Held in One Wimpole Street’s high-spec Main Lecture Theatre on Tuesday 17th January, delegates were treated to a complimentary breakfast including scrambled egg and smoked salmon, pastries and a selection of teas and coffee, before Simon, director of 360R, took to the stage to discuss the ins and outs of app technology. Looking closely at the different platforms apps can be built upon, how they can benefit business, and strengthen a brand, Simon shared an extraordinary set of app statistics which included 1.2 billion apps downloaded during just one week from 25th-31st December 2011, the equivalent of 2000 apps per second. With the average person spending just 0.9 minutes looking at a website via a browser on a mobile device, compared to 4.2 minutes spent on an app, this exciting and fast-moving area of technology is something that needs to be seriously considered by businesses as mobile device usage continues to increase dramatically as another million smart phones are activated daily. Acknowledging the debate between whether you should or shouldn’t charge for apps, Simon highlighted the dramatic decline in downloads of an app when there is a fee, by looking at one company who initially launched the app for free which resulted in over 300,000 downloads and then dropped to just 5,000 downloads once a fee of £1.79 was initiated. Looking ahead at future trends and innovations, Simon shared hints and tips with the audience including building in social media and booking platforms to stop users having to jump in and out of an app and the importance of including analytic software so you can monitor what people are doing within the app and how they rate it.