This invention relates to updating mobile applications i.e. applications suitable for operating on mobile devices such as a mobile phone, or a smartphone, or a personal digital assistant, or any such similar device, operating on any of a number of mobile platforms.

Applications for mobile phones and other such devices have immense popularity with hundreds of thousands of applications available for various platforms. For example, the Apple ^® AppStore ^® alone provides over 300,000 applications for the iOS ^® platform used by iPhone ^® , iPad ^® and iPod Touch ^® devices. Each mobile application is designed to carry out a chosen activity. The variety and ingenuity of the activities performed by applications is considerable, with just some of mobile applications' activities including brochure-type products (estate agents, online shopping, etc), geolocation-type services (interactive maps, locating restaurants, etc), gaming, music-based services (streaming radio, identifying specific tunes, etc), and health-related services (calorie counters, etc).

The usual process for a mobile application is creation (or development) of the application, generally for a specific mobile platform, making the application available to end-users by having it accepted and published in an application store, and downloading of the application from the application store by end-users to a device operating the mobile platform for use. Most mobile applications are not updatable, i.e. they are static. Some mobile applications may be updatable by the developer of the application. However, generally the owner of an application is not the developer of the application, and if the owner wants to update their application, they will have to ask the developer to do this. Once the developer has updated the application, the owner then has to resubmit the updated application to the application store. The store will then go through the acceptance and publication process for the updated application. It will be appreciated that, even when updates to applications are possible, the process is involved and time-consuming. It is therefore desirable to provide a mechanism in which dynamic updates to mobile applications can be made especially by the owner of an application.

According to a first aspect of the invention there is provided a method of updating a mobile application comprising the steps of

(i) making at least one change to structure of the mobile application on a client device,

(ii) sending the change to a server holding the application,

(iii) applying the change in structure of the mobile application to a mirror of the mobile application held by the server thereby updating the mobile application. Making the at least one change to the structure of the mobile application may comprise running the mobile application on the client device and using one or more functions provided by the mobile application to instruct the change to the structure of the mobile application. The change to the structure of the mobile application may be any of an addition to the structure of the mobile application, a deletion from the structure of the mobile application, an amendment to the structure of the mobile application. For example, the change to the structure of the mobile application may comprise any of an addition of a component to the mobile application, a deletion of a component of the mobile application, an amendment of a component of the mobile application. The change to the structure of the mobile application may be accompanied by a change to content of the mobile application. The change to content of the mobile application may be any of an addition to content of the mobile application, a deletion from content of the mobile application, an amendment to content of the mobile application.

The client device may be a mobile device, operating on any of a number of mobile platforms, capable of running the mobile application, such as a mobile phone, a smartphone, a personal digital assistant. The client device may be a mobile device, operating on any of a number of mobile platforms, provided with the capability of making a change to the mobile application. The server may be provided in a private network. The server may be provided in a public network. The server may be controlled by an owner of the mobile application.

Applying the change to the structure of the mobile application to the mirror of the mobile application may comprise running an object-oriented programming language provided on the server and using it to apply the change to the mirror of the mobile application. The object-oriented programming language may, for example, comprise any of ActionScript, HTML, XML, Java, JavaScript, C, C++, C#, Visual Basic. The method may further comprise capturing the change to the structure of the mobile application using at least one object created using an object-oriented programming language provided on the client device. Capturing the change may comprise any of creating a new object to define new structure of the mobile application, deleting an existing object defining structure of the mobile application, amending an existing object defining structure of the mobile application.

The object-oriented programming language provided on the client device may comprise code provided as part of a platform of the client device. The object-oriented programming language may comprise code capable of operating on various platforms of client devices. The object-oriented programming language may, for example, comprise any of ActionScript, HTML, XML, Java, JavaScript, C, C++, C#, Visual Basic.

The method may further comprise providing an update to the mobile application to the client device. The method may further comprise making an update to the mobile application available to end-users of the application.

According to a second aspect of the invention there is provided a mobile application update system comprising

(i) a change element for making at least one change to structure of the mobile application on a client device,

(ii) a delivery element for sending the change to a server holding the application, (iii) an update element for applying the change in structure of the mobile application to a mirror of the mobile application held by the server thereby updating the mobile application. The system may further comprise a capture element for capturing the change in structure of the mobile application using at least one object of an object-oriented programming language provided on the client device.

It will be appreciated that the various elements of the application update system may be provided in software on the client device and server.

An embodiment of the invention will now be described by way of example only with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which Figure 1 is a schematic representation of an application updating system according to the present invention, and

Figure 2 is a flowchart showing the steps carried out in a method of updating a mobile application according to the first aspect of the invention.

Figure 1 shows an application updating system 1 comprising a change element 3, a capture element 5 and a delivery element 7 all provided on a client device 9, and an update element 11 provided on a server 13. In this embodiment the client device 9 is a mobile device comprising a smartphone, operating on any of a number of mobile platforms, e.g. Android, which is provided with a mobile application comprising a brochure-type application. It will be appreciated that other types of client device and mobile applications may be used.

Figure 2 shows the steps carried out in a method of updating the mobile application. Referring to Figure 2 and Figure 1, the client first makes a change to the structure of the brochure-type mobile application using his smart phone 9 (step 20). This comprises running the application on the smart phone 9 which uses the change element 3 to present a number of functions to the client. The client uses the functions to instruct the change to the structure of the mobile application. In this embodiment, the change to the structure of the mobile application is an addition to the structure of the application, in the form of addition of a new component providing use of a twitter feed to the mobile application. The owner uses the functions provided by the change element 3 to instruct the addition of the twitter component to the mobile application. The addition of a new component providing use of a twitter feed to the mobile application is accompanied by content for the new twitter feed component. It will be appreciated that an update to the mobile application may comprise other types of change to the structure of the mobile application.

The change to the structure of the mobile application is captured by the capture element 5 (step 22), using an object created using an ActionScript 3 object-oriented programming language provided on the smart phone client device 9. In this embodiment, the capture element 5 captures the change by creating an object comprising code defining the structure of the new component of the mobile application. The delivery element 7 is then used to send the change in the structure of the brochure- type mobile application to the server 13 (step 24), which, in this embodiment, is provided in a private cloud. The client device 9 makes a connection to the server 13, and an authenticated link between the client device 9 and the server 13 is established. A unique identifier for the brochure-type mobile application and the change to the structure of the mobile application, in the form of the object, are transmitted to the server 13 via the authenticated link.

The update element 11 of the server 13 receives the change to the structure of the mobile application, in the form of the object. The server 13 uses C# object-oriented programming language. The update element 11 applies the change (defined by the object) to the mirror of the mobile application held on the server 13 (step 26), thereby updating the mobile application by the addition of the new twitter component.

One or more changes to the structure of the mobile application may be accommodated by the update method, i.e. if multiple changes to the structure of the mobile application are made at the client device these can be incorporated into the mobile application mirror on the server in one update.

In this embodiment, the client is provided with the brochure-type mobile application by the owner of the application. The client is licensed to use the brochure-type mobile application, deciding on the structure and content of the application, and to make updates to the application. When the client wishes to make an update, he uses the method and system described above, sending the update to the brochure-type mobile application to the server. The server is part of a private network controlled by the owner of the brochure-type mobile application. The owner of the brochure-type mobile application makes the update to the application and provides the mobile application update to the client on the client device. The owner further makes the brochure-type mobile application update available to end-users of the application from the server. It will be appreciated that alternative models of provision and ownership of the application and making the application available to end-users can be used.