All one has to do is simply look around and realize that content consumption is increasingly on the rise, more importantly it’s increasing on the rise while on the move. In fact, mobile content consumption is expected to surpass online content as Smartphone price points decrease. To shed a little more light on the subject, Christina Warren shared a fantastic post over on Mashable about 5 reasons you’re consuming mobile content, I urge you all to read it at least once.

Mobile App Opportunities

According to a recent report by EPiServer, 73 percent of UK consumers now access websites on mobile devices and two thirds have used a mobile app in the last year. However, only 20 percent of companies actually have a mobile-optimized site, let alone a mobile app. Noticing the gap here yet?

By 2015, it’s estimated that 43% of mobile users will be using Smartphones as the penetration continues to grow at a fast rate. Brands, businesses and content creators that will be the first out the gate to generate content for mobile app users, are the ones who will have the upper hand going forward. Up until very recently, the same was being said about increasing your reach online by engaging in social media. Today it’s almost impossible to participate on social networks without encountering one of the big name brands.

Maria Wasing, VP of Marketing Europe & Sales Operations at EPiServer recently said, “The number of consumers carrying an internet-enabled device with them at all times is rocketing and, by thinking about the best approach for your brand now, businesses can make the most of the growing mobile opportunity.”

To that statement, I’d like to add; The evolution to social engagement will occur away from the PC. Ignoring this trend is setting yourself up for failure.

App Development Costs

In 2011 alone, the app development services industry, which includes app creation,  management, and distribution reached $20.5 billion. However, one of the most frequently asked questions remains; how much does it cost to develop an app?

In general, app development costs  vary significantly from region to region, the complexity and scale of the app. UK developers for example may charge $626 per day whereas competitors from India may charge roughly $138 per working day. Of course, you can always invest your time and learn to code yourself.

Now, I hear what you’re saying. With rates like that, how am I supposed to create an app to share my content? Luckily there are a few DIY app development services that will help you get your content on the app store in no time with very little cost. Here are a few examples.

Mobile App DIY

Conduit - Conduit allows anyone to create an app containing content from your site’s RSS feeds, YouTube channel, Social presences such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as customization of your splash page, icon and much more.

AppsGeyser – Turn your web content into an Android app in minutes. Additionally, the AppsGeyser service helps you distribute and monetize your mobile app. Over 90 thousand apps have already been developed with this service.

AppMakr – Appmakr is a browser-based platform designed to make creating your own iPhone app quick and easy. Using existing content and social networking feeds, AppMakr is a user-friendly system allowing for the creation of native iPhone applications.

ShoutEm – This service isn’t free, but it does give you incredible options such as adding modules and arranging them as you please. ShoutEm also lets you brand the app with your company’s colors and logo, including setting up your own application icon, home image, iTunes artwork and more.

Other notable services include: Swebapps, Apps-builder, Mippin, Android3apps and, Mobile Roadie.

Great What’s Next?

By now this post should have opened your thoughts to the opportunities that mobile apps have to offer. Start thinking about the content you could be sharing with your audience beyond the social web. Break it down into sections that your audience would most find beneficial to access while on the go and test the DIY services mentioned about to see what works best for you.

Needs a little extra motivation? Read these posts:

Anatomy of a Mobile App Entrepreneur

App Icons are Like Speed-dating in the Mobile Apps World 

Written by Oren Todoros, W3i Blog Contributor

W3i collaborates with developers to optimize monetization tools such as in-app purchases.  By identifying high conversion in-app purchase touch points in a game, developers can capitalize on a similar implementation.

Venan Entertainment is an experienced game developer, developing games since 2002 (Space Miner Blast, Ninjatown). For their new title, Book of Heroes, Venan partnered with Recharge Studios utilizing the AppX fund, a $10 million fund created to help developers accelerate their game business.  AppX provides a free suite of services; user acquisition funding, actionable insights and game-changing production support with no long-term revenue share and without giving up IP rights.

During the post launch, the AppX team observed healthy activity of in-app purchases in the tutorial and wanted to understand why 25% of the paying users were purchasing an armor bundle virtual good.

In our combined analysis with Venan, we found that the largest monetizing event in the game was during the tutorial. The game was artfully displaying the advantages of a high cost item at the perfect time during the game.

First, the player is shown the context of what is going on in the game. The player must understand the value they are getting from making a purchase before they are presented the offer or they will not make the purchase!

In Book of Heroes, the player is in the game for about three minutes before they are given the opportunity to make a purchase. This makes the player familiar with the mechanics of the game. At the opportune time, the player is presented a bundle of upgrades for their avatar, not the in-app purchase screen. The player is required to purchase armor, but they can choose from multiple tiers. The first tier is easily attainable with their default premium currency amount and provides a minor improvement to gameplay. The second is exactly the cost of investing in the minimal IAP purchase of $1.99 and provides a large advantage over the first. The third requires the IAP of $4.99, and creates a huge advantage for the user’s avatar.

Combine this with a seamless visit to the IAP screen, back to the bundle purchase area and the handy discount amounts on the IAP screen showing the advantage to making a higher purchase, and you have a great monetization event.

Contact W3i to collaborate in growing your app business.  Now time to incinerate some Rath’een Warlocks!

Jimi Van Guilder, Producer, Recharge Studios, W3i, LLC

Jimi is a mobile content expert with a decade of experience working with brands that include Nickelodeon, the NFL, NBC, Marvel, Snoop Dogg and LucasArts. Jimi heads up production at W3i’s wholly owned publishing arm and investment fund, Recharge Studios.

App entrepreneur success stories are becoming increasingly common through the ever-growing mobile industry. Of course, the truth is that working up to a hit app almost never happens over night or with your first app for that matter. As someone once put it, for every Angry Bird out there, there are at least 20 thousand angry developers.

Having met with countless app developers, I can safely say that the one thing they all have in common is entrepreneurial drive. With Apple recently crossing the 10 billion download mark and an estimated 44 billion downloads expected to be achieved by 2016, creative young mobile app developers everywhere are going all-out, looking to cash in on the hottest business trend to emerge in the last decade.

What does it take to become a successful app entrepreneur? Some may say that the development process is actually the easy part. Thinking of an app with the right balance of value, creativity and marketing reach, that’s the tricky part.

One of best apps to riches stories involves Lisa Bettany, a Canadian figure skater who suffered through a serious injury only to bounce back at the top of the app charts with her hit app Camera+. Entrepreneur.com shares her awesome story which I urge you all to read at least once.

Anybody Can Do It

We’ve all at one point or another had an “Ah-Ha!” moment where we were sure we’ve thought of a hit app idea, or at least know someone who has. However, we weren’t all born with the gift of coding flowing through our genes. Luckily there’s no lack of talented freelance developers for hire on services such as odesk, elance, guru.com and many other freelance sites to help get the job done.

Enter Trey Smith. After launching a very lucrative business as an affiliate in the online world, Trey turned his attention towards iPhone apps. His iPhone apps include top hits such as Jump Pack, Maze+ and Monster Magic.  In just a 5 month period Trey’s apps have had over 3,000,000 downloads. In his webinars, Trey explains how he took his iPhone app game, Kolo’s Journey, from concept to completion and through marketing, almost entirely through the use of freelance services.

Business Sense on the Go

One of the biggest advantages entrepreneurs have today is the ability to conduct business anywhere via their mobile devices. From answering emails, to signing agreements, the use of Smartphones as business tools has transformed the way entrepreneurs do business. This also opens the door for app entrepreneurs to think outside of the box as far too many restrict their app ideas to “the next big game,” when in reality, there’s a huge window of opportunity to deliver utility and productivity tools to make on-the-go users’ life a little more fun and manageable.

In conclusion

The most successful app entrepreneurs have approached their app ideas by looking at what niche their app could best fill. Do not underestimate the power of targeting a specific audience or end-user for your app idea, that being said, the real magic happens when you keep  your mind open to fun and creative ideas.

In Tips on Game Mechanics Session 1, I discussed why your game should allow for the purchase and display of content to create envy between players.

This session I will focus on how to increase user retention that ultimately leads to more opportunities for monetization. One of the simplest mechanics to increase user retention is to add a daily reward to your freemium game. It is surprising how many games that use a currency do not contain a daily reward but many top games that previously did not have an award now have one (Gun Bros. is an example).

There are some variations you can place in your daily reward. In the recently released Recharge Studios game Dolphin Play with Friends, we implemented a daily reward that awards players an increasing amount of standard currency for the first four consecutive days and one unit of premium currency for the fifth consecutive day. Once the player gets to five days the cycle starts over.

Some games have variations on the number of consecutive days you can come back to earn the maximum currency, and some games award the maximum currency as long as you come back on consecutive days indefinitely until you miss a day. Other applications award a variety of rewards other than currency such as consumables used in gameplay or crafting.

Daily rewards also offer a great opportunity to monetize the user indirectly by offering an ad for a daily free app as you can see in the example below.

Once the user closes the daily reward they are presented this custom interstitial advertisement from W3i’s Mobile App Advertising Platform that offers a new free app each day. Offering this interstitial after a daily reward is the perfect opportunity to present an ad to the user for two reasons. One, they just were given a reward so they must be in a good mood! Two, they will only see the ad once a day just as they see the daily reward once a day.

Does your app have a daily reward? There may be room to increase the retention of your app and possibly include an advertisement that is less intrusive than an ad shown more than once a day or directly on app launch. Retention is the biggest opportunity, I find myself scrambling for my iPhone if the end of the day rolls around and I had been too busy to collect my reward and feed my dolphins!

Jimi Van Guilder, Producer, Recharge Studios, W3i, LLC

Jimi is a mobile content expert with a decade of experience working with brands that include Nickelodeon, the NFL, NBC, Marvel, Snoop Dogg and LucasArts. Jimi heads up production at W3i’s wholly owned publishing arm and investment fund, Recharge Studios.

Have you ever made a download or install decision based on the quality of the app icon? I’ll be the first to confess that in a time where apps are becoming more and more abundant, where you have the choice of hundreds of thousands of apps, it is becoming increasingly difficult to stand out and find a useful app. Much like in speed-dating, users will make decisions in a matter of seconds, especially considering the mobile context and our increasing demand for instant gratification.

Arguably, the quality of your app icon will increase the chances that users will give your app a fair shot and (hopefully) fall in love with what it offers behind the scenes. In other words, if you put together your app icon without much thought and effort, the chances of a user choosing your app versus skipping it for the next one are close to nil. Does that mean a quality app icon equals a quality app? Certainly not. The same is true for the inverse. However, it will most likely make users at least explore your app in more depth and lead to an install for further evaluation.

So, what does a quality app icon look like? There are plenty of app icon tutorials and resources out there on the net, some better than others. Michael Flarup (on his PixelResort site) has put together one of the better set of guidelines for app icon design (even though it’s a little dated) and I won’t rehash any of it here. The only thing I would augment is the “Stand out from the crowd” section. While Michael shows some good examples, we can push the envelope a bit more. I’ve seen some great concepts come through on Dribbble, a site where some of the top designers hang out and show off their latest works. Here is a small sampling from some work featured on Dribble of how your app icon can stand out even more:

Examples of App Icons that Stand Out

Unfortunately, there is not much, if any, data on what types of icons actually work better in the various app stores. It would be nice to run some A/B testing and get a better understanding. Regardless, making your icon look great is likely a step in the right direction (don’t skimp on the value the actual app provides either). Remember, first impressions matter.

What are your favorite app icons?  Feel free to post in the comments.

David May, Director of Creative Services; W3i, LLC
David has been working in the design industry for over 9 years and carries a fancy B.F.A. with focus in Graphic Design. He’s a native of Germany and loves peanut m&m’s. about everything related to the web and design in general.

What are your favorite app icons?

What’s New @ W3i for Mobile App Partners

App ID Creation – Create an ID for your app that you can use for integration. This will save you time speed up implementation so your app is to market faster! Forgot your ID? Do you need to know what we have set up for your currency? Can’t remember if you have been set up as a partner for a specific application? Find it all here!

Self-Service Campaign Management (Coming Soon!) – Stop and start your campaigns to optimize your return. No more waiting for someone who may be in a different time zone than you. Move quickly with the ability to pause and resume your campaigns as needed without the help of a W3i associate. Were you looking for the ability to see the campaign information for your applications? Now you can! You will be able to view your budget, remaining balances, daily cap information, country targeting, rate, start time and expiration time, whether or not your application was featured and more!

Mobile Integration Documentation – For ease of implementation you now have direct access to updates to SDK’s, sample apps, FAQ’s, etc. No more waiting, direct access to all of our integration updates immediately without having to log in.

Create and Save Custom Reports – Saves time and gives you the insight you need at your fingertips. Save your reports for immediate access to your most important reports after login.

Custom Subscriptions (Coming Soon!)– Now that you have the ability to save your reports, wouldn’t it be nice to have them e-mailed directly to you? Coming soon, the ability to subscribe to your custom reports and have them sent directly to you as you need them. Weekly, daily, whenever, you got it!

This is just the beginning of improvements we are making to improve your experience partnering with W3i.

Localizing your iOS app can have a major impact on game revenue. Read on to find out how:

What is localization?
Localization is simply the process of translating your product into different languages for a specific country or region.

Why localize your app?
Localizing your app can make a huge difference in growing a loyal fan base in other countries.  The Apple App Store is available in over 120 countries with support for 40 languages.  Support for international payments, currency, and more, is already built in to the App Store.  So taking your app global is a great way to increase revenue and the process is probably more straight forward than you think.  Let’s take a look at how to bring your app to the global market place with localizations.

Getting started
The first step is to figure out which countries you are interested in marketing to.  Up to date sales data by country is difficult to come by.  That said, a good place to start is with populous countries with minimal english speaking people, who love technology.  Examples include, Japan, Korea, China, and France.  There are some sites on the web that show trends.  It pays to check this out periodically. My own research for a free ad-funded app (released earlier this year) yielded the top countries as  Korea, Taiwan, China, Japan,  Spain, France, Italy, Germany, and Russia.

Once you’ve figured out which countries you want to market to, the next step is to choose the languages for your app.  Usually country to language is 1 to 1 but that’s not always the case.  For example, there are 10 languages associated with China or Chinese.  So it pays to do some research on the country you will be targeting and figure out which language(s) make the most sense for your app.  In my case I focused on two languages for China, simplified script and traditional script.

Translating your copy
Probably the toughest aspect of localizing your app is to acquire the actual translated copy.  You can gather translations for common text items like Cancel, Ok, Continue, Back, Close, etc. by simply changing the language on your iOS device and take note of the translation for these common text items.   Using the same translation as iOS itself really helps the user and keeps your app consistent with the operating system.

For less common words and simple phrase translations, many developers use Google Translate or some other on-line translation service.  This can be problematic if you need more complex sentences or phrases translated.  Poorly translated phrases may actually hurt more than help by confusing or even insulting the user.

By far the best approach to translating your copy is to use a professional translation service.  There are a variety of translation services marketed on the web.  You probably want to focus on those that specialize in working with iOS apps.  Companies with a focus on iOS app translation often provide good documentation or tools that make the process of setting up your app for localization easier.  In most cases you can get an online estimate by pasting your copy into a form.

Tips for Localizing your App
The process for localizing your app is fairly straight forward.  Apple’s developer documentation provides a complete set of programming topics that will guide you through the process.  There are a few common pitfalls to avoid.

Complete your app (especially the user interface) before localizing.  Once you begin creating localized versions of your windows, views menus, etc., if you change the arrangement of screen items, you will find yourself tweaking multiple files (one for each language).  Completing your app also ensures that you will have all the text you need translated. Remember to include any online help text that you link to from your app in your copy for translation.

Consider alerts and dynamic text for translation as well, not just the text you see when views first load.

If your app references any locale or region formatted information like time, date, currency, or other numerical values, remember to use the locale settings of the device in calculations and text you display dynamically.  For example, if you calculate and display miles per gallon in the United States,  be prepared to calculate and display Kilometers Per Gallon if the user’s locale is set as such.

Avoid having graphics that contain text.  For example, if you use a custom button background and the title for the button is included as part of the image, you will need a version of that graphic for each language.  You can save time by keeping text out of the graphic and use the title property for text instead.

Sound files that contain spoken text will need to be available for each supported language.

One key decision is whether you will also provide translated App Store meta data (app description, etc).  This is something you need to figure out before you go live because adding localized meta data requires you submit a new version to the App Store.

Consider starting with localizing your app for one or two countries and bringing more on later.   If your product roadmap includes expanding features in later versions,  you can move additional translation costs to those versions and justify the expense based on sales in additional markets.

Testing your App
It’s important to test your app with your test device setup for each supported language.  Compared to English, most other languages will result in more characters for any given word or phrase.  You may need to adjust the size of some of your UI controls to accommodate the increased length of a word or phrase.

If possible, add testers from your target countries.  Ask for feedback specifically as it relates to translations.

Hmmm, I’m not sure just yet
Even if your still on the fence about bringing your app to international markets by localizing your app you can still help yourself by taking some basic steps in your app development right now.  Start by reading through Apple’s developer documentation as it relates to localization and internationalization.   You’ll discover, when beginning the development of your app, that you can take some simple steps that will make localizing your app later much easier and cost less.

Patrick Brennan, Senior Software Developer

Apple’s development certificate stuff can be difficult to understand, and after I recently explained it to a new team member I thought it would be a valuable topic for others.  Some of this is documented well on Apple’s site, but I will go through it and focus more on the parts that I found unintuitive.

You can download Xcode for free and start creating apps and experimenting with the iPhone/iPad simulators right away.  If you want to put anything onto a device, however, you will need to purchase a developer license from Apple.  (Note: A device is required for things like testing In-App Purchases, Push Notifications and Location Services.)

After you sign up as a developer, you have access to the developer provisioning portal where you can request a development and distribution certificate.  Apple’s site does a good job of walking through most of this process.

How to create a development/distribution certificate:

1. Generate  a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) with a public key
• In your Applications folder, open the Utilities folder and launch Keychain Access.
• Choose Keychain Access > Certificate Assistant >Request a Certificate from a Certificate Authority.
• In the Certificate Information window, enter or select the following information
• In the User Email Address field, enter your email address
• In the Common Name field, enter your name
• In the Request is group, select the Saved to disk option
• Click Continue
• The Certificate Assistant saves a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) file to your Desktop.
• The public/private key pair will be generated when you create the Certificate Signing Request (CSR) if you use the Key Chain Assistant to create the CSR.
2. Submit the CSR through the Provisioning Portal to the Admin for approval.
• Click the Distribution/Development tab
• Upload the certificate by choosing the file
• Click Submit

Once the certificate processes and downloads you can double-click it to add it to the Keychain (the login keychain by default), the part that is not clear is that this certificate is tied to the computer where you requested it.  If you ever want to sign an app with the certificate on another computer (or another OS on the same computer), you need to export your identity from Keychain Access.  The export process is pretty simple and creates a “Personal Information Exchange” (.p12) file that can be copied to another computer:

Apple's Keychain - Simple Export Process Creating a "Personal Information Exchange"

If you have e a team with multiple developers that could potentially submit an app to the App Store, then exporting the identity is a critical step. This allows other team members to import that distribution identity, download the distribution certificate and provisioning files, and sign the app for testing or submission (Ad Hoc or App Store).

Once you have a developer certificate you can activate any iOS device for debugging:

1. connect the device via USB
2. run Xcode
3. open the Organizer (Window->Organizer in Xcode)
4. go to the devices tab
5. Control-Click on your device in the list
6. select “Add Device to Provisioning Portal”

Xcode will take care of requesting a development provisioning profile (iOS Team Provisioning Profile), and install it on your device.

The next thing you’ll want to try is Creating an App ID, but be careful here – once created, an App ID cannot be changed or deleted. The App ID is comprised of a description, a prefix, and the bundle id. The bundle id is something like com.domainname.appname, and the bundle prefix can be left alone unless you are creating a suite of applications that need to
work together.  A few pieces of advice:

1. lowercase bundle id - The App ID is case sensitive, so it’s best to eliminate confusion/mistakes by sticking to all lowercase.
2. unique description - The common name (description) field shows up in a few different drop-downs, and if you create two that are similar it  can be a pain to keep them separate.
3. double check before submit – As I said earlier, this is permanent.  A misspelling here isn’t customer facing, but it can be annoying and confusing for other teammates.
4. beware enter key - The default action for the enter key is to submit.  I accidentally found this out after I entered the Description, but before I had entered the bundle id…  Duh! So now we have an empty bundle id with a valid-looking description.

Once you have an App ID you can create provisioning profiles for that app.  There are three types of provisioning profile:

1. Development - Now that Xcode manages a default development profile you shouldn’t have to worry about this.
2. Ad Hoc - This is for distributing to coworkers or team members that may need to see or test the app. If they are not registered as developers on the same account, then their device UDIDs need to be manually entered.
3. App Store - Used only for final submission to the App Store

Revoking

If you didn’t export the identity (.p12) files, and the original computer that created the Certificates is lost or wiped, you can Revoke the existing certificates and create new ones. Unfortunately this requires updating all of the active Distribution Profiles.  It’s not difficult, but depending on the number of apps it can be a tedious process.  To do this go to the Distribution tab of the Profiles section, and click Edit -> Modify next to each profile. The Modify page will not let you Submit the profile unless you make a change, so usually I just add a space to the profile name.  Once the profiles are processed they can be downloaded and added to any computer with access to the distribution identity (.p12) file.

Hopefully, this saves you a ton of stress and time.  Do you have any additional feedback on  Apple Development Certificates?   if so,
add it in the comments.

Tony Feick. Senior Software Developer

One of my biggest passions as a child was running around, shooting short videos. The pain was always in uploading the video to a PC, spending time editing it only to share it with a limited audience, mainly friends and family.

While winter isn’t usually the optimal time to take videos outside, there’s usually more than enough family antics happening indoors that you might want to treasure. To save you time and cut straight to the action, here are five video creation apps for iPhone you will find handy. Bad script writing not included.

Viddy

Fands of Instagram will love this one; Viddy is a simple way for anyone to capture, produce, and share beautiful videos with the world. Record a moment of your life, give it that cinematic look with our production packs, and share it with those who matter most.

The app offers free visual effects, music, transitions and themes, plus one click sharing to your favorite social networks.

Cost: Free

BlipSnips

BlipSnips is truly unique as it lets you tag your Facebook friends and location, turning your video creations into a social experience. The BlipSnips team recently added features such as, an activity feed to track activity on your videos.

Cost: Free

Movie360

If Movie360 doesn’t spark your creative juices, I don’t know what will. Let’s start with the fact that it’s free, now add the fact that it comes jam packed with 13 visual effects and you get where I’m going. Unlike iMovie, you can’t edit video, but you can pause and record, so there’s no editing needed really. The app’s interface is fluid and to-the-point. Select an effect from below and tap the record button to start shooting. The app allows you to switch to another effect in the middle of a recording.

Cost: Free

iMovie

The user interface is beautiful and offers numerous options from the editing screen; assign a theme, shoot video on the fly, choose a clip from the camera roll or play the video. Video clips, images from the photo gallery and audio from the music library can all be inserted within a project.  The pre-selection screen is really handy for quickly finding clips.

Cost: $4.99

Vimeo

I’ve been a long time fan of Vimeo‘s professional video hosting service. For one, the Vimeo community of students, artists, and amateur filmmakers is thriving. The official Vimeo app enables you to not only watch high-quality videos that are hosted on Vimeo, but it also delivers an easy-to-use video editor that rivals iMovie. Once you’re done editing a video, you can upload it to Vimeo from within the app itself or export it to your camera roll. The only thing that would make this app better, is if there was an iPad version.

Cost: Free

In conclusion – There’s no lack of options when it comes to creating great videos, using nothing more than your iPhone or iPod Touch. Everyone from music videos producers to big budget productions are turning to the low alternative of shooting directly from the iPhone.

Already have your video work of art shared online? We’d love to see it. Share it with us in the comments or let us know about it on Twitter – @W3i and @OrenTodoros

Over the course of the last year we have seen considerable growth in smartphone ownership, apps and mobile app sites. With the new year right around the corner, now would be a good time to look ahead and make some fact-based predictions on how the mobile industry as a whole will evolve over the next few months.

First, here’s where things currently stand. According to analytics firm Distimo in its year-end report for 2011, there are now over a million mobile applications available across the top seven major app stores. And, as I mentioned in my previous post, the iTunes App Store still reigns supreme, especially if you’re a developer looking to make a profit.

The iPhone App Store generates about four times the revenue that is generated by the Google Android Market, the report finds, in terms of total revenue generated by the 200 highest grossing apps. Meanwhile, the App Store for iPad generates more than double the revenue of the Android Market.

To add to Distimo’s report, Neilsen’s State of the Media: The Mobile Media Report highlights the potential of mobile commerce in the near future.

Report’s Key Findings

The majority of 25-34 and 18-24 year olds now own smartphones (64% and 53% respectively);

The majority of smartphone owners (62%) have downloaded apps on their devices and games are the top application category used in the past 30 days;

The number of smartphone subscribers using the mobile internet has grown 45% in 2010.

87 percent of app downloaders (those who have downloaded an app in the past 30 days) have used deal-of-the-day websites like Groupon or Living Social.

Apps are Growing Up

Taking the facts above into consideration, here’s how I see the mobile and app industry grow over the course of the next 6 to 12 months.

The rise of the mobile web will continue to grow, specifically with retailers and businesses. Given the ubiquity of the web cross platform, the costs associated with cross platform development and the experiences which can be provided via mobile Web, developers will shift away from platform specific apps towards developing rich, mobile Web experiences.

Amazon will acquire RIM. No facts to back this one up, it’s just a hunch.

While QR codes are a hot trend right now (usage of QR codes jumped up 9,840% in the second quarter of the year 2011,) the user experience is clunky and uninviting. I don’t see this trend continuing into 2012. We’re already starting to see the emergence of more advanced and appealing technologies.

Businesses will get smarter about developing lead-based app marketing campaigns. Business-to-business companies will be leading the charge, but everyone will be on board soon. Year 2012 is set to be the year of lead-based app marketing.

In Conclusion - 2012 promises to bring us more progress in the mobile space thanks to increased attention to user experience, better development tools and increased opportunities for mobile advertisers and publishers. Mobile media  is the future, and the future has officially arrived.