​Imagine building an app with just its idea in your head or a weak structural skeleton. Can you guess what the outcome would like? Scary, isn’t it – all that time, effort and money just to create a below average app with several bugs. Hence, what we need is a diagram that presents the outcome of every possible action and whether the outcome of that product will satisfy the customers and meet their goals. In short, wireframes anticipate how the buttons will function in the apps and also let the developers know the functionalities that are absolutely necessary and the ones that are too ambitious. 

In today’s time, there is an app for everything – fitness, food delivery, online shopping, dating, games, photography, health, etc. Smart phones have substantially grown over the years. In 2018, mobile traffic accounted for 52.2% of total website traffic in the U.S.
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Reference Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/241462/global-mobile-phone-website-traffic-share/

Due to these ever growing number of app users, there are many developers trying to create a market space for their app creations. The app market is booming with hundreds, if not thousands of them being added in the Android or iOS play store every day. Why do you think that is? Yes, that’s right! The app industry is making millions and billions of dollars and everyone wants a fair share of the profits. The number of mobile app downloads worldwide in 2022 is estimated to be 258.2 billion.
Reference Source: https://www.statista.com/topics/983/mobile-app-monetization/
 
So, How Much Does an App Earn?
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Imagine writing a book without a rough storyline or any plot in mind; can you? I suppose not. A book without a story is as pointless as a mobile app that doesn’t solve a purpose! Hence, most developers define the value and purpose of a mobile app on a document they call the mobile app requirements document. This document have specific details on what the app is all about and how will it be presented to the user. The document contains a timeline – that has dates and milestones – and the budget. Now, let’s take a quick look at the checklist summary while creating a mobile apps requirement document. 

​Checklist Summary for Mobile Apps Requirement Document

• Rough idea of an app in layman language and an explanation of how to use it
• Platforms that the app will work on such as, Android, iOS, etc. and whether it should be a native or an hybrid app
• Will the app be outsourced or will it be made internally
• Specific timeline (along with milestones and the release date) and budget
• User Interface of the app – mandatory buttons and its placement and branding and design guidelines that it needs to follow
• Will the app be integrated with social media and in-app purchase and will it contain geo-location services and push notifications
• Will the app only work online or will it have an offline feature
• Features that need to be included in the app
• Detailed research on the target segment and the competitors that the app will face – and then defining a feature that will make your app stand out
• Medium of communication to plan the project and create a team member list and their individual duties for creating the app

Once, you’ve made a checklist for the app, the next step is to delve into in detail.

In this digital age, companies and businesses small and large are on the path to digitization. Imagine dealing with a company that doesn’t have its own website or its own social networking pages. Today, a company’s digital presence is extremely crucial to attract clients and new business. So, how does it help them? Let’s take an example of a clothing brand.
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Initially a company’s presence relied on instinct, experience or basic market search to promote their clothing brand. But today, it is all about offering the best discounts and good quality clothes at the customer’s doorstep. Not only that, they also provide a return policy that ensures that the customer feels safe to purchase their clothes online. In today’s digital presence, a customer can even upload his/her picture on the app/website and virtual understand the fit or an image of how they would look in that clothing. 

Java has been in the Android App market for years and is one of the most reputed platforms. But as time has passed by it has been difficult for Java to sustain its position in the market – it is used by millions of app developers and is one of the most used platforms after C and C++. But in 2017, Kotlin was announced as an official language for Android application development. Let’s understand more about these programs.        

What is Java?
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Java is a programming language that has vast open-source tools and libraries to help developers. It is used by most large enterprises because of its flexibility and interoperability – and also because of it its simplicity, robustness and influential approach. Two of the major reasons why Android mobile apps are still being written in Java are because of its architectural OOP paradigm and the massiveness of the code.
Did you know?
Google’s Android operating system uses Java API packages.

The beauty of the digital age is making the world smaller and making everything available with just a few clicks of the button. Big or small tasks are being completed with the use of Apps or websites. It is believed on an average, people spend at least 4 hours on their phone, daily.
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Source: https://www.inc.com/melanie-curtin/are-you-on-your-phone-too-much-average-person-spends-this-many-hours-on-it-every-day.html

An app makes it easier for companies to connect with and drum up additional interaction and business from customers. Most businesses have developed or are in the process of developing user friendly apps to ensure maximum customer satisfaction. Consumers today are more demanding due to the digitally changing nature of the market and for any business to survive, they need to address these demands.
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What are Push Notifications?
A small message, which is sent to a user, when they are not on the application is a push notification. This notification can be sent anytime and anywhere as long as the user has given the app permission to send the same.
After an app is initially downloaded, a user will receive a number of prompt messages to accept and give permission. These permissions vary as they depend on the app and its purpose and most businesses implement user-centric notifications to ensure the customer journey is strategically customized.

What Are DevOps?
DevOps are a combination of processes, cultural philosophies, practices and tools which increase an organizations ability to deliver quality products and services at high velocity. It provides an automated system and infrastructure, helping the company evolve and improve products at a faster pace, than by using traditional developmental methods and processes.
DevOps is considered to be a never ending process of continual improvement for an organization.The beauty here lies in enabling an organization to better serve their customers, compete effectively in the market and also provide more efficient ways to handle releases, issue resolution and better management of unforeseen work.

How Does DevOps Work?
In a DevOps model, the development and operations teams are no longer separate or “siloed”. These teams merge and form a single team where the developers are involved right from inception to testing and deployment.
In some instances, quality assurance and security teams are also integrated with development and operations where by archaic manual processes get automated and fast. The technology and tools used help companies evolve applications in a quicker and more reliable manner. All in all DevOps helps to increase a team’s velocity in launching as well as modifying products.
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How Should You Implement DevOps?

​While creating a website or an application, the developer needs to focus on two important components; the User Experience (UX) and the User Interface (UI). Both these terms are related to one another – the User Experience is based on effective use of the mobile app and how the user enjoys using the app, whereas, a User Interface is the look and feel of the app, its presentation and the overall interactivity of a product.
Hence, while creating a mobile app, the developers need to work together on the UX and UI, but both require different skill sets. Let’s understand this with the help of an example: 

Take a look at the Facebook home screen. Everything you see in the top and side search bars “News Feed”, “Status”, “Video”, “Upcoming Events”, etc. – is all a part of the UI. So, what the User Interface ideally is that it helps you navigate within the app or website, for example, if you click on Events, you will be navigated to a page where you will be able to see all the events listed in your profile. A good UI is the one that is easy to use and helps navigate the user with ease.
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On the other hand, User Experience is when the user clicks on the Events tab, but has to wait for the events to download for more than a minute. Imagine you try to search for a long lost friend, but you can’t search it or get presented with a multitude of options that do not match your friend’s name. With this kind of experience, it is the UX designer that needs to be blamed for the poor performance. 

“You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new.” – Steve Jobs
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First man discovered fire. Then came the wheel, then industries and machines and with technology came the constant change and modernization of the world today. When the mobile phone had first been launched, it was a luxury item which few possessed and now it is a necessity. The same can be said about the internet and increasing dependence of people on the web. 

For years now the mobile community has been divided on platforms like:

• Android
• iOS
• Symbian OS
• Bada OS
• Blackberry OS

By 2023, it is believed that the number of smartphone users, in Canada alone, will be approximately 30.4 million and the number of mobile phone internet users will be 30.9 million.
Sources:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/467190/forecast-of-smartphone-users-in-canada/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/482507/canada-mobile-phone-internet-users/

It is safe to say we live in a digital world where most tasks are now completed with a few clicks of a button. The top of the market has been the Android and iOS platforms which have effectively been ahead of the other competition. This year, 2019, is said to be different as the hot new buzz is about the Progressive Web Apps (PWA).
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What are Progressive Web Apps?
“Progressive Web Apps are just websites that took all the right vitamins.” – Alex Russell, Software Engineer at Google.

“Every company, city, and country is becoming digital, navigating disruptive markets, …(and the) role in the digital transformation has never been more important.” – John Chambers, Former Chairman and CEO of Cisco Systems.
The era we live in today is a digital age where all industries have embraced and entered this digital world in some way. Industries get to harness the potential of digitization in various shapes and forms, thus making the best of this evolution.
The supply chain industry is no different and today, they rely heavily on digital technologies to ensure accurate data to help with deliverywhile optimizing resources. 

Digital Transformation and the Supply Chain Industry

Managing the supply chain is a large and complicated area, which is chaotic and filled with multiple challenges. There is a lot of manual work which costs time and money and in a way is a futile exercise with excess paperwork. 
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Each stakeholder would want to manage their own paper work, ledger and data which could make things more complicated and in order to make sense of this data, a third party would need to be involved especially for bookkeeping.
Source: https://www.ecommerce-nation.com/future-iot-devices-ecommerce/