The History Of Mobile App

The use of mobile phones has become so common. For some of us, living a single day without a mobile phone would be like being in the olden days when you had to travel to the city to find a telephone booth to make a call. If anything, mobile communication and our lives are integrated. Living without a mobile phone can be a nightmare. It can make you feel uncomfortable. 

Mobile phones served only two purposes. The first function was making phone calls and the last function was sending text messages. The coming of Smart Phones changed the entire world of mobile communication. They have enabled people to do more than just sending text messages and making phone calls. They help one to have fun, learn and earn. 

Mobile application development started when the 20th Century was ending. At the time, the most common applications were arcade games, simple calendars, small calculators and some ring tone editors. The coming of a new millennium saw a rapid growth, development and evolution of mobile phone content and applications. 

With an intention to meet advanced communication and entertainment needs and to improve customer satisfaction, manufacturers decided that they would develop more advanced yet easy to use mobile applications. They could not achieve this without putting quality and the potential demands into consideration. For instance, a mobile app must be easy to use. This explains why most mobile phone companies try their best to facilitate the development of mobile applications to give users the freewill to customize their devices. 

Back then, Motorola DynaTAC 8000X was the only mobile phone available in the market. It was expensive to buy, had hefty monthly charges and scary per-minute rates. It had a simple contacts application and enabled people to make calls. 

Handset manufacturers then came up with the idea of developing the first generation mobile phones. Because of the fierce competition in the mobile market, the manufacturers did not want to expose their secrets so they did all their applications in-house. If you were a mobile app developer at the time, you would not have had an opportunity to write applications for mobile phones. 

It was at this time that the first mobile phone games were developed. Nokia Company created the most famous Snake games for some of its mobile phones. Other games followed the most famous ones being Tic-Tac-Toe, Pong and Tetris. The inclusion of games in mobile phones made customers to demand for more features and games to be included in handheld devices. 

However, manufacturers did not have the resources to meet demands. They decided that they would use the internet to provide consumers with a portal for entertainment and information services. The manufacturers realized that there was a problem with this approach. They realized that internet access did not scale up for mobile phones. First, most mobile phones had small monochrome display screens, limited processing power and minimal storage. 

The other problem with the approach was that the mobile phones could not handle data-intensive operations, which only old browsers would. The bandwidth required to access internet service on mobile devices was not cheap either. 

Mobile manufacturers developed WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) to address the above challenges. This would make it possible for mobile device owners to access communication services and entertainment over the internet. While WAP application was great for mobile operators, it had a big problem. It made it difficult for developers and content developers to deliver to their maximum. WAP was also slow and in addition, frustrating. Everything about WAP became a nightmare and in the end, it was seen as a mere mediocre because it did not meet the already growing communication demands. 

There has to be changes, at least an adjustment to solve the shortcomings of WAP. Handset manufacturers realized that if they wanted to sell their products, the needed to change the way they do things. They had to change their protection policies and expose their secrets to those outside the inner circle. This led to the emergence of various proprietary platforms where developers are actively taking part in developing mobile applications. 

Today in mobile history, there are many companies dealing with mobile app development. To date, no single application has emerged victorious. There is no single platform for all possible mobile applications. Some platforms are platforms are private, while others are more open to and suitable for developers.