Ultimate Guide to Understanding SMS API

There are many SMS API available, and they all seems to do the same thing.

Tell me the number and message to send, and I will send to the phone.

A simple I/O operation it seems, but the truth is not.

Nexmo provided a guide to SMS deliverability. An excellent guide for new API users.

I also learnt a few new things.

• If you know the MCC/MNC your recipient is on (you can if you have a mobile app), then you can use Nexmo API with "network-code". This will avoid number portability problem.
• REST can scale as well as SMPP 
• Refer to their country specific guide

AWS now has mobile push notifications API

You can now send push notifications (Apple APNS or Google GCM) via AWS!

This feature comes under SNS (Simple Notification Service), which includes sending to email and SMS too.

The pricing is amazingly cheap too. Mobile push notifications will cost $1 or less for 1 million pushes! As a comparison, Parse charges $70 per 1 million pushes.

After 4 years, iOS developers can now interact with WhatsApp via URL Schema

In their latest release, WhatsApp has introduced their app URL schema.

For example, the following URL will open WhatsApp from your app, with the message and user prefilled.

whatsapp://send?text=Hello%2C%20World!&abid=1234

At the same time, the app has changed from fixed paid app to auto-renewable subscription. So they earn $0.99 every year!

Interestingly, didn't Apple say auto-renewable subscription is only for apps that has new content?

Live Chat for mobile - from Apptentive

Apptentive started with providing in-app feedbacks and surveys.

Today, they have a "revolution".

They have announced Message Center, kind of like live chat, but for mobile.

Apigee Push Notifications

Push is one of the hottest API around and we have covered a few.

Now, even Apigee is into the game.

They are providing 10M free push per month, which is 10 times of what competitors such as Parse offer!

They also running a contest now, and will provide you additional 10M free push for next 12 months, if you integrate and send out 1 test push.

Google Analytics now has A/B Testing!

Yesterday we posted about Google introducing BaaS for mobile developers.

Today, there is another new stuff from their labs: A/B Testing, and integrated into Google Analytics!

This feature is known as "Experiments". You can refer to the developer documentation.

It looks awfully for developers only. If you are not a developer, perhaps Optimizely is better for you.

Google also jumped onto the BaaS bandwagon

Google has launched their own Backend-as-a-Service, like Parse (now belongs to Facebook) and Helios (Heroku).

They called it the Mobile Backend Starter.


As the creator of Android, it is no surprise they created a much needed service for mobile developers.

The question now: Would Apple be jumping onto the bandwagon?

We will find out in WWDC 2013.