Over the last 3 years there has been an unprecedented growth in the use of Smart Phone. This explosive growth has been lead by the iPhone with the iPhone Apps being the core basis for its appeal.In the next few months having a Smart Phone like an iPhone, Android or BB will become as essential as owning a home computer or even having cable tv.

Today the App store boasts 150,000 Apps and counting. The App store crossed the 1 billionth download in July 2009. Considering that Apple launched its App Store in July of 2008 and the 1 billionth download mark was crossed in just under a year and this number is nothing short of mind blogging. At the posting of this article the App Store had an estimated 3 billion+ downloads.

The typical user is interested in Apps in the price range of .99 to .99 and considering that there are over 33.75 million iPhones sold to date the number of users that can potentially download the app and the potential profit at selling an app even for .99 is significant.

The Android and Blackberry are not far behind and both have their own Market Place and a growing portfolio of Apps. On March 17 2010 the Leading technology blog MobileCrunch  reported that the number of applications in the Android Market Place has crossed the 30000 mark. That’s more than double what was available in December. HTC and Motorola that run Android, plan to launch 15 new phone in the coming months to meet the demand. In March 2010 Blackberry maker Research in Motion (RIMM) announced a spike in its sale of phones for the fourth quarter of 2009 signaling a strong demand for the ever popular Blackberry.

Such staggering numbers cannot be ignored and the App market growth has been nothing short of super exponential. Note that the above numbers are coming in primarily from the US market and one has as yet not fully tapped the 2 billion of the world’s population in India and China with its emerging upper middle class eager to own a Smartphone for its Status symbol and Utility.

The question is how can one position themselves correctly so as to ride this exponential upward inflection curve one sees in the Mobile App Industry.

Small and Midsized software development firms are best positioned to quickly upgrade their resource pool and cash in on the ever increasing demand of developing new apps for the App Store.

A-1 Technology New York has already recognized this upward trend. Over the last several months A-1 Technology has steadily increased its iPhone resource pool and now boasts a large Portfolio of Apps on the App store with several of these Apps being in the Top 25 and Featured on the App Store and PC Mag. The company has created a spin off division called MobileProgramming that focuses primarily on Mobile Apps.

For a complete portfolio of app developed by A-1 Technology New York refer to the following link.
http://www.mobileprogramming.com/Portfolio.aspx

How would large companies get in on the action and make sure they are not left behind using legacy based technology. Part of the reason Large companies cannot get in on the action is Corporate Inertia and the time it takes a large organization to make a decision. The following are the suggested alternatives for Large companies to ensure that they are part of this Mobile App growth.

Create a separate division within the Organization that focuses on the emerging Mobile App sector.
Acquire a well established company that has a proven track record of High Quality B2B and B2C Apps on the App store.
Outsource the Mobile software development to a preferred vendor like A-1 Technology that has over the last several months invested and developed core expertise in the Mobile App sector.

In the last several months we have already seen several large fortune 500 companies like Disney, Novartis etc.  are including A-1 Technology on their preferred vendor list for Mobile Software Development.

In the coming months we are sure this trend will continue as we continue to see the extraordinary growth in B2B and B2C apps.

article by Prashant Ram