Applying the Lean Startup to Mobile: Tips from Instagram & Foursquare

The all or nothing distribution for iOS and Android is something that has bugged me for a long time. It bugged me enough that I developed an "in-app" distribution platform for Android. In a nutshell I wrote an SDK that turns your entire apk into a plugin. A "shell" apk is installed on the phone that can run and update the plugin apk(s). This allows you to change almost anything about the app (not including permissions) and target a single phone, class of phones or all phones for the updates. I licensed the software to a company that needed to tightly manage phones but they have since pivoted away from their previous model.

I am trying to figure out if there is enough of a demand to create a service based on this technology. It seems like web companies have embraced lean startup, A/B testing, etc but I don't see a ton of mobile companies going this direction. This article gives me hope that these ideas are catching on in the mobile world.

If anyone is interested in "in-app" distribution to enable lean style iteration and A/B testing on Android please let me know.

And if there's some special 'platform native' special sauce you want to add to the rapidly iterating HTML UI :

http://wiki.phonegap.com/w/page/36752779/PhoneGap%20Plugins#...