A mobile app i.e. a mobile application is an application developed for mobile phones & smart phones. In simple terms a mobile app is a software program for your phone. These “apps” can be as simple as a basic flashlight application or a dictionary or something complicated like a Google Maps Navigation app. There are mobile apps developed for entertainment like the Facebook & Twitter app (social media networks) or the Angry Birds mobile app (games).
 

With this sudden spurt in the popularity of mobile apps, “mobile application development” has become a popular specialisation in software programming. Nishatha Abraham spoke with an expert in this domain, Rauf Adil, Head-Mobility Practice, Virtusa Corporation which is an IT consulting outsourcing company with agile software development and application rationalization services. Rauf has spent more than 17 years in the US, where he studied and worked on several early stage startups in Silicon Valley including Certus, Insevo, Nextance & has in-depth knowledge about Mobile Payments, Mobile virtual Check Ins, Mobile Device Management and Enterprise Mobility.

Campuswalkin: What do you mean by a “mobile app”? Who is a mobile app developer?

Rauf: A mobile app is a software program that runs on a mobile device such as an Apple iPhone or devices running Google Android operating System. Typically mobile apps are either native (written for a particular mobile operating system such as Apple iOS or Google Android) or they are Mobile Web based apps that use markup languages such as HTML5 and require a browser to run.

A mobile developer is a software engineer or software programmer who can design, develop and test mobile application on one or more mobile operating systems and devices (such as Apple iOS or Google Android)
 

Campuswalkin: What kind of academic training would I require to become a mobile app developer?

Rauf: You need to be proficient in a programming language such as C, C++, Objective C for writing applications on Ios (iPhone, iPad) or Java (Android, Blackberry OS). You should understand the basics of UI design and also the basics of application design, development and testing. Once you have the basics then you have to choose what platform and mobile operating system you want to specialize on and focus on it. If you want to become an iPhone & iPad developer you have to learn Objective-C, xCode and Interface Builder on Mac OS-X platform.

If you want to become a Google Android developer you have to be proficient in Java and learn Android development. Android development can be done on Mac OS-X, Windows or Linux environment.

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