework has a good support for “content-based” applications, including text, audio and video browsing. Depending on user need, future releases may focus on form input and other areas.

Adapters

Several adapters are provided, one for each supported device. When an application is launched, it must choose an adapter matching the device it is currently running on.

Application Class

Joshfire has a default App implementation that allows others to inherit from, it provides initialization methods and general glue.

Data and User Interface

Each application manages two tree structures:

• Data Tree: contains all the data the application needs to load or use over time
• UI Tree: contains all the UI elements the user might see or interact with (buttons, lists, videos…)

The advantages include: clear separation of concerns (content and layout), each element is addressable with a unique path, simple mappings can be made with existing standards.

UI Elements

Basic UI elements are abstracted in base classes from which inherit device-specific implementations.

• In a browser: a simple <UL> – <LI> combo
• In a smartphone (iOS, Android, etc.): a scrollable, native-looking list
• In a shell: a list of choices in a command-line
• In a connected TV: a browseable ribbon

Inputs

Each adapter supports several input methods like “keyboard”, “mouse”, “touch”, “tvremote”, etc.

Each user interaction can be mapped to an event to which any part of the application can react.

Inputs can also be proxies for remote controllers, with a simple TCP packet firing an event in the app.

This content is originally published in the Joshfire website.

When users use their mobile phones to check the news, weather, email, or their social networks, they often have a choice between the mobile web version or a specially-created mobile app. But which do they prefer? Mobile apps – at least according to their time spent.

According to first-reported data from Nielsen Smartphone Analytics, a new effort that tracks and analyzes data from on-device meters installed on thousands of iOS and Android smartphones, the average Android consumer in the U.S. spends 56 minutes per day actively interacting with the web and apps on their phone. Of that time, two-thirds is spent on mobile apps while one-third is spent on the mobile web.

Perhaps more surprising, despite the hundreds of thousands of apps available for Android, a very small proportion of apps make up the vast majority of time spent. In fact, the top 10 Android apps account for 43 percent of all the time spent by Android consumers on mobile apps. The top 50 apps account for 61 percent of all time spent. With 250,000+ Android apps available at the time of this writing, that means the remaining 249,950+ apps have to compete for the remaining 39 percent of the pie.

The question now concerns knowing whether it is more efficient to use a mobile application or a mobile web version. This could aid to justify the correlation between the time spent in interaction and the users’ preferences.

Another factor of influence can be the own nature of the tasks performed. It is possible that tasks executed in mobile web versions require more time than mobile applications, affecting thus the interaction time.

This content is based on the article “Mobile Apps Beat the Mobile Web Among US Android Smartphone Users”, which was originally published on 17/08/2011. It can be accessed at: http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/ mobile-apps-beat-the-mobile-web-among-us-android-smartphone-users/