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Apple earnings shows importance of mobile UX
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Apple's earnings report emphasizes the growing importance of designing for mobile web viewers with an emphasis on mobile UX. The report, which Apple released yesterday, stated that Apple sold more than 48 million iPhones, a record number for the company. Separately Apple announced last week that in one weekend alone they sold more than 13 million iPhones. Apple has firmly established itself as the king of the hill for mobile smartphones. The iPhone has become the mobile device that all UX designers and web developers must consider when evaluating and testing functionality. While the fractured Android market may hold a total market share that is greater than Apple, the iPhone is the single-largest product used by mobile Internet viewers, which is why it is important for the mobile UX design of websites to work well on iOS devices.
Apple illustrates transition from desktop to mobile UX
The shift in importance to mobile UX is seen in many areas, with Apple’s most recent sales report serving as only the most recent piece of data that illustrates this trend. Earlier this year Google reported that there are now more mobile users conducting searches each day than those using desktop computers. Individual businesses can check their own analytics data reports to see the number of mobile users and specific devices being used, to see exactly how far Apple iPhone devices lead those being used by other website visitors.
Linking UX to profitable international business
For companies that provide goods and services oversees, Apple’s earnings report shows the importance of providing localized designs that adapt to the cultural and linguistic needs of an international audience. Apple has clearly navigated this well by providing a UX and website that supports ecommerce and supports their international sales efforts. Chinese customers accounted for approximately one-quarter of their sales in the most recent quarter, yet Apple has only 25 stores in China. While the company had approximately $51 billion in total sales world-wide for the quarter, Chinese customers accounted for $12.5 billion of this total. With their strong emphasis on a comprehensive user experience, whether on their website, in their store, or unboxing a new product, Apple continues to illustrate how emphasizing design and UX leads to profitability, and how learning UX skills helps to improve the products, websites, apps and services a company delivers.
About the author
Jennifer Smith is a user experience designer, educator and author based in Boston. She has worked in the field of user experience design for more than 15 years.She has designed websites, ecommerce sites, apps, and embedded systems. Jennifer designs solutions for mobile, desktop, and iOT devices.
Jennifer delivers UX training and UX consulting for large Fortune 100 companies, small start-ups, and independent software vendors.She has served as a Designer in Residence at Microsoft, assisting third-party app developers to improve their design solutions and create successful user experiences. She has been hired by Adobe and Microsoft to deliver training workshops to their staff, and has traveled to Asia, Europe, India, the Middle East, and across the U.S. to deliver courses and assist on UX design projects. She has extensive knowledge of modern UX Design, and worked closely with major tech companies to create educational material and deliver UX workshops to key partners globally. Jennifer works with a wide range of prototyping tools including XD, Sketch, Balsamiq, Fireworks, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Blend for Visual Studio. She also works extensively in the fields of presentation design and visual design.
Jennifer is also an expert on Photoshop, digital image editing, and photo manipulation. Having written 10 books on Photoshop, and having consulted and provided training to major media companies and businesses around the globe.
Jennifer is the author of more than 20 books on design tools and processes, including Adobe Creative Cloud for Dummies, Adobe Creative Cloud Digital Classroom, and Photoshop Digital Classroom. She has been awarded a Microsoft MVP three times for her work with user experience design in creating apps for touch, desktop, and mobile devices. Jennifer holds the CPUX-F certification from the User Experience Qualification Board and assists others in attaining this designation in leading a UX certification course at American Graphics Institute. She is a candidate for a Master’s degree in Human Factors in Information Design.