A Study on the Different Types of Mobile Applications ...

A Study on the Different Types of Mobile Applications Available for Hand Held Devices in the Field of Agriculture Tabassum Shaikh* Assistant Professor ;Allana Institute of Management Sciences

Shabib-Ahmed Technical Officer, CSIR-Unit for Research and Development of Information Products ; Research Scholar, Symbiosis International University

ABSTRACT : Agriculture is the backbone of economies and nations heavily depend on their agricultural production. However, with explosive growth in population and living habits, limited expansion of cultivation land and resources, rising production cost and increasing environmental pressures, agriculture is facing multiple challenges. Nations and organizations have started educating farmers and providing live updates by means of different applications available for various software through different hand held devices. This study tries to compare various applications available, their advantages, limitations, availability, pricing if any and the platform used for development. KEYWORDS :Agriculture, Mobile apps, Farming, hand-held devices INTRODUCTION : Agriculture, the backbone of India, provides principal means of livelihood for about two third of the Indian population. 70 percent of the world's rural poor population depends on agriculture as the main source of income and employment1. Global agricultural production is expected to slow from and annual growth of 2.1% between 2003 and 2012 to 1.5% a year on average over the coming decade. This slow down is attributed to reasons such as limited expansion of agricultural land, rising production costs, growing resource constraints and increasing environmental pressures2. Agriculture in the 21st century faces multiple challenges as it has to produce more food and fibre to feed a growing population, more feedstocks for a potentially huge bioenergy market, contribute to overall development in the many agriculture-dependent developing countries, adopt more efficient and sustainable production methods and adapt to climate change 3. To get better quality yield and productivity, Nations and Organisations are educating farmers from time

to time. In the case of agricultural productivity, farmers and agricultural workers have many needs from information about and access to financial services to knowledge on best farming methods and techniques; information on potential selling opportunities, agricultural inputs (e.g., seeds and fertilizer), weather, transport, storage options, and more4. Providing accurate agricultural information to farmers in a timely manner is a challenge and nations are coming up with innovative ideas for the same. The Internet has also expanded distribution channels and ways of reaching people as the amount of online users are increasing day by day and the means of accessing the web has also changed dramatically. Mobile devices are playing an important role in disseminating information in a timely manner. Various mobile software and mobile applications are available for providing live information in different fields and agriculture is one of them. This paper tries to showcase a comparative study on the different types of mobile applications available, their advantages, limitations, licenses etc. Modes of Information dissemination : Technology is moving at a fast pace and the systems of communications has changed drastically in print media as well as electronic media. The print media even though the oldest and still popular for disseminating information has its own limitations and reach. In the Agro industry, where many of the farm owners are illiterate or are do not have sufficient time to read, the print media has much less impact than that in the other sectors. The electronic media on the other hand has evolved giving a person a voice, expressive power and can be edited, changed and modified at any moment of time. With the advent of the internet, the mode of communications changed rapidly and many websites came up providing informations, online training as well and live updates to the public. This was also true in the case of Agriculture as many web sites

provided information about different sectors and services of agriculture5. However, lack of farming personal who can handle a computer, internet connectivity and bandwidth proved to be a limitation in the field of Agriculture. As the internet and its technology evolved, cloud computing became the fifth generation of computing and with its use in handheld devices, mobile applications have now taken over as a new mode for disseminating of information to the public. Mobile apps thus are also evolving the field of agriculture. Penetration of the Mobile phones Mobile phones have become the most common mode of communication and have penetrated globally. In their various design and features, mobile phones can be found in the pockets of the wealthy and poor alike. As per the International Telecommunication Union (Feb, 2013) There are 6.8 billion mobile subscriptions worldwide, which is equivalent to 96 percent of the world population, with 89 percent in the developing countries 6. Recent figures suggest that over 90 million Indians owns mobile phones .It is the world's secondlargest mobile phone user base with over 929.37 million users as of May 2012 and with 14.31 million user of broadband internet (May 2012)7. As the mobile phone market has evolved, so is the market for hand held devices and the smartphones market share was the maximum with 60% in the product category of smart connected devices as per IDC. Details are given in the following table 1 : Smart connected device market by product category (shipments in millions), according to IDC Type of 2012 shipments 2012 market device share Smartphone 722.4m 60.1% Tablet 128.3m 10.7% Portable PC 202m 16.8% Desktop PC 148.4 12.4% Total 1201.1m 100.0% Source: © IDC (Feb 2013) Via: © mobiThinking 8 Table 1 : Smart connected device market by product category according to IDC Mobile Apps and their use. The use of Mobile apps is increasing day by day. Numbers for total number of apps worldwide are hard to come by, but the Apple App Store (for apps that work on Apple devices) and Google Play (for apps that work on Android devices), are believed to be the two largest stores with over 800,000 apps apiece, according to Canalys and as per Portio Research (March 2013), 1.2 billion people worldwide were using mobile apps at the end of 2012. This is forecast to grow at a 29.8 percent each year, to reach 4.4 billion users by the end of 2017 9.

Mobile application is software application that is developed for small hand held devices such as mobile phones, smart phone, tablet, PDAs and so on. These apps are a small individual software that have limited functionality. Mobile application are commonly known as “app”. These apps are usually available from application distribution platform such as Window Phone Store, App Store, Google Play, Nokia Store, BlackBerry App World etc. that are downloaded from internet to the target devices. Some of the apps are free where as some apps are paid and bought. A comparison on the platform for apps is depicted in the following table 2: Technical Specifications Specifi cation

Andro id

iOS

Latest Versio n

Androi d 4.4.2(k it kat)

iOS 7.0.4

OS Type

Linux

CPU Archit ecture

Progra mming Langu ages Licens e SDK Platfor m(s)

Blac kber ry OS 7.1.0 .108 7

Wind ows Phon e 6.5.3

Mac OS/U nix

Mob ile OS

ARM, MIPS, Power, x86

ARM

AR M

C,C++, Java

C, C++, Objec tive-C Propri etary

C++, Java

Micro soft Mobil e Qualc omm Snapd ragon (Base d on A RM V.7 or later) C, C+ +

Free & Open Source Linux, MacO S X, Windo ws

Mac OS X via iOS SDK

Prop rieta ry Win dow s

Symba in

Nokia Belle Featur e Pack 2/2 RTOS

ARM, x86

C++

Propri etary

Proprie tary

Wind ows P hone SDK

Crossplatfor m, Windo ws (prefer red is Qt), Carbid e.c++,J ava ME, third-

party softwa re (OPL) Table 2: Technical Specification of different mobile platform

10 11 12

Libraries & Demo Lifestyle Live Wallpaper

0 4 0

0 0 0

0 4 0

13

Media & Video

2

0

2

14

Medical

0

0

0

15

Music & Audio

0

0

0

16

News & Magazines

16

0

16

17

Personalization

0

0

0

18

Photography

0

0

0

19

Productivity

8

1

9

20

Shopping

0

0

0

21 22

Social Sports

1 0

0 0

1 0

23

Tools

4

1

5

24

Transportation

0

0

0

Market Information

25

Travel & Local

3

0

3

2

Weather Information

26

Weather

0

0

0

3

Learning /Advisor Services

27

Widgets

0

0

0

4

Agricultural News

5

Financial Services

28 29

Acrade & Action Brain & Puzzle

1 1

1 0

2 1

80

13

93

These apps are also available in the different categories and agriculture is one of them. Nowadays, it is almost common knowledge that smartphones and apps have the potential to help farmers increase their yields and revenue and Mobile services such as voice, SMS, and simple data are perfect for areas where infrastructure and financial limitations prevent broadband Internet10. As this study focuses on the apps available for farming, these app are available in the following categories highlighted in the following table 3. Sr No 1

Category

Sub Category

Payment

TOTAL

Loans

Table 4: Number of agricultural apps available on Google PlayStore

Insurance 6

Geospatial Application

7

Trading Application

GPS Soil Sales Purchase

Table 3: Mobile apps category As google play store and Apple App Store are the most commonly used apps store for downloading apps, a detail study was done on the farming apps found on these two stores. A detail of these is depicted in the following table 4 and table 5. Sr. No.

Categories

Apps on Play Store Free

Paid

4

4

Total

1

Books & Reference

2

Business

3

Comics

0

0

0

4

Communication

5

0

5

5 6

Education Entertainment

3 0

1 1

4 1

7 8

Finance Games

4 0

0 0

4 0

9

Health & Fitness

2

2

22

2

8 24

4

Sr. No.

Categories

Free

Paid

1 2 3 4

Books Business Catalogs Education

1 2 1 10

1 0 0 1

2 2 1 11

5 6 7 8 9 10

Entertainment Finance Games Health & Fitness Lifestyle Medical

2 1 2 0 10 0

1 2 1 0 3 1

3 3 3 0 13 1

11 12 13 14 15 16

Music Navigation News Newsstand Photo & Video Productivity

0 1 31 0 1 17

0 0 3 0 0 10

0 1 34 0 1 27

17 18 19 20

Reference Social Networking Sports Travel

0 1 0 0

0 0 0 0

0 1 0 0

Apps on Apple Store Total

21 22 23

Utilities 19 8 27 Weather 4 0 4 Food & Drink 6 1 7 TOTAL 109 32 141 Table 5: Number of agricultural apps available on iphone AppStore

As per the above two tables, apps in the field of agriculture were available in almost all the categories of apps on Android through Google stores and iOS through Apple stores. A comparative graph depicting apps in two stores is given in figure 1. Weather

4 0 30 5 27 11 9 27 0 1 16 34 0 1 20 4 13 0 0 3 43 0 7 13 4 11 5 0 0 1 24 2 1 8 2 20

Tools Productivity News Media Health Finance Entertainment Communication Business Books

0

Australia India 18% 10% Africa 19%

Google Apple

A total of 50 apps as per country were found out of which USA had the maximum of 19 apps, followed by Africa and Australia and the India. The OS used for apps were either iOS, Android of Symbian. However, the top used apps were actually based on iOS. This is highlighted in the following table 6. 40

60

Apps on Apple and Google Stores

No. of Apps

234

141 45

80

32

93 Total

13 Free

Google Paid

Other 8%

Fig 3: Countrywise apps

There are a minimum of 234 apps available on the two popular stores for farming. There were about 93 apps for android while and 141 apps were found on apple stores in the field of farming. The Figure 2 below depicts the same.

109

China 2% Mexico 2% Sri Lanka 2% Tanzania 2%

USA 39%

20

189

Count ryw i se Apps Kenya Indonesia 4% 2%

Fig 1: Category wise apps on Apple Google Store

250 200 150 100 50 0

It can be seen from the above graph that apps on Apple store are on the higher side than Google stores in both the categories of free as well as paid apps. While most of the apps were freely available, there were some apps which were paid too. About 19 % of the apps were paid ones while a whopping 81% were freely available. . A detail study on the also revealed that there were apps related to countries or regions. This is highlighted in the following figure 3.

total

Fig 2: Apps on Apple Google Store

Software Name Farmers iClaim app iFarmers

iOS

Android

Symbian













Digital Mandi iCropTrak













FieldView







Mobile Farmer Farm Futures Magazine Spray Lite Extreme Beans IFarmer: Inventory DigitalCS













 

 

 













Table 6: Apps available on OS

A further classification of these apps showed that the majority of these apps were developed in either C or C++. This is highlighted in the following table 7: Software Name Farmers iClaim app

Supported Language English, Spanish

Development Language Objective C, C, or C++ Customized version of Java Java ME

iFarmers

English

Digital Mandi

iCropTrak

Hindi, English, Kannada Punjabi English

Objective C, C, or C++ Customized version of Java Symbian C++

FieldView

English

Mobile Farmer Farm Futures Magazine Spray Lite

English, German English

Extreme Beans IFarmer: Inventory DigitalCS

English, Spanish English English

Objective C, C, or C++ Objective C, C, or C++ Objective C, C, or C++ Objective C, C, or C++ Objective C, C, or C++ Objective C, C, or C++ Objective C, C, or C++

English, Spanish Table 7: Apps and its development language

CONCLUSION : Mobile apps are slowly becoming the preferred means for specific use which working on hand held devices and Farming is one of its category. While there were 141 apps found on Apple and 93 apps on google store, majority were available free of cost. However paid apps which specific services are also available in the field of farming. These apps were available in almost every category baring a few. It was found that most of the popular apps are based on iOS and were developed either using C programming or C++ programming language. Looking at the above comparative study, it can be concluded that the apps market is set to grow further and apps in the field of agriculture are taking IT closer to the farmers. REFERENCES : 1

http://data.worldbank.org/topic/agriculture-and-ruraldevelopment

2

http://www.oecd.org/site/oecd-faoagriculturaloutlook/oecdfao-expect-slower-global-agricultural-production-growth.htm 3http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/wsfs/docs/Issues_pap ers/HLEF2050_Global_Agriculture.pdf 4 Selecting Mobile ICT Devices For Agriculture Services & Applications In Sub-Saharan Africa ; USAID’s Fostering Agriculture Competitiveness Employing Information Communication Technologies (FACET) ; 2011 5 National Conference on Data Mining (NCDM -2011) : “A Qualitative Analysis of Websites providing agriculture related information” 6 http://mobithinking.com/mobile-marketing-tools/latestmobile-stats/a 7http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_in_India 8 http://mobithinking.com/mobile-marketing-tools/latestmobile-stats/a 9 http://www.portioresearch.com/en/blog/2013/fast-growth-ofapps-user-base-in-booming-asia-pacific-market.aspx 10 List of African mobile agriculture services and applications, source : http://www.oafrica.com/mobile/list-of-african-mobileagriculture-services-and-applications