OomphHQ

myFoodBook app launches!

Tue, 21 May 2013 18:00:00 +1000

The Oomph team is proud to announce the launch of the myfoodbook: MyCollections app. We worked in collaboration with the myfoodbook team to take the recipes from their online website and compile these into rich interactive cookbooks on iPad. Combined with beautiful food imagery, the cookbooks include features like cooking mode with voice control, recipe timers and the ability to share recipes and create personalised issues of favourite recipes.

This project also gave the Oomph Design Studio the opportunity to further develop our automated workflow process for content production. The technical minds of the development team and the creative minds of the design team came together to produce a great end product! Making use of templated design layouts for the books we used scripting to take the recipe content from the myfoodbook website and feed it into the design structure for the app. myfoodbook plans to launch a number of books over the coming year and therefore using this automated workflow will be a quick, efficient and cost effective way to produce multiple issues going forward.

The first issue is a Mother’s Day Collaboration edition with featured recipes from Masterchefs Julie Goodwin and Alvin Chen. With the help of the Oomph Marketing team the app was also featured in the Food and Drinks section of app store yesterday with some great user reviews.

Watch out for the next issue launching next week, a Partner Book sponsored by Kikkoman, with more collections to follow soon after that.

Post by Erica van Der Walt - Creative Director Oomph.

13.05.13 Video - a brilliant way to promote your app! One of...

Mon, 13 May 2013 12:15:00 +1000

13.05.13 Video - a brilliant way to promote your app!

One of the biggest challenges app creators have is convincing their readers/users to download their app. Videos are proving to be one of the most effective ways to overcome these barriers. They allow your potential reader to ‘look inside’ the app and get a feel for just what they’ll get when they download your app.

Oomph has worked with the RACV to create a slick video to help promote their app and drive downloads.

We’ve been working together since the launch of the fully interactive Royal Auto iPad app in September 2012 and the eighth edition of the iPad version has just gone live featuring a trip to Italy’s Dolomites, articles on Ballarat, Okinawa, a review of the BMW 120i and much more.

As part of their strategy to push the Royal Auto magazine app to a wider audience, RACV’s digital team asked Oomph to produce a promotional video for the app highlighting the easy to use functionality, extra content available and the key features of the app, including:

• Seamless navigation

• Videos and image galleries

• Interactive maps

• Calendar events

• Sharing content with via email, Facebook and Twitter

• New content notifications

Oomph’s in-house design studio collaborated with RACV to oversee the entire production process from storyboarding, scripting, studio time with a videographer, voice-over artist and sound recording team, as well as post-production video editing.

The result is an engaging walkthrough of the app, that can be viewed by all potential users across a wide range of marketing channels as well as an introduction to the app for first time users.

If you’re keen to increase downloads, please contact OomphHQ.com today!

Publisher Australia's Young Mind's Event Review

Thu, 02 May 2013 15:26:00 +1000

Thursday, May 02, 2013

By Fiona MacDonald, PA Freelancer member and Young Minds committee member.

Young Minds is proudly sponsored by Oomph - Simply Smart Tablet Publishing.

In the three short years since Apple launched the iPad, tablets have become a major part of the publishing conversation. On 16th April, Publishers Australia’s Young Minds committee hosted a panel discussion analysing the state of tablet publishing in Australia and whether it had lived up to the hype, to over 60 attendees at Hotel CBD.

To Haymarket Media Australia creative director Sam Grimmer, who led development of the FourFourTwo iPad edition, the digital publishing industry is still very much a work in progress. “No one is really making money as yet,” he said. “But how long did it take after Gutenberg created the printing press for everyone to be reading newspapers?”

Maeve O’Rourke, executive producer of tablet and mobile at Bauer Media Group, agreed that it’s still too early to judge whether digital publishing ‘works’. “We’re doing pretty bloody well three years in,” she joked. “It’s unrealistic to think that tablet publications would suddenly become a publisher’s primary income source.”

Also participating on the panel were her Bauer colleague Robin Austin, who heads up the design side of the group’s digital publishing unit, James Thomson, editor of Fairfax Media’s BRW and Lisa Walton, marketing and strategy director at Oomph.

Better content
Despite the lack of success stories so far, the panel was convinced that tablet publications offer something unique to readers – the question now is how to make money from them.

Thomson had just finished working on the tablet edition of BRW’s famous annual Rich List issue and said that it offered surprising benefits over the print version. “We’ve made it so people can sort the list by marital status and age, as well as a range of other criteria. This is the type of extra material that’s perfect for an iPad edition,” he said.

On the advertising side of things, Sam Grimmer explained that there is huge potential for brands to create interactive ads that help readers engage with their product. He recently worked on an ad for a sportswear company and created a “really sexy” fully rotational model of a running shoe that readers could interact with. He believed it would make someone want to buy it more than an image in a print publication.

But O’Rourke told the audience that for now, most advertising is still produced for the print magazine and then inserted into the tablet edition as a side note by sales teams.

New revenue streams
Walton believed there would be five potential commercial models for tablet publishing – subscriptions, advertising and app downloads were the basic ones. But she also believed that sponsorship models – where one company could take out 70% or more of the ads in an issue – would be more lucrative in digital editions than print ones, given their potential to create interactive ads.

“The fifth model is content marketing, where you inspire people to buy more through the magazine, just like Coles does,” Walton explained, adding “iPads may have less reach than online at the moment, but research shows they have a lot more engagement, so there are big opportunities.”

Changing the way people read
But for now, said Austin, the amount of time, expertise and money that digital apps require is holding them back – and that goes for the ads as well.

This is the reason many magazines opt for a ‘replica’ tablet edition – essentially a PDF of the print magazine that people can view on their tablet devices. While these can be more profitable, particularly because they don’t require much in the way of extra design resources, they don’t take advantage of the features of tablets.

“We need to learn to combine strong work flow with good design, that’s the key,” said Austin. “Right now every designer is used to designing A3 spreads, and suddenly they’re working with an A5 spread with no page count and too many photos. “The whole structure is different to a print magazine – people don’t flip through iPad editions, they see a headline they like and they expand the story.”

Advertisers don’t necessarily have access to creative teams who can create material for tablet devices. This is where Walton believed publishers could find a sixth possible revenue stream: creating ads for their advertisers.

Now it just remains to be seen whether readers will pay for magazine content on a regular basis – that’s a question the whole publishing industry wants to see answered.

“If people aren’t going to pay for content, we’re all stuffed really, whether we’re on iPads or not,” said BRW’s Thomson. “But I think there’s definitely potential for tablet publishing, we’re still just working out efficient ways to give people what they want.”

View photos of the event

Like Young Minds on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/PAyoungminds

Publishers Australia Young Minds is proudly sponsored by Oomph in 2013. Oomph - Simply Smart Tablet Publishing. Visit OomphHQ.com for more information.

The Coles Magazine iPad App promotional video. Jam packed with...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 17:19:46 +1000

The Coles Magazine iPad App promotional video. Jam packed with beautiful easy to cook recipes, with useful functionality including Shopping lists, meal planners and favourites. It’s fastest downloaded iPad magazine in Australian and recognised by Apple as one of six top Newsstand Apps of 2012 - be sure to check it out.

Honda Digital Brochures

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 17:03:54 +1000

April 30th 2013

Honda Australia is following up on their successful Honda Australia Magazine that launched in July 2012 with the Honda Australia Digital Brochures App exclusively for the iPad. The app brings Honda vehicle information to life with awesome interactive media, vibrant images, video and the ability to customise your drive.

Every page provides the user with the option to request a find a dealer, request a test drive and presents all the car specs on easy to understand reports. Honda have launched with the CR-V, Civic Hatch and Jazz Vibe.

Choosing a car has never been so easy!

Proudly powered and produced by Oomph.

Congratulations MCA! Anish Kapoor App wins Best Web Award

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 15:29:00 +1000

On the evening of April 19 in Portland, Oregon USA, the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Anish Kapoor ePublication was recognised at the international Museum and Web Conference MW2013. The iPad application won the Rich Media category of the Best of the Web Awards.

Attracting over 600 museum professionals from across the globe, the event explores the current and potential use of digital technology within the museum industry.

Keir Winesmith, the MCA’s Manager, Digital Media, said: “We choose the Oomph platform because it has the wide range of features and stability we required to create the ‘living catalogue’ concept we wanted to explore with this ground breaking app.”

About the MCA’s iPad app.

The digital publication for Anish Kapoor’s solo exhibition at the MCA is the first of a series of free and paid digital publications that will be made available through the MCA Publications app for iPad.

This iPad app is proudly powered on the Oomph digital publishing platform and Oomph Creative Technologist Tony Redhead worked on the stunning panoramas of this amazing exhibition. You can read more about Tony’s involvement in his blog here.

About the Anish Kapoor ePublication

MCA is leading the way with this stunning ‘living catalogue’. The MCA website gives a great overview of the benefits of this type of catalogue and how the app was released in 3 stages:

“In a world first, the publication is a ‘living catalogue’ that evolved over the course of the exhibition. This has allowed the Museum to present the singular experience of the exhibition and its installation through interviews, photographs and videos recorded on site and in the Kapoor studio.

A traditional printed catalogue produced months ahead of an exhibition fails to capture the installation challenges and in situ exhibition.

The e-publication has unfolded in three steps: a preview, the installation and the exhibition itself.

The Preview Edition launched the day of the exhibition opening and focused on the breadth of Kapoor’s practice.

The Installation Edition explored the challenge of the exhibition installation through video interviews and documentation.

The Final Edition reflects on the Anish Kapoor exhibition, adding a series of different perspectives on the exhibition from curators, visitors and MCA staff.”

MCA and Oomph

Beyond the use of the Oomph platform to power this amazing app, the Oomph team provided MCA with training and production assistance with the Preview Edition. From here, the MCA team could used the Oomph platform to create the final stages of the app and will now be able to use the platform to power future ePublications.

Tony Redhead provided panoramic photography services and template development for the Final Edition and recalls, “Having the opportunity to work with the MCA Team was fantastic. Anish Kapoor’s work is incredible and to have the opportunity to get up close and photograph it was a unique experience. Finally, having a platform like the iPad and Oomph to present the work to a global audience in such a beautiful way is immensely satisfying.”

Download the MCA iPad App

Congratulations to the MCA for an amazing app!

Best wishes,

Team Oomph

Introducing Oomph Cloud Connector

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:34:00 +1000

Connect your back office information such as spreadsheets with your apps via the Oomph Cloud Connector. Update pricing, inventory, specifications and anything else by simply updating your spreadsheet.

Advantages of Oomph Cloud Connector

No longer will your app and data be out of sync
No costly app updates
No slow content updates

Applications of Oomph Cloud Connector

Sales Decks - keep pricing up to date
Retails Apps - manage inventory, pricing and buy links from the cloud
KPI Dashboards - keep a realtime view of your companies Key Performance Indicators on your iPad

Oomph can now accept content from InDesign/Woodwing, CMS’s, databases and cloud documents. No other digital publishing solution offers this array of content formats all following Oomph simple smart publishing conventions.

The video below shows the availability and pricing of a group tour to Japan being updated in real time using a Oomph cloud connect app. Combining an update with a push notification means your app users always have the most of to date information where ever they are.

Oomph Cloud Connector will be available from the Oomph Pro team beginning in April 2013. Find out more about cloud connector.

We wil keep you posted!

Team Oomph

Announcing Oomph Pro - all our brands under the one umbrella

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 16:46:00 +1000

With the ongoing success of the Oomph brand in the digital publishing space, it made sense that our professional services, formerly Mogeneration, took it’s rightful place under the Oomph brand umbrella as Oomph Professional Services (Oomph Pro).

As a part of the new brand alignment, we have launched the new Oomph Pro Website.

Since 2008, we have provided the tools and expertise to help clients deliver world class tablet solutions. Oomph Pro services include account management, design and production, project management and strategy services.

Our website features an exciting new range of Enterprise grade products that sit along side Oomph Pro’s digital publishing solutions:

Sales Mobility Solutions

Retail and Kiosk Style Apps

Training and Development

Our plan is to continue to focus and expand our enterprise service offering as more and more businesses adopt media tablets into their sales and communication strategies.

Friends of Oomph Pro

Oomph the platform powers almost 300 Apps that are used by over 2 million people.

Oomph Marketplace
Oomph Marketplace is an online space where you can buy and sell iPad app templates. Marketplace operates in a similar way to many Wordpress template providers - simply download and modify an existing template, then publish. It’s that simple.

Marketplace is great for designers and publishers who want to make apps fast.

Want to talk to us? All of our offices can be contacted on sales@oomphhq.com or through our website.

Posted by

Lisa Walton - Strategy Director, Oomph Pro

More tablet insights from Lisa to help you increase your ROI

Spotlight on the Museum of Contemporary Art and M2 Magazine

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 16:45:00 +1000

MCA Publication - second edition.

The interactive view of the Kapoor’s work takes you through a preview of the exhibition and awesome behind the scenes information about the installation. As the exhibition comes to a close at the MCA, this app feature will become a multimedia celebration of the entire event. Something a coffee table book could never achieve.

Explore Anish Kapoor’s art

Download the MCA iPad App

We welcome exciting publisher M2 to the world of iPad

M2 publishing have hit the ground running, launching 5 iPad magazines in Australia, New Zealand and America.

They launched their first iPad magazine M2 on the 6 December in time for the hugely popular Annual M2 Man of the Year Awards in NZ.

From their they have launched M2 Australia, M2 Women, Capital Magazine and Spark.

We will follow their success closely and wish them all the best with their well designed iPad magazines.

Posted by

Lisa Walton - Strategy Director, Oomph Pro

Preview app templates online - experience before you buy

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 16:45:00 +1000

We’ve launched web previews of app templates!

Now you don’t need an iPad handy to experience the awesome templates available on Marketplace. With just one click, your browser becomes an all singing, all dancing iPad.

Simply, hit the Preview button next to the template you are viewing and see for yourself.

All templates on the Marketplace can be previewed online.

Coming soon to all Oomph clients

Increase revenue by giving your online customers a web preview of your app.

How? Extend the exposure of your content by directing your marketing to an interactive web preview of your app - encouraging engagement and downloads.

Full details in the coming weeks.

Be the first to know, like us on Facebook or join the Oomph User Group on LinkedIn

Team Oomph

Oomph 21 is go!

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 13:36:00 +1000

Oomph is pleased to announce release 21 of our iOS platform. This is available now for all online and full service clients. We have been working through updating all of our non-standalone apps to version 21 and expect to have this completed this week.

This release started its life as a bug fix release, however it was soon extended to include some new much requested functionality.

We’ve included a brand new audio widget, which is now implemented natively. This gives much better performance and allows us to introduce some new features such as support for streaming audio and support for continuous play while reading other content in an app (ambient mode). This new audio widget is completely backwards compatible with the previous version.

Also, based on some of the content our customers were producing, we noticed that many of you were wanting to apply static animations (i.e. not visibly animating to the user) to objects on a page, for example rotating or translating an image. Animations were not designed to support this, so we’ve added a new feature we call “default transitions”. This effectively allows you to apply a transition before the page is rendered, such as scaling, rotation or translation.

We have improved our URI scheme support to include allowing an app to be opened on the Downloads screen. Many customers use this in their email marketing, to drive customers directly to the download screen when a new issue is available.

If you are an Oomph SDK customer, we have replaced our previous time-based licence with an API key based licence. This gives you increased confidence when your customers do not (or are unable to) update their app, in that the older ones will no longer expire. Contact our sales team if you would like to enquire about licensing the Oomph SDK in your app.

Oomph 21 is our first release to drop support for iOS 4, the full reasoning behind this was circulated to customers and posted on our blog last year.

Due to a Twitter API change, we were also forced to drop support for our Twitter widget (full details here). We have replaced this with a new widget, the Twitter Timeline which uses Twitter’s “user timeline widget” under the hood. Full details on configuring a timeline widget for use in Oomph are provided here.

We have also fixed some bugs, in particular to do with Flurry and Google analytics, and also when using animations in popups.

As always, full release notes are available in our documentation.

Posted by

Tom Adams - CTO, Oomph

That's my favourite! Encourage users to bookmark your content.

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 18:10:31 +1000

The New Oomph Bookmark Widget Hotspot

What is it?

This new Oomph bookmark widget encourages users to bookmark pages of your content without needing to return to the bookmark button in the main navigation menu. You create the bookmark widget like any other Oomph hotspot.

How is it different from the standard Oomph bookmark button?

This new bookmark widget is a hotspot that can be added directly to your content to highlight the bookmark and collections feature. If you want to highlight text, images or video in your content and encourage users to add your pages to their favourites, then the bookmark widget is for you.

How do I create these bookmark widgets?

Read the documentation.

If you have any questions, ask our lively Oomph community.

Enjoy!

Team Oomph

Oomph update: Twitter API changes and widgets

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 14:46:31 +1000

You may have heard that Twitter is officially switching off its v1 API this March. Unfortunately, our Twitter feed widget uses the v1 API that twitter is removing from service.

Though these changes are beyond our control, we’ve been working hard to minimise the disruption these changes will have on Oomph content & our customers.

The not so good news:

Changes to the Twitter API are beyond our control.
Due to the way the new API works, there is no way to maintain backwards compatibility, in a way that works for all users (i.e. ones without Twitter accounts), conforms to Twitter’s API terms of service and brand guidelines, and works within their API rate limits.

The awesome news:

We have built a new Twitter timeline widget, using the officially support embedded timelines.
In typical Oomph style, this will be just as easy to use as the current widget.

We expect to release this new widget as part of our next release (Oomph 21) in the next couple of weeks.

Hook up to our social network to hear the latest.

Catch up with you soon,

Team Oomph.

An international crowd of first time Oomphers building app templates

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 07:56:00 +1000

Graphic Designers are the new rock stars of the digital world and we love them. As part of the launch of the preview of Marketplace, Oomph joined forces with the #1 design marketplace Design Crowd to reach designers from across the globe.

Oomph ran four category specific contests, to create Oomph iPad app templates to be sold through our Marketplace. The categories include:

Event apps
Brochures
Retail catalogues
Magazines

The finalists have been chosen, they’re an international bunch, originating from the United States, Australia, Europe and Asia.

It has been an awesome experience working with these designers and the support we have received from the customer service and marketing teams at Design Crowd has been phenomenal.

Stay tuned for more Oomph contests run with our friends over at DC.

Browse templates on Oomph Marketplace.

More about Design Crowd.

News from the lab: Oomph Live

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 07:56:00 +1000

Big news from the lab - Our latest creation, which we’re calling Oomph Live, allows you to feed images, movies, news, weather or any other RSS or XML feed into your app.

Think of the possibilities:

Show a live weather feed in your app
Grab the latest news and images from your favourite website
Add a feed from the channel subscription you love
Create an app version of your online newspaper or magazine
Create a native app version of your blog
A playlist app from your favourite radio station

During testing, we built a magazine with a cover pulling from NASA’s image of the day. We also built an app from the NASA blog, added local weather into travel templates and other cool stuff.

With Oomph live, you layout the design once (hello templates!), connect your data - and the content will automatically update. Your live content works offline & complements all existing Oomph features.

When you can you have it? Follow us on Facebook or Twitter, we will keep you posted.

The Oomph Product Team

Oomph Editor Updates - Hotspot positioning, bug fixes and Marketplace updates

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 15:51:00 +1000

There’s an new update for Oomph Editor that’s just been released. It great news for those using it in their daily production workflow. It’s version 0.1.25 and these are changes associated with this version;

- Updated to the new Marketplace
- Added the ability to download templates from the browser
- Update Hotspot positioning to enable compatible with InDesign layouts
- Fixed a problem with hotspots on InDesign exported pdf’s
- Fixed a crash on launch under certain circumstances
- Minor UI tweaks and Bug fixes

If you launch Oomph Editor you will be prompted to download the update.

For more information on Oomph Editor and download links visit: http://j.mp/SOrs0t

Oomph Editor is a desktop application for creating Oomph content & templates, allowing you to rapidly create & proof your content on your desktop or iPad. Oomph Editor allows you to build, preview and test whole projects, individual folders within projects & individual assets including. HTML, PDF, JPG, PNG, mov, mp4 and InDesign files.

Let us know how you get on via our Facebook Page

Team Oomph.

New Oomph Partner Program - You spoke, we listened!

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 16:47:00 +1000

Hello Graphic Designers, Design Agencies and Publishers,

After speaking with existing and new clients, we decided to re-model our Partner Program to make sure all the pieces fit. We’ve reduced our monthly Partner fee and provided further discounts to best support your business.

Who is our Partner Program for? Our Partner Program is for Graphic Designers, Agencies and Publishers who would like to use their graphic design skills to create rich interactive tablet apps for their clients. Packed with features Oomph gives you the creative control you need to innovate and make your clients happy.

Why Partner with Oomph?

Create rich interactive apps for your clients
Become an Ambassador of the world’s leading tablet app development platform
Receive discounts on Standalone and Newsstand app licenses
Receive the latest product information
Manage your clients in your Partner Portal
Receive your own company branded app to present to your clients
Sell your services around a proven tablet app development platform

The Oomph monthly Partner fee supports your business by giving you access to all the things you need to make money with Oomph. You will also receive discounts on app licenses and our handy revenue model tool to forecast your Oomph Partner activity in dollars.

If you are an existing Partner, you will be invited to migrate onto this new plan.

Want more info? Contact us

Mogeneration are seeking Data Analyst interns!

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 17:00:00 +1000

It’s an exciting new phase of growth and we need more hands on deck at Mogeneration in the form of an unpaid intern for our Data Analytics requirements.

We’ve had several interns in our office. All have brought skills and passion and all have taken away learnings and experience covering the start up space, technology and App development. If you think you have what it takes to work with the highest rated iPad App platform on the planet, then we’d love to hear from you!

We’re looking for a person who can:

Build and clean datasets
Perform data analysis
Perform statistical analysis and modeling
You should have an education in computer science or have a serious quant background (or both!)
You must understand both datasets as well as algorithms.
You will be able to work autonomously and organise your own work
You should have serious skills in Excel and familiarity with statistical packages, especially SQL.
You will love drawing clear insights from large and complex datasets
Be comfortable with the underlying statistical strategies and tools needed to support efficient interpretation of data.

Aside from a passion for and/or experience in all things quant related, we’re looking for proactive, smart problem solvers, with a great sense of fun and willingness to come and get their hands dirty with us in shaping the direction of the company as we grow.

Life inside a start up is a baptism of fire and while it’s a lot of fun it’s more guts than glamour.

You will get the chance to work with and learn from world class experienced professionals across a range of functions including brand marketing, operations and strategy, digital sales, software engineering, design, web and more. If you’ve been toying with the idea of starting something of your own, this is the perfect risk-free way to see what life is really like in the fast paced world of a digital startup.

For unpaid interns, we can look at flexible working arrangements - we’re happy to flex hours to accommodate other activities or academic obligations. We are looking for someone who can spare at least three days a week for 2 months or longer.

We also have a relaxed work environment - an open plan office in the heart of Sydney, with fruit, coffee and tea provided.

What would be your responsibilities? The exact job spec will depend on experience, time commitment and candidate preference.

Data Analytics Intern job spec:

Perform hands-on, large-scale data analysis working with data from multiple sources within Mogeneration.
Write SQL queries to retrieve data in order to perform analyses
Work extensively with Excel to analyze data and chart results
Develop effective statistical models for segmentation, classification, optimization, etc.
Identify actionable insights, exercise sound business judgment, suggest recommendations to influence the direction of the Mogeneration’s business.

If this sounds like you, tell us you’re interested! Contact us

Mogeneration on LinkedIn

Oomph Update: Upgrade to iOS 5 or iOS 6 before Feb 2013

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 10:34:00 +1000

With the release last week of Google Maps for iOS, the last major blocker to iOS 6 adoption has been removed. 94% of people are now running iOS 5 or 6 on their iPhones and 88% on their iPads. This leaves a very small percentage of people using iOS 4 and prior releases.

Source: Chitika.com

Supporting older operating systems comes at a cost for software companies. More systems mean additional testing and bug fixing is required to ensure software works across older systems, and those systems themselves may have bugs that require workarounds. There is also an opportunity cost. By allocating resources to supporting legacy systems, we are not able to allocate them to platform innovations. Maintaining legacy support also hinders our ability to innovate as we cannot take advantage of newer features & APIs in the host platform.

Our official stance, for most of our current products, is that we support the current and previous major releases of an an operating system. For iOS this means iOS 5 and 6, for the Mac this means Lion and Mountain Lion. While this is our aim, we understand that this may not always be amenable to some customers. For example, some cannot upgrade past Mac OS X Snow Leopard because of prohibitive upgrade prices on some of their core workflow tools. We may also choose to release new products only on the latest platform, as key APIs may only be available on these platforms.

Our current iOS product supports iOS 4 through 6, across all iPad models. Our analytics tell us that for Oomph apps, between 1.5% and 4% of users are running iOS 4.x, and approximately 10% are using the iPad 1. As newer devices such as the iPad mini take more market share, we expect this percentage to drop even further. For both iOS 4 and iPad 1 users, there is no technical reason that these devices cannot be upgraded to at least iOS 5 (the iPad 1 cannot run iOS 6).

As of 1st February 2013, we will no longer support iOS 4 in our iOS platform updates. This means that soon after Apple releases iOS 7 (expected late 2013), new Oomph apps and updates will no longer support the first generation iPad.

Where possible, we would encourage our customers to recommend their readers update to iOS 5 or iOS 6.

Want to deliver apps on Android and iOS? We listen to the experts.

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 20:21:00 +1000

At Oomph we understand the importance of being on the forefront of technology and staying ahead of the game. So we think very carefully about where we invest our development time and money. We follow all the latest news, listen to industry experts and also use our own expertise to determine our next move.

Recently, one particular expert, Adobe’s Senior Director of Product Zeke Koch revealed a very interesting statistic that supports Oomph’s direction: of all downloads of Adobe DPS mags, a total of 3% were on Android. 3%.” (read the full article).

So you have to ask yourself: What are your motivations for launching cross-platform today?

Do you want to generate more revenue? Capture the entire audience base for your product? If the answer to either of these questions is ‘yes’, you need to consider the following information before you invest your hard earned dollars:

Tablets have a much higher ROI than desktops. 70% better ROI varies by device iOS is double android.

iPad To Dominate Tablet Downloads For Next 5 Years, Owning 56% In 2017

Henry Blodget CEO, Co-founder and Editor in Chief of Silicon Valley’s Business Insider released some telling statistics in their State of the Internet 2012 report:

Yes, Android has the largest mobile platform globally.

But Apple is dominating app revenue,

And when looking at the tablet market specifically, it’s totally dominated by Apple.

Android is leading in mobile but making little impact in tablet so far.

So the conclusion from the above is quite simple, Android customers are a cost conscious bunch and because of that ethic, they are less likely to spend money on apps. Which is fine if your business is primarily investing in the freemium market.

Here at Oomph we like making our customers money and demonstrating their ROI through reach and sales, something Apple and the iPad have in the bag.

Also, it’s nearly impossible to support all Android devices with your app. Meaning, not only you will need to dumb down the iPad experience to try and get it right for your Android customers but the app may not work effectively on every Android device your customer uses.

Oomph’s game is very much in smart investment. We could spend time and money investing in the development of an out-of-box Android experience for your audience but Android technology cannot support a slick interactive experience like the iPad and the industry statistics are clear when analysing the reality of delivering ROI on Android.

Let’s be clear here, Oomph are not complacent about the strength of Android. Oomph does support delivering Android apps, it can, with bespoke build costs included, deliver an Android experience. Just talk to our friends at The Australian.

But what about HTML5 and the rise of mobile sites? Just ask Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Oomph CEO Keith Ahern about that one. Zuckerberg openly regretted his investment in HTML5 in favour of native apps read more

Speaking of which, Keith and our CTO Tom Adams are, quite frankly, forces to be reckoned with. Their direction and strategic thinking has brought Oomph to where it is today.

Keith puts our thoughts about Android and HTML5 into words: We are not complacent in our thinking, we do think other tablets will rise over the next 12 months - perhaps it will be the new Kindle Fires or even a new Google or Microsoft device. We have architected Oomph to be device independent, we look forward to a bona fide iPad competitor in 2013.

Some of Oomph’s tablets (L-R) Samsung Galaxy 7”, Barnes and Noble Nook, Kindle Fire

We continuously work on our HTML5, Windows 8 and Android version of Oomph. You can see some working examples Oomph HTML5 (requires Chrome, Safari or IE8+) and Oomph Windows 8 (video). Oomph is definitely excited about the future of tablets, you are in safe hands with us.

The Facts:

of all downloads of Adobe DPS mags, a total of 3% were on Android.
iPad revenue is double that of Android
the iPad is predicted to dominate the download market, owning 57% in the next 5 years
Android has the largest smartphone platform globally
Apple is dominating app revenue by millions of dollars
Apple is dominating the tablet market
most research shows that iPad enjoys between 68% and 95% of the tablet marketshare
supporting all Android devices is nearly impossible leading to an inconsistent user experience
you will need to dumb down your iPad experience to present your app on Android.

What do other people think?

The Android Conundrum: People Buy More Phones And Do Less With Them

Is It Time To Conclude That Android Gadgets Are Bought By People Who Don’t Actually Do Anything With Them?

Why we’ve decided to stop producing TNW Magazine for Android - The Next Web

If you would like more information or have any questions regarding this article talk to Oomph - we would love to hear what you think.