Recently the product team sent out a feedback survey to our customers. We do this at least once a year (this is the third time we've sent out our survey), to ensure that we are aware of our customers' needs and current attitudes about DeviceAnywhere. The product team also reaches out to customers directly over the phone and gathers feedback indirectly through our sales and support teams; all of these methods work, but surveys are obviously the best for reaching a wide cross-section of users with a consistent set of questions. We received over 300 responses (thanks to everyone who responded!) and I wanted to share some of the results that might be of interest to the mobile industry as well as our customers.
The Results
One question I always like to ask is what mobile business our customers are in. With three surveys now under our belt, it's also possible to see some interesting trends. In the following question, respondents were asked to pick the one answer that was closest to what their company does.
Now while these results are indicative of our customer base, and not necessarily the mobile industry as a whole, I still found it very interesting to see that Mobile Internet was the most popular answer, and that Mobile banking/payment came in third, but increased considerably vs. the last 2 years!
We also asked about the wireless technologies our customers utilize. Interestingly, most of the answers got fewer responses as a percentage of the total than last time, with the exception of SMS. One possible reason for this is that as the industry grows, some mobile companies are beginning to specialize.
We see this with some of our customers who are focused on developing for certain smartphone platforms, like BlackBerrys or the iPhone. BREW saw the biggest % decrease - this may be a function of our expansion into Europe; more European developers and European phones likely means a smaller percentage of BREW developers in our customer base.
In this last posted question, we asked how our customers use DeviceAnywhere. While the traditional use is QA of mobile applications and content, customers are using DeviceAnywhere for a variety of other reasons as well, including product demos and marketing presentations.
This is a theme that has been prevalent in a lot of our discussions with customers; that as phones and apps become more functional but also more complex, the need for online demos and tutorials increases. That's the idea behind our DeviceAnywhere Consumer product, which provides interactive demos of phones and applications that can be hosted on any website.
Thanks again to our survey respondents; I personally read every single response and your input and ideas greatly influence the features and improvements we make to DeviceAnywhere on an ongoing basis.
-Rachel (VP Product Marketing at DeviceAnywhere)
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