The introduction of the Apple iPad has ushered in a new era of tablet computing. Over the next 12 months the market will be flooded with competitive tablets based on Google Android, Microsoft Windows 7, RIM’s QNX OS and  HP Palm WebOS. ABI research estimates that 11 million tables to be shipped by the end of 2010. Manufacturers such as Cisco, HP, RIM Blackberry, Motorola and Sony are working on new tablets. Tablet computing represents a new battleground where multiple sectors are competing for the first time. Smartphone manufacturers (Apple, RIM), computer companies (HP, Dell), entertainment device manufacturers (Sony) and even networking companies (Cisco) all are competing in the tablet marketplace.

Tablets are a natural device for travel with their high entertainment focus (movies, books), always on connectivity (no need to wait for the computer to boot) and light portable design. As competition heats up in 2010-2011, capabilities such as two cameras will allow video conferencing and AR apps to take on a new enhanced capability on a growing number of tablets.

All travel companies must start now on their tablet strategy for every market segment – business, groups & meetings, and leisure travel. Research has continually shown that frequent travelers are the early adopters of new technology. Though much of the focus has been on the ability of a tablet to replace a laptop, the product category itself represents a new platform. Applications such as Flipboard, which aggregates Facebook, Twitter and other feeds into a very appealing magazine-like style, is an example of a new application that is taking advantage of the tablet platform. As with any new platform, simply taking an existing Website or smartphone app and applying it to the new tablet devices, misses the opportunity the new platform provides. The key for tablet apps is personalization and integration of multiple sources of information into a seamless app that is location and contextually sensitive (a similar mantra to smartphone app development) but also takes advantage of the larger screen and ability to more easily integrate immersive video and gaming.

Source:  Global Intelligence Alliance

One major debate that persists in the area of mobile development is the question of whether a travel company should create a native (downloadable) app or simply provide a mobile Web application. As part of my upcoming PhoCusWright Webinar Mobile Chaos: Do I Need an App for Every Platform? (next Wednesday September 15th at 12:00 noon), I will discuss this subject.  As a teaser here are some of my thoughts concerning this debate.

An interesting paradox exists in respect to the motivations of travel firms in porting their Website to the mobile Web. Many state that their primary motivation is to make their app available on as many devices as possible at the lowest cost. Though this is an admirable goal, the reality of the mobile Web is that the majority of browsing is happening on smartphones such as the iPhone, Android or the BlackBerry. Therefore if the goal is to reach full feature phones, through these efforts is misdirected. A more important issue is how a normal Web pages appear on today’s smartphones. Even the most sophisticated smartphone browsers still provide a frustrating experience for the user when viewing a normal Web page; therefore, every travel company needs to port their existing Website to the Mobile Web. With more and more browsing happening on the smartphone and with the direct correlation between the frequent traveler and smartphone ownership, the effort to transcode the current Website to be more readable on a mobile Web browser is no longer a luxury, but a mandatory part of every travel company’s mobile strategy. As HTML5 matures, the ability to interact with a phone’s core features such as the GPS, calendar, address book, accelerometer and  compass is emerging.

Source:  Global Intelligence Alliance

As a result, the mobile Web will behave similar to the native app and within the next few years matching native app capabilities. The question then arises, do I need a native app?

The answer is best provided in terms of market segmentation.  To create a native app that simply mirrors the functionality of the current Website, wastes resources and may not yield any significant incremental benefit to the travel company or traveler.  From a market segmentation perspective, the native app should be targeted to your best customers and as a result provide unique functionality that takes advantage of location, personalization and situation.  Recently, Priceline reported that a good majority of its mobile app bookings where coming the same day as the reservation.  Priceline did not disclose whether these bookings had cannibalized their Website bookings or whether they were incremental. The Priceline Negotiator is a good example of a limited function native app that is targeted to specific activity – book last minute hotel or car reservations. Clearly Priceline did their homework to determine the profile of their best customers and the type of function they wanted in a mobile app. Other downloadable apps miss this opportunity and simply mirror Website functionality.  Native apps can provide a travel company with a great opportunity to interact with a company’s best customers, but these applications must be innovative taking advantage of the smartphone’s unique capabilities such as the compass or accelerometer and provide personalized recommendations based on the traveler’s location and situation. It is with this in mind, a travel company can have a successful native app launch. Though most apps seem to first appear on the iPhone the importance of the Android and BlackBerry platforms cannot not be ignored as each has a significant market share. For non-US roll-outs Nokia is an essential platform as well.  We also have the launch of Windows 7  in the fourth quarter of this year and the re-emergence of WebOS under the direction of HP as wild cards to consider as well, not to forget about the explosion of tablets that will hit the market over the next 12 months.  Mobile Chaos will be the norm for some time.

Apple launched its App store in March of 2008 permanently changing the way mobile applications are distributed. Today there are over 15,000 apps in the iPhone store, but there’s a lot more to come….

New app stores have been announced from RIM Blackberry, T-Mobile and Google. There has also been some speculation that both Microsoft and Nokia may be launching apps stores.
So what does this mean to the travel industry? Sometime in the not to distant future we may be looking at over 100,000 downloadable applications available from a variety of sources. The percentage of applications that fall into the travel, location based services and navigation categories will likely be high. The travel industry needs to create applications today for the current app stores from Apple, RIM Blackberry and T-Mobile. These apps should not simply be retreads of their current Website but include innovative ways to combine location, context and personalization into delivering unique value to the business and leisure traveler.

Things are heating up even more on the smartphone front as RIM introduced the new BlackBerry Storm which will be available later this month. RIM’s BlackBerry owns the enterprise smartphone mobile space. Recent surveys we’ve completed as part of the PhoCusWright special report “The Future of Mobile Travel” shows the iPhone gaining ground on the BlackBerry with a significant number of frequent business travelers (at least 4 business trips a year) stating that they are considering an iPhone.
The growing smartphone war has positives and negatives for the travel industry. On the positive side, smartphones patterned after the iPhone will have a more practical mobile Web browser experience. The downside comes in application development. Our research is indicating that downloading applications is a more practical strategy than simply repositioning current Website information. In addition to Apple’s iPhone App store, Google and Blackberry have announced plans to open app stores as well. The cold reality of this trend is that travel companies who are serious about mobile applications will need to port their app to multiple environments. The iPhone SDK is a good development platform but very closed in nature. In contrast the Google Android platform promises to provide a more open environment for mobile platform development. Even Symbian OS now owned by Nokia is talking about a more open computing approach. Those travel suppliers and intermediaries who believe that simply translating their current Website to work with Web browsers on multiple handsets is a sufficient mobile strategy, will need to rethink that approach as smartphones become the standard device for business and leisure travelers. Yes Web browsing is definitely on the iPhone, but even with the ability to use the two finger pinch to zoom in on Web content, there is a major difference between an iPhone app verses viewing a Web page on the Safari browser.

Here is the screenshot for the Travelocity Web page on the iPhone. Yes you can zoom in but this is still not a practical way to book itineraries.

Compare that to the screenshot of the Travelocity iPhone App. Sure the Travelocity app does not have booking capabilities but the UI is much easier and more practical to use for a future booking platform, which BTW our research shows frequent business and leisure travelers want (especially for irregular operations!).

T-Mobile introduced the first Google Android phone this week. This long anticipated new platform combines elements of the iPhone (touch screen) and the Blackberry (pull out keyboard). Since I began researching mobile technology for the “Future of Mobile Travel” special report from PhoCusWright, I have been saying that the iPhone is a game changer. This message became more real to me as I purchased an iPhone earlier this month. Like any device it has its pluses and minuses. The same is true with the new Google Android platform. Both of these phones are shifts in the way people view their mobile device. Here’s my brief take on the two devices and how they will impact the travel experience:
1) The iPhone – The most exciting part of the iPhone is not the phone itself but the combination of the phone’s capability and the large number of inexpensive apps available through the Apple App store. Though downloading apps is nothing new, bypassing the “deck” of the mobile carrier presents a more intuitive, flexible and direct environment to load applications. There are currently 175 apps listed in the travel category and another 121 apps listed in the navigation category. The simple concept of locating yourself though GPS and looking at your immediate surroundings for restaurants, shopping or movie theatres is made simple by apps such as “Nearby” or “Where To”. Surprisingly few travel companies with the exception of the online folks such as Travelocity or TripIt have released iPhone specific apps (though a lot more are on the way). Once travel companies start realizing the ease of distribution available to iPhone users I anticipate many more traditional brands populating the travel category. The iPhone is a mediocre email device particularly for those Blackberry thumb users who can type long letters rapidly from the phone. The email application works fine for me as I normally wait to respond (unless it is an urgent message) until I power up my laptop or desktop. I had no trouble connecting the iPhone to my MS Outlook. The Web browser is another strong element, but even with the larger screen and ability to expand using the two finger pinch, browsing on the iPhone is much improved from other devices but NOT a replacement for the Web. Our research has uncovered the fact that many travel companies are simply porting their current Web pages onto mobile devices and even with the iPhone’s improved graphics, booking travel on the mobile Web browser can be challenging. The other approach of downloaded apps seems to be a much preferred way to penetrate the iPhone market. A strength that Apple has verses Google is the control of the hardware and software. The hardware control includes the firmware (software that is embedded on the hardware) giving greater consistent performance. The message here is simple, all travel companies should develop applications for the iPhone.
2) The T-Mobile G-Phone wants to be both a Blackberry and an iPhone. Surprisingly, currently the T-Mobile version only connects up with Gmail and in fact you need to have a Gmail account to use the G-phone. No doubt Microsoft Exchange may become a future capability, but until it does the G-Phone cannot replace the Blackberry. I will hold off my full evaluation of the device until I actually see the physical phone. My sense is that the Google Android platform can match the iPhone look and feel and simplicity of Web browsing. How apps are created and distributed will be a key element of the success. According to Strategy Analytics, the Android mobile operating system will account for 4 percent of all fourth quarter smartphone sales in the U.S., a small % but likely to grow. If the Android operating system spreads quickly and if developers gravitate to the application development environment, the same ease of use of downloading apps for the Android powered systems may further cement this process as the preferred delivery of travel specific apps, provided a central store is created. If the carriers remain in control your ability to download apps may be limited by the traditional control the carriers have put on new app distribution. The lack of control over the firmware may be an Achilles heal for the G-phone but it is too early to determine if the need to work with a variety of firmware is truly a market inhibiting problem.