E-TRAINIG MOBILE DEVICES AND APPLICATIONS FOR SPORT PROFESSIONALS

Abstract

Mobile devices and specific applications for sport professionals have become nowadays very useful in specific training, but their potential is not fully exploited. The general goal of this paper is to point out bridges between the two communities of sport professionals and mobile applications developers. In this paper we survey these mobile devices according to these two different viewpoints. We first take into account their utility, the sports involved, and the specific training processes and present the available offer of mobile devices and applications. Main producers and tools are mentioned as well. The sport profesional viewpoint shows the way they are percieving the mobile applications and devices in the training process, and what are their expectations. Then we consider the technological aspects of the mobile devices and their potential for sport professionals. The technological aspects are treated from the developer's point of view. We present what the nowadays mobile devices are able to offer for the benefit of the sport, due to their design and embedded technology, tools and capabilities. Different operating systems, main producers of mobile devices and developers of mobile applications are briefly mentioned. A short classification of the applications for mobile devices is given, and the levels of the corresponding software developping skills are also mentioned. This suggest an ideal composition of a mobile application developing team. Our paper is an invitation for reflexion on the modern approaches of professional sport training through the nowadays mobile technologies. The invitation is addressed both to sport professionals and mobile devices developers. We conclude that the mobile devices and applications have a huge potential for sport professionals and, at the same time, the sport training offers a large domain of applications to the mobile devices developers.