Successful mobile apps “don’t lose sight of the basics,” Alex Musil, EVP of Product Marketing at Shazam told Show Daily ahead of his appearance at the App Planet Forum this morning.

“People want responsive apps that don’t crash and “just work”.  For example, you can tell when an app has only been tested on WiFi and not in a real world 3G environment,” he notes.

While the mobile app industry has seen phenomenal growth in recent years, there is currently something of a shift in mindset toward how to offer more compelling products which take more advantage of the capabilities offered by smartphones and mobile networks.

Musil notes that “there are a few things great apps do better,” ranging from the initial user experience to integration with other apps and payment options. This should be obvious from the outset: “they let people use the app without having to jump through registration or other hoops; people understand their value very quickly.”

Among the features of the best apps are intelligent use of push notifications – “apps which add value beyond the moment someone thinks of tapping on the app icon to use it…notifications can really drive engagement and remind people an app is on their phone” – and integration with Facebook and Twitter. “Each use case is different, but there’s a good chance some aspect of an app can be made social,” he says.

Musil is often clear that apps need a free option in order to attract users in the first place. “People want to try before buying. There’s far less hesitation for someone to install and try a free app at least once. Smart apps are upfront where that line is drawn and always provide some minimum standalone value for light usage without paying.  They then leverage in-app payment to make it as easy as possible for users to unlock the for-pay features.”

One issue that is not set to go away is fragmentation – both between different operating systems, and with different versions of platforms (for example targeting smartphone or tablet devices). “Where and to what extent to focus will always be a big decision point for developers. Variety in mobile platforms will always exist given the volumes involved and the motivations of various players in the mobile market,” Musil says.

“Developers need to keenly understand how the value of each user differs across platforms (and perhaps even devices in some cases) and invest appropriately.  The benefits of innovation, driven by competition between platform vendors, now outweighs the costs of fragmentation in my opinion.  There are clear platforms to focus on and they will provide a compelling market for developers with manageable fragmentation.”

Positively, there are tools available to enable developers to innovate. “There are a ton of tools and resources out there.  The platform vendors are continuously innovating, there are third party vendors who plug gaps in areas like advertising and push platforms; plus there are open source options that can save time and effort,” Musil notes.