The Mobile Applications Boom

I was just on a “Mobile Applications Boom” panel at the Red Herring Conference in San Diego, and what was interesting was that 4 of the 5 panelists were from outside the US. Since our business derives 90% of its revenue outside the U.S., I felt right at home. The key themes that emerged were that the U.S. continues to lag the world in mobile innovation, with the exception of the IPhone and its related app store. Additionally, service providers outside the US are moving much faster on mobile video services and related non-voice applications.

The consensus was that the market would evolve around a number of vertical app stores, built around the leading smartphone/mobile phone vendors. Several forecast that the IPhone would have 100,000 applications by year end, but that it would become increasingly difficult for developers to make money given the clutter. Additionally, the applications will likely evolve from the silly and frivolous to more formal applications, similar to what has happened in the social networking market.

RIM in particular will focus on its customer base, and while it will have far less applications than the iPhone, it will be very skilled at monetizing them from its existing fanatical installed base of Blackberry customers. Service providers, such as Vodafone,  are also launching their own app stores, but the feeling was that they will be less successful in competing with the app stores from the phone vendors.