RoCS is a local initiative with a rich history — 18 years since the first edition of the event. Most importantly, it paved the way for IT and software conferences in the area. We were honored to attend this anniversary session and although we frown on bragging (smiley face), Appscend was also awarded with an Excellence Prize for the company’s activity so far and impact on the mobile ecosystem. And, indeed, we are very proud!
Andrei Marinescu, Appscend’s cofounder, was present for this anniversary edition of RoCS with a presentation on mobile applications, our mobile ecosystem and the way businesses can prosper in such a new and very dynamic environment. If you appreciate Prezi, and speak Romanian, you can view Andrei’s presentation here: http://prezi.com/ucemmiax34fs/bune-practici-in-dezvoltarea-strategiei-mobile/.
1994: first smart mobile phones
In short, we focused on good practices in the mobile ecosystem. For instance, did you know that the first mobile phones appeared in 1994, exactly 18 years ago?
2008: first mobile apps
2008 marks an important milestone for the mobile community, with Apple’s iPhone statement. Together with iOS and the launch of Apple Store, the entire world shifted towards a new business niche and adopted the trend of mobile apps.
2012: a true mobile revolution
In 2012, we have two important platforms – iOS and Android, two large companies – Apple and Samsung, and 39% of the mobile phones used today are smartphones. Thus, the adoption and fervent development of the mobile community is highly motivated, with iOS mobile apps having been downloaded 31 billion times in the past 5 years. And the staggering percentage is quite reasonable, since each smartphone has in general 108 apps which are used up to 80 minutes per day by individual users.
Businesses and developers out there have understood the large opportunities and impressive ROI that mobile brings: a new market for development, new and sophisticated communication channels, scalable ways of monetizing and distributing content. And the tools used to achieve such business results are numerous and complex: push notifications, location based marketing, social analytics, ad servers or backend services based on cloud.
Reasonable to understand, with any new business universe, there are certain drawbacks. In the mobile ecosystem, we have to deal with a highly fragmented community, a multitude of separated solutions, additional costs, lack of know-how. Nevertheless, there are also good news ahead, as there are solutions to this troubling mobile chaos, such as native development and cross-platform mobile apps.
And to that, we should also add, Appscend. 
