MobOS – Interview with Teodora Chetan
1. Tell me few words about MobOS. What is all about?
Teodora: MobOS stands for Mobile Operating Systems Community Conference and it is the first initiative of its kind in Transylvania. Designed to be the touching point of the mobile community in the local and regional area, MobOS addresses both the iOS and Android technologies, aiming at increasing the knowledge and motivation of the mobile developers.
MobOS 2nd edition happened between 19-20 February 2015 in Cluj Napoca and consisted of 2 days: the presentations day and the workshops day. With 10 speakers out of which 6 international ones, the speaker panel was much appreciated and their topics well received by the 220 participants on both tracks: iOS and Android.
2. Why did do you chose to create and organise MobOS in Cluj-Napoca?
Teodora: Inspired by the desire to create a community around the mobile technology at local level, and being strongly connected to Cluj Napoca, me and my friend decided to do some concrete steps in creating development opportunities for a sector we believe has great potential.
Cluj Napoca’s IT sector is in a steep development and so is the mobile community. We believe the community though needs two important things for a stronger development: physical touching points as well as an international latest technology “fresh air”. Both of them have standed as objectives for a conference on mobile technology solely dedicated to mobile developers at local and regional level. We are happy to see that now with the second edition we have managed to gather participants from outside Cluj Napoca and we are hoping to become shortly the most important mobile developing community touch point in Transylvania.
3. What do you think are the trends in mobile development and mobile marketing?
Teodora: The definite trends we see in the mobile development are the increased usage of the Cloud, the increased development of hybrid apps on multiplatforms and the huge development of mobile banking and payments.
The Cloud is developing more and more as a solution and soon there will be only 3 main things that will differentiate the competitors: the speed (push notifications and different such mechanisms), bandwidth (how well does it work when the internet connection is not running smoothly) and how much battery it consumes.
Something that we believe can be a big thing in the future is the integration of 3D in mobile apps as a next challenge but also as a next big cool thing in terms of mobile development.
The mobile is becoming more and more a part of our day-to-day life and companies use it as a form of marketing in standard or even more creative ways. Mobile shopping, mobile advertising and mobile applications for different services companies offer are definitely things we see growing in the future and definite trends marking the mobile marketing world.
We see a stronger integration between the mobile development and mobile marketing domains. They need each other more and more to exist and develop and that is why we see companies developing integrated mobile departments capable of offering mobile solutions to anyone regarding the need.
4. Why should a company have a mobile marketing strategy?
Teodora: The smartphone usage globally overpassed 25% in 2014, 9 countries having more than 50% of its populations owning and using a smartphone. A smartphone is almost indispensable nowadays to business people and to the bigger part of the consumer’s market. In such a world, ignoring being there where your main consumers are is plain ignorance and companies choosing this will suffer for sure. Being mobile it’s not an option anymore – no matter the company profile or industry.
Taking into account the amount of information coming from everywhere, the attention span of an individual is shorter than ever and companies need to take advantage of any possible mean they can get the little attention left from their consumers.
A mobile marketing strategy basically is the mean for a company to a) be there where their mobile consumers are, and b) taking advantage of the little attention they can still grab from consumers.
5. What are your advices for companies that are thinking to be more mobile oriented in their communication and marketing strategy?
Teodora: To any company: call a provider or hire mobile developers and mobile marketers. If you sell products, do e-commerce on smartphones and tablet, if you sell services make the whole process of whatever you do easy to access and fast to get. We live in a speedy world, people have less and less time, so you, as a smart company, should adapt to the world we live in today. And you should adapt now. Or yesterday!
Thanks Teodora!
Teodora Chetan is one of the co-founders of the Romanian Mobile Software Development Community, together with Andreea Parvu. Together, they have organized a few events on mobile development, out of which 2 editions of the conference MobOS. With a strong vision for the mobile future, Teodora and Andreea plan to offer relevant information to the community in order to contribute to its growth and relevance in Transylvania and around the world. The MobOS team is completed by 2 technical engineers experts on mobile development on iOS and Android that provide the team with constant feedback on latest trends and topics of the presentations that should be included in the conference.
