You have to admit, 2009 was a big year for smartphone and mobile applications. iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, webOS, and even Windows Mobile (or Windows Phone now) all have some sort of offering for applications. This trend is something that any cell phone manufacturer in the future would be stupid not to implement into their phone. The biggest problem is, is that with more and more different types of operating systems on phones, the more application formats are needed to reach each platform.

“App stores” are extremely “in” right now and they have shown to be extremely profitable and popular with the iPhone and Android operating systems. Consumers want to be able to customize their phone with different applications that they need for home, work, and play.  The problem with phone app popularity is that consumers almost expect their new phones to be able to run tons of applications. Obviously this isn’t the case.

Make

The iPhone App Store had done extremely well with over 100,000 applications and over 2 Billion downloads. When consumers and cell phone companies see this they both want a piece of the action. Android’s Market is doing well too with around 20,000 applications thus far and further shows that consumers want to be able to get useful applications on their phones.What this shows to me is that app stores are a necessity when it comes to smartphones. I know personally that if my phone doesn’t have a Remember the Milk and Evernote app then it will not be as useful to me.

iPhone OS and Android OS are the dominating mobile operating systems right now when it comes to breakthrough and innovative mobile applications. These operating systems will continue to flourish as the others will seem to clump along until they decide to innovate.

Break

App stores or the lack-there-of are going to break certain phones popularity and adoption. Like I said before, the more smartphone operating systems there are, the more application formats are needed for the operating systems. This presents a huge problem.

Most application developers are not going to have the time or resources to apply their applications to all smartphones. Because of this the development tools for each platform have to be easy to use and should provide the developer an easy way to port their applications to the new platform. Here is the reason that most smartphone platforms are going to fail; they do not provide the tools necessary for developers to do their job efficiently and the reach of the platform is not widespread enough.

It seems that Palm’s webOS may have some struggles to get more and more applications added. Even though the platform is built on web technologies (HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc.), the Pre and the Pixi are not widespread enough for developers to flock to the new OS. Palm’s webOS may be the only operating system besides iPhone and Android that has a chance to pick up some adoption because of it’s innovative operating system.

So, you thought 2009 was the year of the “app”? Wait until this year pans out; it won’t only be smartphones, everything will have apps. But it is easy to see that having a successful platform and application store is something that is needed for any new mobile operating system. Some of these OSs are going to die because of the lack of innovation. Will their be any in 2010 that go by the wayside?