Speaking with business owners and "Apprenuers" in London, I'm often asked to provide a quote for a blackberry app as well as for an app on iOS and Android. And for good reason too. In Blackberry's "heyday" it got a lot of market adoption from business professionals and the school crowd. And that adoption is still 'lurking' about in London in the same crowds. Plus, with the recent launch of Blackberry's 'comeback' phone, it's a worthy question. However, in my opinion, when App Developers London an app, just because you know a lot of people who have Blackberrys or a majority of your customers do... it's not just a case of market share... The most important thing to consider is app adoption. So out of all the Blackberry smartphones that are out there, how many people actually use apps? According to mobilestatistics.com, in Q1 of 2012 Blackberry had a total app downloads of only 3bn, since it's app debut in 2011. With Android having total app downloads of 15bn and Apple 30bn at the same time.

So when considering investing into an app project, I always recommend starting off with the most popular platform being iOS. From there I suggest taking it one step at a time. But I don't recommend investing in a Blackberry app 'straight from the jump', if at all, as you'd be wasting resources you could be using to aid the success of your app(s) on the other platform(s).

To help you plan out your app project, I'm going to share with you 3 things you should consider and spend time thinking about or get answers to, when developing your app:

1. What will your app actually do?

Now, you may laugh but due to the nature of apps, with so many possibilities and the ability to get one app to do a hundred things, you fundamentally need to iron out what you're getting the app to do, is it to inform, drive data, entertain? Get this defined and it'll be a steady guideline throughout the process.

2. Do you want design & development or just development?

It's really easy to mistake software for functionality. What I mean by that, is in some scenarios, you maybe developing software that can be used on a laptop or pc, but you want the app equivalent. Some may think all you need to do is design what the app will look like and 'stick it on'. Not the case. The app is a separate piece of software and it doesn't matter how good the app design look, it won't work if you don't develop the software to get the app to function. So app software needs to be developed too. On the other had, you maybe fully capable of designing what the app will look like but you need app developers to code the software I just mentioned. Either way, you need to define what part, if not all, of the app project you'd like your app developer to help you with. Which leads me to the 3rd point.

3. Are there any 3rd party systems or websites that the app needs to get information from or submit information to?

As mentioned in the previous point, does the information in the app need to be gathered from somewhere like your system? Or does the information need to go to somewhere like your system? This is a very important question.

Using the previous point as an example, your building the system and the app needs to connect to that system to work properly, so this needs to be mentioned. But if this is your first app project or first project in the software arena you may not have this system available and so  App Developers London haven't built it... so this system therefore needs to be built also.

Your app developer should be able to build this system for you or you need to get it built. Either way, you to need to mention this to your app developers so that they can advise you on what is or what isn't necessary.