Kuwait Airport app has been acquired by PiXiL

I am proud to write, that one of my application has been acquired by PiXiL, a company focusing on the smart devices such as iPhone, Android and Blackberry development.

The application will be available in Appstore as well, it just waiting for approval. It has the same functionality with the Android version.

Kuwait airport app status

Some of you might be facing some troble with the application. To make it clear, the problem is not in my side, but the official website.

The application has been downloaded around 2,700 and counting. I guess the server cannot handle too much requests right now. So if you facing some problems getting the data, please wait a while or check the official website instead. Because the website giving my script the timeout result more often now.

And for you all the iOS users, the app will be coming to app store very soon. 

Developer view: Why Android apps more expensive than iOS apps?

Some of you may asking the question above. As developer coming from iOS app, I will give you some of the reasons.

1. Developing android apps is a pain compare with iOS apps
Here is some of the reasons why developing Android apps is such a pain:

a. Simulator
The simulator is slow. It's 2011, and you need to wait around 3 - 6 minutes to see the small changes you made. Compared with iOS, it took maximum 1 minute.

b. Screen sizes
There are 4 type of screen sizes in Android, which are small screen, medium screen, large screen, and extra large screen. Each type has a range size. From the developer guide, small screen has AT LEAST 426x320. The medium screen AT LEAST 470x320, the large screen AT LEAST 640x480, the extra large screen (usually tablet) has AT LEAST 960x720.

Compared with iOS, Apple only have 2 screen sizes for iPhone and 1 screen size of iPad. The important thing is, if you only deal with 1 screen size in iPhone, your UI Design will work on all the iPhones. The different between iPhone 4 and below is a matter of the resolution.

c. Eclipse is suck
No other reason.

d. You need more device to test
At least, you need 2 devices to test your app. Currently I only have 1. But I don't want to buy another device until I really get what I'm expected.

2. Not all developers allow to sell the app
Until now, only developers from 29 countries can sell application in Android market. So google only allows developer from "3rd countries" to create Free apps. Because it's free application, no wonder the quality of their apps is so-so.

But many of them, like myself, is using a friend from 29 countries above and sell the apps under their friend name. The consequent is, their friend is asking for a percentage. Google took 30%, and a friend took around 10%. So the developer get only 60% from the actual price. 

Statistic on the Kuwait apps

Currently I have 4 apps on Android market made for Kuwait users. It's been 2 months since I built the first app for Kuwait. Let see the statistics:

Q8Benzin ($1.30)
1. Total install: 28
2. Total rating: 1
3. Total comment: 1
4. Revenue: around $20

Kuwait Airport (FREE)
1. Total install: 1556
2. Total rating: 16
3. Total comment: 10

Kuwait Deals (FREE)
1. Total install: 811
2. Total rating: 10
3. Total comment: 7

KWIBlog (FREE - new app)
1. Total install: 3
2. Total rating: 0
3. Total comment: 0

The most device used are:
1. Samsung Galaxy S2 (59.5%)
2. Samsung Galaxy Tab (9.%)
3. Samsung Galaxy S (5%)

Conclusion:
I didn't get what I expected, but I really appreciate for those who contacted me and say "Thank you". Some of them say it in arabic. But I don't really care.

Saying thank you is the easiest way, but its really make my day.  Because I only work on the app after I get home at night, and continue when I get chance. As developer, I really happy when my app can be useful for others.

So yes, I will continue making application for Kuwait.

Statistic on my Qatar apps

It's almost 1 month since I published my applications for Qatar. And these are the statistics:

Qatar Airport (FREE)
1. Total install: 271
2. Total rating: 1
3. Comment: 0
4. Most used devices: Galaxy S2 (25.5%), Galaxy Tab (11.5%), Galaxy S (10.9%)

Beside the FREE version, I do have the paid version.

Doha Airport ($1)
1. Total install: 2
2. Total rating: 0,
3. Comment: 0

Conclusion:
I am not going to make another app for Qatar.

Kuwait Aiport website new redesign

UPDATE:
The app is working fine now. If you find some problem, please let me know.

So the website is changing their design. So my application will not work anymore. I decided to unpublish my application until I can get the data back from their website.

Basically, they are not doing something big on the arrival and departure page. But unfortunately, the YQL couldn't get the status of each data which I don't know why. So I will need to create a parser by myself to get all the data. It will be much faster, but I am afraid they will noticed that my server taking their bandwidth.

Let me see on 2 or 3 days later. I should put some redesign on my app as well.

Hello to Qatar

After not very good response with Kuwait market, I would like to try another market in the middle east. When looking around the websites from across the gulf countries, I find Qatar Airport website is very good when providing the data.

So based on the Kuwait Airport app, I developed Doha Airport and Qatar Airport. The Doha Airport is paid application for $1 and the free version is Qatar Airport. The free application only allows you to get 20 results without search functionality. While the paid application will give you 60 data with search functionality.

I will wait for about 1 month to see the result. If the result is good enough, I will be happy to create another app for Qatar.

Kuwait Airport

This application is about to check the Arrival and Departure schedule on Kuwait International Airport. It's good that Kuwait Airport is providing the data on their website. I love it when some companies providing useful data to public.

How the application work

The app taking the data directly from Kuwait Airport website (here, and here), parse the HTML table to be JSON data. I may say, the Yahoo Query Language (YQL) does a very good job here. So when your android asking to get the data, my PHP file is requesting data from YQL to execute Kuwait Airport website and send the result as JSON. After that, I just need to organize the result to be able to read by your Android phone.

That mean, if Kuwait Airport website is changing their HTML data, my application won't work as expected.

Click here to download the app

Kuwait Deals

I do love some deals. There are currently 3 websites offering the best daily deals in Kuwait. Err... actually, it's 4 websites. I was just discovered the last one a couple days ago.

I'm type of lazy person who doesn't want to follow all the websites every midnight. So the idea is to collect all the deals and put it on my Android phone (to be honest, the app also available on my iPhone, but I don't have guts to publish it). Lucky me, the HTML tags they are using is not very complicated. So I can grab them using CURL and XPATH with PHP.

Unfortunately, for Sheeel.com, as I grab the website from US Server, they showed the US Dolar currency, not the Kuwaiti Dinar. And I did some experiments to get the Kuwaiti Dinar price, but still no luck. The easiest way would be getting the data from Kuwait IP Address, but it may require some steps.

Ah, one more thing. After I published the application, I noticed that Blink.com.kw updating the deals on 12:00 pm, instead of 00:00 am. So there are 2 different time when I fetch the data from the websites.

Enough with the back-end thing, the application is FREE. Completely FREE. So go grab them.

Q8 Benzin

This is my first application on the Android Market. Q8 Benzin will show you the nearest gas stations and ATM/Bank in Kuwait.

The current supported banks are Gulf Bank, ABK, and NBK. For the other banks, I still waiting for them to publish their location on their website and unlikely to be happen within short time.

Q8 Benzin is paid application, its only 350 fils. I guess it's not a big deal for Kuwait people, because 350 fils is like treating me a shawarma.

Click here to go the the app

Hello Android!

This would be my first post on this blog. So I will try to introduce myself here. I really am sorry if my english is not good as you expected.

Who are you?
I am originally iOS Developer and in learning to be Android Developer. For some reasons, I can't reveal my identity, because it will ruin my lovely live in Kuwait.

On behalf of learning to be Android Developer, I need to start making application. As I live in Kuwait, and I love staying here, and there are not many companies noticing Android users, so I started to make something useful for Android users in Kuwait.

What is your expertise?
All the published apps is done by me. Only me. So I do some backend with PHP, some web and mobile design, and mobile development.

How to contact you?
Only email. You can see my email on the Android Market.