If you are an entrepreneur or a small business owner looking into the mobile application industry, either to ride the wave or to capitalize on the fact that your customers are spending more time with their phone, this post could come in very handy

Bellow you may find some thoughts on how the Mobile Development industry will evolve in the nearest future.

1. Micropayments
Micropayments within mobile applications can be used to upgrade basic app to a premium version, purchase game items, digital content or even small gifts for friends. Mobile bill payments and micropayments for digital content consumption continue to grow in the future.

2. Enhanced Security
Better security for mobile application platforms is expected. This is especially important when more users are conducting financial transactions and life streaming using their phones.

3. Business App Store
With all the mobile platforms targeting their app store towards average consumers, the introduction of a business app store is imminent.

4. Location-Based Technology
Location-based technology or GPS technology received the most buzz in 2009 and we expect it will continue growing this year.

5. Social Based Applications
Social networking activities certainly do not end when you leave your computer. We are already seeing a great number of people tweeting and updating their Facebook status on-the-go, not to mention those who are posting videos and photos to services like Twitpic and 12seconds using their mobile phone.

6. Augmented Reality (AR)
Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are merged with (or augmented by) virtual computer-generated imagery – creating a mixed reality.

7. High Entry Barriers for Fledgling Developers
Developers that are new to the scene and without much support will face trouble getting user adoption. Not only that there are already tons of mobile applications out there, established developers have better advantages in terms of capability to introduce new features over a short time span as well as the resources to adapt and test their applications on new platforms.

8. Mobile Application Advertising
The increasing number of mobile application users opens up another advertising channel for brands and businesses. This is definitely good news for developers.

9. Importance of Marketing for Applications
There are already hundreds of thousands of mobile applications out there. In order to stand a chance, developers or mobile application entrepreneurs need to know how to market applications developed by them.

10. HTML 5 – Native Apps vs Web Apps
How will it affect the mobile applications space? Well, phones with a mobile browser that has HTML 5 rendering capabilities will be able to run web applications directly without any downloading and installation of apps. As for developers, there will no longer be a need to develop for different mobile platforms.

What other trends do you think will be likely this year for the mobile applications industry?

Your opinions are welcome!

Kristina Kozlova
Altabel Group Company
www.altabel.com

In response to queries about its future product plans, Skype issued a statement that indicates the company plans to offer an application to all Android handsets later this year, and it will include a video chat feature.

The statement reads, “Skype envisions a world where video plays a larger role in the way we communicate. It’s on computers, televisions, and it will eventually be coming to mobile devices too. We’re betting big on video, and we intend to set the bar on mobile video calling, and it’s something we’re going to do this year. We will be bringing a direct to consumer app to the Android marketplace later this year. This application will be available for all consumers globally to download regardless of carriers.”

Right now, Skype on Android is limited to Verizon Wireless’ handsets. Competitor Fring recently announced a new Android application that offers free video calling. Fring aggregates together a number of services, such as Skype, MSN, ICQ, GTalk and other IM platforms into a single application.

By Egle Mikalajunaite and Ralf-Gordon Jahns

Mobile apps have been around for some time and there is a lot of hype around the developing market. But how sustainable is this development, and where does it lead? In summary, our analysis shows that apps will eventually be as important for companies as web pages are today.

The main drivers:

What are the reasons for this optimistic view? Here are just six reasons why we think that apps will become as important as Websites to companies in the next years:

1. Ubiquity of smartphones: Smartphones will increasingly replace feature phones in stores. Nearly everyone will be able to use smartphone apps, not just – as of now – business people, social networkers and gamers. The main driver will be a reduction in handset prices, which will decrease to 100 Euro for most starter devices.

2. Manifoldness of possibilities: Smartphones are small computers which are becoming more and more powerful. They will be suitable for an increasing number of tasks which have previously been restricted to laptops or desktops. Today smartphone apps are used by companies to promote their brand or product, or to provide access to their existing products. In the future we will see a lot more use-cases, e.g. new products enabled by apps, mobile health, mobile selling, or apps which help to improve working efficiency within a company.

3. Ubiquity of app stores: For the foreseeable future, Smartphones will always depend on the app stores. If you have a smartphone or advanced feature phone you will have easy and convenient access to the world of apps.

4. Unmatched user-experience: Apps offer a user-experience which mobile Websites or widgets are unable to provide.

5. Proximity to customers: Mobile devices, especially Smartphones, are much more personal and intimate devices than a laptop or desktop device. For most users their phones are never further than 1 meter away 24/7. Imagine how attractive it is for consumer goods, food, and myriad other companies across the economy to be able to place their products and services so close to consumers.

6. Better visibility: Although there is a lot of clamor about the discoverability of apps, especially in the Apple App Store, standing out among 140,000 apps is much easier than being found amongst millions of websites. In addition, these distribution platforms are stores, and unlike the web or its search engines, they are designed to sell and present products. Cross-selling and promotions are components of their core features. The new geneneration of app stores make it easier than ever before to be in the forefront of millions of potential customers’ minds.

Although there is still a long way to go before many companies learn how to benefit from and how to engage in this exciting new market, but it won’t take long before it becomes standard business practice, especially for media, consumer goods, automotive, and food companies to communicate with their customers via an app. This applies especially to the Western and Asian countries with high smartphone shipment rates but will also impact emerging markets with a short time-delay.

Eighty percent of developers in the USA think they should receive more than 30% of the revenue generated by their apps in an app store according to the Spring North American Development Survey. Survey taken from more than 400 developers conducted last month.

Female subscribers download twice as much mobile content as their male counterparts according to mobile entertainment destination Myxer’s latest BoomBox report.

Downloads among female users topped 4.5 million in April, compared to 2.2 million among males–Myxer reports there are approximately 1.7 times as many females as males downloading content each month, adding that each female that visits downloads 17 percent more content than the average male.

Myxer adds that the average female Android device owner downloaded 7.6 pieces of content during the month of April, while the average Android male user visiting the site only downloaded 6 items during that time, a difference of 21 percent. By comparison, females on iPhones downloaded 3.0 items while males download 2.8 items, a difference of only 6 percent.

Betfair Brings Gambling to the iPhone

UK company Betfair, specialized in betting, seems to be the first company to release an actual betting application on iTunes. This service is only available in Ireland and the UK though.

Consumers who downloaded the app can bet on major sports and other events that address the general public (for example the elections). To avoid breaking foreign gambling laws, the GPS info is used to ensure the client is in the UK or Ireland. There is however, no way yet to make sure the client is not underage (but that is a problem on any virtual betting platform).

Mike Chambers is Adobe’s principal product manager for the Flash platform. After having complained about the aggressive attitude of Apple in refusing to allow Flash on the iPhone and iPad he had this to say about Android :

Fortunately, the iPhone isn’t the only game in town. Android based phones have been doing well behind the success of the Motorola Droid and Nexus One, and there are a number of Android based tablets slated to be released this year. We are working closely with Google to bring both Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR 2.0 to these devices, and thus far, the results have been very promising.

Because this is Flash, it is rather trivial to port games created with Flash that target the iPhone to target other operating systems, such as Android. At FlashCamp San Francisco on Friday night, David Wadhwani (GM and VP of the Flash Platform) showed off a number of games running on Android that had been created with Flash, many of which had already been deployed as iPhone games. My personal favorites were Chroma Circuit and GridShock created by Josh Tynjala of Bowler Hat Games. Both games were originally developed as browser based games and were then updated to target the iPhone (Chroma Circuit was featured on the iTunes app store). Josh recently updated and optimized them to target Flash Player on Android, and the results have been impressive. There have already been a couple of developers who have moved their Flash based content from the iPhone to Flash on Android (couple of examples below) and I expect that this is a trend we will be seeing more and more of.

Here are some links to developers who originally targeted the iPhone with their Flash content and are now deploying to Android:

* Adobe AIR for Android: Chroma Circuit and Qrossfire Videos
* Jobe Makar : Flash is Speedy on Android
* Jobe Makar’s Fruit Smash Organic (Video)
* Alan Queen’s Star Map Game (Video)

Both Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR 2.0 for Android are in pre-release testing. If you are interested in being notified when we expand the testing, you can sign up at:

* Flash Player 10.1 for Android Beta
* Adobe AIR 2.0 for Android Beta

Personally, I am going to shift all of my mobile focus from iPhone to Android based devices (I am particularly interested in the Android based tablets coming out this year) and not focus on the iPhone stuff as much anymore. This includes both Flash based, and Objective-C based iPhone development. While I actually enjoy working in Objective-C, I don’t have any current plans to update and / or maintain my existing native iPhone applications (including the AS3 Reference Guide, and Timetrocity). As I wrote previously, I think that the closed system that Apple is trying to create is bad for the industry, developers and ultimately consumers, and that is not something that I want to actively promote. Don’t worry though, I definitely plan to get both Pew Pew and Bacon Unicorn Adventure running on Android and am planning on open sourcing both.

Also Adobe’s CEO Shantanu Narayen said “We have a number of excited partners who are working aggressively with us to bring Flash to their devices, whether they be smartphones as well as handsets, and so companies like Google or RIM or Palm are going to be releasing versions of Flash on smartphones and tablets in the second half of the year.”

According to ComScore’s latest study, thirteen percent of US based mobile gamers have started to trade in their featurephones for smartphones to boost their gaming experience.

ComScore reported 58.6 million featurephone based mobile gamers in February 2009 versus 50.9 million of them in February 2010. In the same period, the number of smartphone gamers grew 60%. Smartphone owners are also more likely to play mobile games on their phones. 47.1% of the smartphone owners play mobile games versus 15.7% on featurephones.

“Although the number of mobile gamers has declined in the past year, there is reason for significant optimism about the future of this market,” said Mark Donovan, ComScore senior analyst and SVP of mobile. “As the market transitions from feature phones to smartphones, the dynamics of gameplay are also shifting towards a higher quality experience. As a result, we can expect to see a profound increase in adoption of this activity, both in terms of audience size and overall engagement.”

Just a quick update on this article from last week :

Web browser maker Opera topped the iPhone application download chart within 24 hours of releasing its free browser app.

It has been downloaded 1,023,380 times since its launch on 14 April.

It took three weeks for Apple to approve the program, which has already been developed for other mobile phone platforms.

Opera Mini is not the first alternative to Apple’s Safari to be developed for the iPhone.