Abstract
To find the best train ticket booking mobile application on the bases of application features. Four widely used mobile phone applications (Ixigo, MakeMyTrip, ClearTrip, and IRCTC) for railway ticket booking are selected and application features related to ease of download and use, rating, number of installs, etc. are compared. A practical attempt is made to book a train ticket using all these applications one by one and comparing features such as coach locator, platform locator, route map, fare break-up, showing seat availability, save and pre-fill passenger details, sort search list by train name/number, sort search list by journey duration, sort search list by class, train running status, etc. 1 point is allotted to the applications if a particular feature is available in the applications and 0 is allotted if the feature is not available. Sum of all the points is calculated separately for each application and then ranks are given from 1 to 4 considering the final score. Ixigo mobile application scores the highest among other three train ticketing mobile applications – MakeMyTrip, ClearTrip, and IRCTC. Features such as downloading applications via a miss call or SMS; downloading application from websites of Ixigo, MakeMyTrip, ClearTrip, and IRCTC; and sorting train search list by class on applications are not found in any of these four applications. Furthermore, features are grouped into groups such as – the features only available in top ranking Ixigo and the features not available in top ranking Ixigo but available in any or all other three applications. This research will be of a good value for mobile railway ticket booking application providers as competition is becoming acute and the booking pattern is shifting from using desktop or laptop to mobile phones and tablets.
Highlights
In the concluding chapter of the book titled Mobile Design and Development: Practical concepts and techniques for creating mobile sites and web apps, author Brian Fling writes “I like to think about what’s and what tomorrow’s innovations will be
This note from the book on mobile sites and applications tells much about how cell phone applications are changing customers’ experiences and expectations of satisfying their needs of buying range of goods and services, from groceries, healthcare products, electronic goods, clothes to travelling
Column-wise sum of score is taken for the application and the same is repeated for all the mobile application
Summary
In the concluding chapter of the book titled Mobile Design and Development: Practical concepts and techniques for creating mobile sites and web apps, author Brian Fling writes “I like to think about what’s and what tomorrow’s innovations will be. This note from the book on mobile sites and applications tells much about how cell phone applications are changing customers’ experiences and expectations of satisfying their needs of buying range of goods and services, from groceries, healthcare products, electronic goods, clothes to travelling. There are more than 40,000 mobile applications related to health and roughly 247 million users downloaded one or the other application (West, 2012). The potential worth of the mobile application industry was once estimated to reach as $ 100 billion by the year 2015 (Rakestraw et al, 2013). A research company named ABI Research forecast that revenue generated from mobile applications will reach to $ 46 billion in the year 2016. Indian Railways, which is a public sector enterprise managed by Ministry of Railways, Government of India, was running 11,824 trains in 2010-11 and today runs 19,000 trains (www.indianrailways.gov.in)
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