Mobile Fix: Fat Apps and Thin Apps

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November 1, 2010

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5 minutes

Simon Andrews Addictive is the full service mobile agency Simon has just launched, in partnership with digital media specialists Agenda21. addictive is the fifth agency Simon has launched. His first digital creative agency, in 1995, was a dismal failure – few marketers understood the internet then and even fewer cared. The next three were more successful – Simon was one of three partners who launched what became Modem Media in Europe – growing a business from six people in one room in Soho to two hundred and fifty people in London, Paris and Munich. He then joined DLKW in 1999 at the time of their management buyout and built DLKW Dialogue into one of Londons most respected digital agencies before launching Big Picture in 2005 which focused on emerging media such as mobile, social networks and newTV. He joined Mindshare in November 2006 where global chief digital strategy officer – focused on ensuring that key clients receive the best digital thinking – and doing. Simon was also highly involved in developing the talent, product and processes necessary to deliver this thinking and doing. This led to a key role in architecting the recent restructure that saw Mindshare embrace digital across all disciplines. He left Mindshare in the summer to work on the addictive launch. Before going digital Simon was media planning director of Young & Rubicam and Zenith Media, and then account planning director of Ogilvy Direct. Outside of work Simon tries to have his two sons Ethan and Isaac share his enthusiasm for obscure soul and jazz records and the increasingly obscure Leeds United.

In the latest Mobile Fix, Simon Andrews, founder of the full service mobile agency addictive!, says a “smart mobile strategy is all about finding the right balance between richness and reach”…

Given this issue is coming from St Ives and that any recent surfing has been of the wet variety rather than the web, we’re more focused on views than news.

Our piece last week on the need for a cross platform approach to mobile, with a mobile site as the key requirement, prompted some discussion. We’re still big believers in apps; we’re just trying to see their place in the mobile repertoire for marketers.

Richness and Reach

The initial attraction of apps was the rich experiences they delivered. With touch as the key interface, early apps delighted users with intuitive navigation, clearly defined function and integration with the operating system. Whether they were games or utility, this was a new type of experience and through the easy discovery and downloading inherent to the App store, apps redefined what people did with their phones.

The one downside was that the reach was limited to those who had iPhones – a classic early adopter marketplace.

Jump forward to now and we still see these rich experiences (Simi, Tweetdeck, Flipboard etc) but a large proportion of apps we now see from brands are little more than microsites repurposed to work as apps – with some use of OS features such as the camera or GPS.

So not particularly rich experiences, but still with limited reach. Despite the huge growth in smartphone usage across Apple and other OS such as Android, Blackberry and Nokias Symbian, many apps are still limited to the Apple OS. And relatively few brands have invested in a mobile optimised site. No wonder people talk of iSyndrome.

Our answer to balancing richness and reach is to think of about Fat Apps and Thin Apps.

Fat Apps are those rich experiences with deep integration with the OS. If your brand can find a way of creating a relevant Fat App it can still be a worthwhile investment, particularly if your customer base are early adopters. But you still need a mobile optimised website that can be found and used by anyone with a phone with a browser. And that allows you to invest in mobile search etc to drive profitable traffic.

And once you have a mobile optimised site, we believe there are real benefits to developing a Thin App.

A Thin App is an app with limited functionality and limited integration with the phone OS. Its key function is to get the user to the mobile optimised site as quickly and efficiently as possible. But because it’s an app, it benefits from visibility in the app stores and delivers an icon on the users home screen – the most valuable real estate in the world right now.

A Thin App can be thought of as merely an enhanced bookmark – and can be as little as a launcher for the mobile site. But it can also add real value through blending what can be cached in the app, with real time information being accessed from the cloud through the browser.

Some of the best ecommerce sites already work in this way – take a good look at Amazon and eBay and see when the app stops and the browser experience starts. And many of the Google apps already work in this way too.

Because of the blended functionality the reduced time and cost of building Thin Apps means developing versions for Android, Blackberry, Symbian etc can be affordable too maximising reach. But even though the scope may be limited, Thin Apps still need to have great UX (user experience) and be stable and bug free – so you still need professionals to build them.

Our view of a smart mobile strategy is all about finding the right balance between richness and reach. Along with other issues such as cached and cloud and discovery and distribution, which we’ll cover another week.

Quick news stories

We’ve talked about the opportunity for mobile money before and the latest news from Sprint demonstrates the pace of change… And it’s interesting how an operator can participate in the economy rather than just be the dumb pipe.

Just as politicians were quick to use social to get their messaging out (whatever happened to all those social media gurus who were touting Obama case studies last year?) we’re now seeing mobile being tried. In the US, a Republican used hyper local targeting along with a YouTube video to create a mobile surge. We think YouTube has huge potential as a mobile tool and we expect to see lots more experimentation.

Google announced through its @AndroidDev Twitter account that the company’s Android Market now has 100k apps.

Wired suspect Google is building a Nexus 2 – maybe with Motorola or maybe with Samsung – and think it would be available exclusively through Carphone Warehouse in the UK

The New York Times wrote a good piece this week on how brands are looking at mobile and predicting that the 2012 Olympics will be big factor in mobile growth across Europe.

Click here for your full Mobile Fix (complete with links to background articles).