It is no surprise to hear nowadays that tablets and cell phones have out-sold desktops and laptops in worldwide sales. In this modern era everybody wants to stay connected and small portable devices allow you to communicate with the world 24/7. With the world making a switch in preference for the use of mobile devices, developers started creating mobile applications, more commonly known as mobile apps. They are designed specifically to run on smartphones and other mobile devices and take advantage of device features such as touch-screen, camera integration and GPS.
At the beginning of this year, Apple revealed that 50 billion apps had been downloaded from the AppStore since its opening in 2008. In fact, they gave a $10,000 gift card to an American, Brandon Ashmore, for being the person who downloaded the 50 billionth app. Parallel to this, Google announced that 48 billion apps have been downloaded from Google Play to date.
Users can download all kinds of apps these days, from games to social networking to retail, music, online banking, etc. You even see great companies working together to bring people outstanding apps, like the Nike+ app which was developed in partnership between Nike (Sporting goods) and Apple (Technology) two of the most recognized brands in the world. The growth of mobile apps continues and there is a lot of room for new business.
Prashant Fuloria, the CPO of Flurry (a company that provides app developers with tools to measure how much people are using their apps) commented in a conference in San Francisco this year that: "China recently surpassed the U.S. with the number of smart devices, with 240 million smartphones and tablets in use. But that represents just a quarter of China’s population, which means potentially, there’s far more room for growth in China. Ditto in India, which has the same number of smart device users as Canada — but has 36 times the population".
Mobile apps have gone global and there is continuing growth especially in emerging markets such as China, India and Latin America.
Nevertheless, there is a challenge for app developers when they are creating a global app and this is where Andovar can help. We can make sure that your app is well developed and ready to go when launching it into other countries. Here at Andovar, we have an extensive database of professional linguists in over 80 languages. Translating the app is the easy part, the difficulty is when the translated material is ready for integration. As you probably know there are two main operating systems for mobile devices, iOS (Apple) and Android (Google). While with iOS you only need to work on a few screen sizes (iPhones and iPads), with Android you have to work with many. This can be very tricky when trying to release a multilingual app.
For instance, most languages expand in length when translated, some more than others, but there will always be a notable difference. At Andovar, we have the ability not only to localize the content but also to execute the integration, as well as the testing of your app. Our multicultural team of professionals allows us to identify the best practice for your particular needs. Our team is composed of experienced engineers, developers, technicians and project managers who will work with you to make sure that your timelines and quality standards are met. Below are the steps we apply when localizing a standard app with no multimedia content:
- Pre-engineering of the app
- Translation
- Editing
- Client review of translation
- Integration/Testing (Linguistic + Functional)/Client review/Implement changes (if needed)/Final QA
- Delivery of fully localized app
This is only the short and sweet of services we can offer for your app. Should your app have any multimedia content, we are able to localize it as well. We have our own recording studios, which gives us the capability to do voice-over, as well as creating subtitles in more than 80 languages. If you want more information about our processes or our global team, feel free to contact us for a consultation. We will make your app go from local to GLOBAL.
