Internet Browsing Declines as Mobile Apps Lift Off

As smart phones get smarter, and app stores get larger, the conventional internet browser may find itself abandoned in favor of the thousands of mobile apps that people use every day. According to recent data, mobile apps are being used more often at the expense of browsing the internet. With the recent tsunami of mobile apps taking the world by storm, statistics are showing that people lean more towards using their phone apps rather than visiting the net on both their smart phones and on the PC.

According to Flurry, an analytics firm, mobile apps usage has steadily increased over time. Flurry originally noted this phenomenon in June of 2011, when their statistics showed that app usage was ahead in the race with browser consumption with users spending 81 minutes a day on apps compared to 74 minutes a day on the internet. For the original study, Flurry surveyed app usage in 140,000 apps running Flurry analytics and compared it to web data usage from comScore and Alexa. On Monday, Flurry updated this study by providing recent data that shows web consumption numbers remaining the same while time spent on apps continues to soar.

Facebook may be one of the culprits of this shift, as users are leaning more towards accessing Facebook from their phones than from a browser, Flurry stated. Visitors to Facebook are streaming in from mobile apps. Flurry’s analysis shows that gaming and Facebooking combine to represent an astounding 80% of all time spent in mobile apps.

Despite this obvious gap between web browsing and apps, Flurry estimates that this race for dominance is far from over. “By the end of 2012…the cumulative number of iOS and Android devices activated will surge past 1 billion,” said Flurry senior marketing manager Charles Newark-French. “As Apple and Google continue to battle for consumers through the operating system and devices, Facebook is demonstrating that it can leverage its hold over consumers at the software level, through the power of the social network, across multiple platforms.”

So perhaps we shouldn’t count PC’s out of the lead just yet, but instead consider that consumers’ need to have access to News Feeds “now” and “on the go” (a need satisfied largely by Facebook) is truly the driver behind the wheel.

The debate of native apps vs. HTML5 will continue for some time. In conclusion, Flurry also attributes the decline in web usage to users’ growing favor of native applications.

Automated Testing Solutions leaders Zap Technologies and Tekstrom, Inc. partner to deliver leading consulting and technology solutions

January 9th, Atlanta, GA – ZAP Technologies, the leading provider of full lifecycle test automation solutions for mobile, rich internet applications (RIA), Apple and Unix applications today announced a formal strategic partnership with Tekstrom Inc. an information technology company focused in the niche segment of software testing life cycle  since its inception and is based in Newark, Delaware with offices in Chicago – Illinois, Brampton- Canada, Amritsar  &  Bangalore – India.

Tekstrom‘s Software Testing and Quality Assurance practice with focus on Test Automation brings diverse expertise in QA to a global customer base and, like ZAP, is a Certified Business Partner with HP, the leading Automated Software Testing Tools provider. Under this agreement, Tekstrom will resell the extensive portfolio of ZAP products and services, including ZAP-fiX, the industry leading full lifecycle mobile application testing suite that seamlessly extends the functionality, management and reporting capabilities of HP’s market leading Quick Test Professional (QTP), enabling the rapid application transformations to corporate mobile network and device infrastructures that is one of today’s critical initiatives for global organizations in finance, insurance, healthcare, retail, technology and other key markets as they rapidly adopt mobile technologies to reach new markets and increase revenues.

“We are extremely excited to build this relationship with Tekstrom for many important reasons, but are particularly attracted to our common cultures and histories as HP Software partners and the incredible QA and testing expertise that Tekstrom brings to our collaboration on a worldwide basis. We both strongly believe that as corporations increasingly develop and deploy key business and commercial applications to diverse and dynamic mobile platforms in order to increase revenues and competitive position, it is critical that they can collaborate with vendor partners that bring more than technology alone, but can demonstrate expertise and experience throughout the entire delivery and testing environment. Both ZAP and Tekstrom can immediately take a seat across the table from customer QTP experts and speak a common language,” said Alex Chernyak, Founder and CTO of ZAP.

“As an organization with a strong legacy and reputation for delivery of consistently high quality expert QA & testing services to our corporate customers, we are increasingly being asked to assist and consult on major application migrations to mobile devices and infrastructures. We have assessed the marketplace for tools and partners that can help us deliver effective responses to these demands, and selected ZAP and ZAP-fiX for a number of key reasons. Primarily, unlike other options, ZAP provides a true portfolio of testing platforms, all delivering the same consistent functional capabilities, from emulators to real devices to device clusters delivered as a hardware/software combination; truly a full application delivery lifecycle solution. Also, with customer concerns about security and integrity of confidential data, like QTP, ZAP-fiX is installed as a software product, in-house and within a company’s security protections,” said Harpreet Minhas, Chief Promoting Officer (CPO) of Tekstrom Inc. “We look forward to a long and successful partnership”.

ZAP Technologies Introduces Real Device Test Automation

ZAP Technologies has been developing and delivering leading consulting services through HP Software for more than a decade. ZAP’s specialty is designing best practices around QA management, test automation, performance validation, and application management utilizing HP software products. ZAP experts are actively involved in and work closely with HP Software research and development and product marketing teams on the latest product innovations.

Recognizing and understanding the need for automated testing for mobile apps, ZAP Technologies has developed a solution called ZAP-fiX (ZPX) that extends the HP Quality Center or HP Application Lifecycle Management desktop testing environment to many mobile platforms: iPhone, iPad, WebOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile®, Mac OS, and Unix.

Media Contact: Ishita Sharma Tekstrom Inc, 3025254281, info@tekstrom.com