In 2013, mobile devices will pass PCs to be most common Web access tools. By 2015 media tablet shipments will reach around 50 percent of laptop shipments and over 80 percent of the handsets sold in mature markets will be smartphones. These trends were highlighted by Gartner research in their  ”Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2013” presentation at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, last October in Orlando.

Apple App Store has over 700 0000 apps¹, Android Market over 700 000 apps² and Windows Market Place has in only 13 months reached 50 000 apps³. They amount of developers working on Windows apps has increased significantly in the last couple of months. When Windows Phone 7.5 was released more than 10 000 new apps were uploaded in a period of 40 days.
The competition in the app space is fierce with user demands increasing, one being the responsiveness of the services behind the pretty front ends.

How to make sure you are keeping up with the increasing demands ?

Apica, as provider of performance testing and monitoring services for cloud and mobile applications, is giving customers and software vendors a new way to track mobile application performance. Apica’s next generation WebPerformance Monitoring(WPM) service now has extended mobile application testing functionality.  With this new WPM service Apica allows for mobile application performance testing – a cruical part of the Mobile Application Management lifecycle.  Apica now has the ability to measure the performance of a mobile application from over 100 locations worldwide.

The success of a new mobile application is more likely if the performance and responsiveness are tested before a public launch or version release. By constantly monitoring and gathering performance data of the app over time the user experience is maintained. When response time deviate alarms should be sent to the application owner. Through scripting typical usage scenarios can be tested and potential flaws may be detected,fixed and re-tested by the developers.

”Along with the increased usage of mobile devices for web browsing and web application access the related server platform must be able to cope with the increased load. We now have the ability to record and test application calls from three of the largest mobile platforms in the market. The development of more capabilities are  under way with a Windows Phone 8 release planned for the summer timeframe.”  

-          Thomas Wiik, Apica Test Specialist and Lead Developer.

Supporting resources

¹ -  http://ipod.about.com/od/iphonesoftwareterms/qt/apps-in-app-store.htm
² - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Play
³ -  http://www.prisjakt.nu/pryl/tele/1586_50_000_appar_pa_windows_phone_marketplace