Features

• What enterprise mobile apps can learn from mobile games

  Enterprise mobile apps are shifting from small, narrowly task-oriented programs to larger, more complex ones. To design them well, enterprise developers can learn a lot from a surprising source: mobile games.

• Open for business: It's the year of the corporate app store

  With more employees using smartphones and tablets for business, enterprises are setting up their own app stores for application distribution, leveraging a consumer model for mobile application access that is tuned to the workplace. Instead of saddling already overburdened IT personnel with getting applications to individual devices, these app stores provide a central distribution mechanism for employees to download applications themselves.

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  Mobile apps: The IT pro's new power tools

  Think the mobile revolution is all about word games and social networking apps? Think again. Heavy-duty apps for IT pros have arrived on mobile platforms and they're quickly changing the face of IT systems management.

• Chinese developers take a bite of the Apple

  If you've ever gone to Apple's mobile app store and purchased games like High Noon, Gamebox1 or Doodletruck, then you've downloaded an app from the burgeoning Chinese software development community.

• Five reasons mobile apps rule

  The mobile app craze, which was started by Apple's iPhone and has been perpetuated by any smartphone worth its plastic, shows no signs of slowing down, according to Gartner. The market researcher says mobile app revenue, which equaled $US4.2 billion last year, will hit $29.5 billion in 2013. For consumers, that's a good thing, because mobile apps rule. There's been some talk of Web apps eventually killing off the downloadable app market, and that may hold true in the long, long run. But, right now, mobile apps rule. Here are five reasons why.

• Mobile's future: Outrageous but possible predictions

  'Tis the season of mobile predictions. As this year comes to an end and a new decade begins, Mobclix, which operates a mobile ad exchange network, has gazed into its crystal ball and foreseen 10 mobile trends-many of which are, in fact, pretty outrageous.

• Is Apple's iPhone App Store growing unwieldy?

  Research firm IDC says Apple's App Store could stock in excess of a quarter million iPhone and iPod Touch applications, tripling current levels by the end of 2010. That's some number. Contrast with an estimated 10,000 Windows 7-compatible apps, over 700 (released as well as announced) Xbox 360 games, nearly 600 PS3 games, over 1,000 Wii games, over 600 DS games (from September 2008), and over 700 PSP games.

• Android, iPhone, BlackBerry: Which OS is best for app development?

  Let's say that you're a software developer who has created a hot new application for smartphones that you're certain is about to take the world by storm. Your work isn't quite done and here's the problem: not only will your brilliant and innovative application have to compete with several other applications that have similar ambitions, but it will have to compete with them over multiple platforms.

• Nokia sees mobile users wanting services over phones

  Services, such as maps and music downloads, will dictate how consumers select their mobile phones, and hardware will adapt to meet this trend, said Tero Ojanperä, Nokia's executive vice president of services.