Light Reading Mobile – Telecom News, Analysis, Events, and Research

The Buzz Bin  

Application Programing Interface (API)

September 12, 2012 |

An Application Programing Interface (API) is a specification, or interface, that allows different elements of software to more easily communicate with each other.

Developers frequently use APIs in a mobile context to hook third-party applications into the wireless capabilities of an operating system or other application. Wireless operators use them to allow for easy access to their network resources, including subscriber data, location and quality of service functions, so developers can build more robust applications.

Today, only 9 percent of all Web and 5 percent of mobile apps use APIs, according to Research and Markets, but the firm expects that to grow by 68 percent by the end of 2016 as vendors, carriers and developers invest more in APIs.

For more on APIs and the companies involved:



Currently we allow the following HTML tags in comments:

Single tags

These tags can be used alone and don't need an ending tag.

<br> Defines a single line break

<hr> Defines a horizontal line

Matching tags

These require an ending tag - e.g. <i>italic text</i>

<a> Defines an anchor

<b> Defines bold text

<big> Defines big text

<blockquote> Defines a long quotation

<caption> Defines a table caption

<cite> Defines a citation

<code> Defines computer code text

<em> Defines emphasized text

<fieldset> Defines a border around elements in a form

<h1> This is heading 1

<h2> This is heading 2

<h3> This is heading 3

<h4> This is heading 4

<h5> This is heading 5

<h6> This is heading 6

<i> Defines italic text

<p> Defines a paragraph

<pre> Defines preformatted text

<q> Defines a short quotation

<samp> Defines sample computer code text

<small> Defines small text

<span> Defines a section in a document

<s> Defines strikethrough text

<strike> Defines strikethrough text

<strong> Defines strong text

<sub> Defines subscripted text

<sup> Defines superscripted text

<u> Defines underlined text

Network Computing encourages readers to engage in spirited, healthy debate, including taking us to task. However, Network Computing moderates all comments posted to our site, and reserves the right to modify or remove any content that it determines to be derogatory, offensive, inflammatory, vulgar, irrelevant/off-topic, racist or obvious marketing/SPAM. Network Computing further reserves the right to disable the profile of any commenter participating in said activities.

 
Disqus Tips To upload an avatar photo, first complete your Disqus profile. | View the list of supported HTML tags you can use to style comments. | Please read our commenting policy.
 
White Papers SPONSORED CONTENT
Featured