Top app development companies interview: MLSDev – Follow up

Here's another follow-up interview. This time, after a few months, we got back in touch with Ivan Mak, the CCO at MLSDev. Ivan talked to us about the recent achievements of the company, as well as future plans and how MLSDev sees the mobile world evolving.

Your last interview was published on November 5, 2014. What great apps have you been working on since then and what are your biggest plans for the upcoming months?

A lot, actually =) Some of them are still in development so I can’t share any information about them with you. But I can tell that we did a great MVP for a swiss startup called Mynga. Right now we’re in process of collecting first users’ feedback and based on that we’ll continue making improvements to this project.

Also, we’ve created an Android version of a popular Apartment Rentals app called Comfy.

And I want to admit that our team is now working on the revolutionary social network, all our team strongly believe in its success. We plan to release MVP for this project at the end of the summer.

If you had to choose one category, what kind of app you think is MLSDev's specialty? Give us some examples.

Apps that heavily utilize geolocation features have become our main specialization over the last couple of years. The most recent one is GeoTourist - a small social network for travelers and a powerful tool to access multimedia guided tours based on geolocation. It has become the official application for tourists in Singapore. The key feature of it is that the tour audio starts playing as the user approaches one of the points within a tour. Another one is Erodr - a social network for college students, which allows students to check the list of students nearby they might like to know and get connected. Users can not only post and collect likes along with comments on their posts, but also limit the viewable range and life of their posts, or even post anonymously. One of the main peculiarities of the app is that all messages and posts are erased after a short time, leaving no archived conversations.

Which app has been the biggest challenge for MLSDev? Tell us a little bit about it, what problems you had to face and how were they solved.

One of the most complex products that we did, was an Android application for the aircraft industry. We developed it for Russian university of aviation. The purpose of this app was to show pilot's landing schemes in different airports all over the world. The main problem was that we had no right for any bug =) We had been developing it for more than a year and had an issue with the low productivity of hardware that was at hand by that time. But we did it. Unfortunately, I can’t give links on this app due to the NDA. The app is being used by now in civil aviation all over the world.

Last time we spoke, you said the iPhone 5S was the best devices in the market. Has iPhone 6 taken its place or is there any other device you think has overcome the Apple giant?

The best thing about Apple products is the user experience. Competitors can ship a device with bigger screen resolution, faster processor. But when it comes to the overall satisfaction from day-to-day device usage it is mostly Apple’s devices that can give it to their owners. I think that the latest iPhone 6 is a good successor to iPhone 5S. So personally I use iPhone 6 as my main device.

What do you think has been or will be the biggest smartphone release in 2015 and why?

The most recent data from IDC shows that Android dominated the market with a 78.0% share in 1Q15. That is why I think that the biggest smartphone release in 2015 will be Nexus 5.2. It will not only have very impressive technical indicators - a powerful processor, impressive screen, significantly improved battery, but also supposed to be shipped with the new OS - Android M, available payment system Android PAY, and the function of “Now On Tap” that Google presented to 1O15.

Besides smartphones, what mobile device do you think is worth having first?

I think Apple Watch did start a new market (As Apple used to, starting from the first iPhone).

What do you think mobile devices will be able to do in the future that they don’t do now?

It seems to me that in the future smartphones will be focused on having Artificial Intelligence, so people will be able to automate all aspects of their homes with the help of their devices, use them to pay for goods etc. Furthermore, since 2007 there is a growing tendency to supersized devices (with a screen size of 6”). Judging from our experience, such oversized device is not so convenient, especially when you have to put it into your pocket:). So I think that the development of watches as a portable, convenient, and effective substitutes for smartphones with a screen size of 6" and above will be in trend in the future.

What smartphone feature could you not live without?

The main feature I mostly use in my smartphone is messaging (Viber, Skype, Gmail etc..). You know, I can’t even tell that my smartphone is still smartPHONE =)

Is MLSDev adapting to the new technologies and devices coming along? Give us some details on how or comment any ongoing or finished projects.

Yes, we always research and use new technologies and devices. For example, we started our path from using so-called experimental technologies - cross-platform languages such as PhoneGap, Unity 3D, etc. Now we are fully focused on native programming languages. For example, we have been working with Swift ( a new programming language for native iOS development) since it has been released.

What advice would you give to anyone with an app idea who didn’t know how to get started?

Look around and share your idea with your potential users. Don’t be afraid that somebody will steal it. Your potential users will give you plenty of great ideas for your future product and it will be free for you! After that come and hire MLSDev =)

Go to their AppFutura company profile to get more information about MLSDev.

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