Blame the apps

There was a great story emanating from telecoms.com this week that Vodafone has determined that some applications available through Apple’s App Store are failing to meet its internal quality standards because they are accessing APIs that are non-essential for the applications’ functions.

It’s not just Apple apps; many are replicated on the Android platform as well. Application anomalies have not passed the notice of many smartphone users puzzled at how quickly they chew up data allocations on their tiered plans.

It should not be surprising that the quality of programming in the apps space has slipped when you consider that of the million plus available on the App Store, many have been created by novices using packaged development tools. What do they care about optimization as they implement all those smartphone functions to check location, data repositories, online services, etc? They are not the ones paying for the data plans; they just want their apps to have all the bells and whistles regardless of how inefficient they are and how heavily they rely on network connectivity, usually unbeknown to the hapless user.

You would think that Apple, with its once-stringent acceptance process, would be concerned about data hogging apps and those that are clearly badly written in terms of optimization of network resources. Not likely. They probably only care about the effect of apps on the operating system and that each complies with its own user interface standards.

Vodafone may be on to something here. As a mobile network operator, it is painfully aware of just how valuable bandwidth is, and how it is fast becoming a dwindling commodity. Continuously spending money to upgrade and optimize networks and squeeze every bit out of their limited spectrum is not a long-term solution. The fact that they have started to investigate what’s going on at the edge of the network at device and application level is brilliant, and hats off to them.

It may also be one of the reasons behind Vodafone’s own branded Android app. Not only is Vodafone filtering out many of the irrelevant apps, it may also be dumping those that are not ‘network friendly.’ Clever move, or walled garden episode two? Either way, they may be setting an example for other operators.

This, however, may only be the tip of the iceberg. As cloud services and enterprise mobility are seen as potential earners and stickiness builders of the future, the accompanying load on the networks will also need to be taken into account. The selection of enterprise cloud offerings, how mobile devices interact with them and the security they require are all areas that CSPs can control and optimize, and that’s where they can add value.

The issues being raised now are specific to native apps that are relatively lean compared to the HTML5 variety fast gaining popularity because they are OS agnostic. Early indications in that space are that HTML5 apps are tardy in performance and incredible data hogs. What effect will they have on network capacity especially as standards are a little thin just now?

The point Vodafone is making, and that should be a signal to others, is that you cannot trust the application stores to police software efficiency on a network. If they take on that responsibility, how will the market feel about it? Maybe we should develop and promote an app efficiency rating system like we see on home appliances. We could rate apps in terms of ease of use, speed, network load and general efficiency and at the same time refuse entry to those that don’t make the grade.