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Over the course of the next year I feel that you have as much of a chance of predicting the stock market as where the mobile industry is going to go. Yes, we all know dual-core smartphones and LTE are on the way but the unknown is how this technology is all going to be used. Here are my best overall predictions (guesses) for the upcoming year.

1)   Android – Apple – Blackberry – Nokia – WP7 (In that order)

2)   As more devices enter the market and faster network speeds are delivered to the consumer, developers who want to get their product to more phones in a more timely fashion will start taking advantage of web apps. 

3)   This last one is a prediction as well as something I hope for. Earlier this year we saw Microsoft embracing the ChevronWP7 unlocking tool by striking a deal with the developers to integrate it into the WP7 OS. With Android and Apple ahead of the pack, the rest of the OSes will need to make some dramatic changes to do their best at...

2011 will bring many, many app conferences.  It started with App Planet at MWC in Feb of 2010 and took off from there.  App World, App Universe, Appcelerate, Planet of the Apps and so on – we will see them all plus more in the upcoming year.  Developer conferences of all kinds will continue to pop out of the woodwork.  Three years ago, when we started WIPJams, there were barely any!  In 2010, there were upwards of 30 in September alone.  In 2011, developers will have their choice of even more developer events, conferences & code camps.  Better start thinking of ways to weed through them to determine the best bang for your buck!   Not the buck to attend the events… many of those will continue to be free to developers ... but your travel/hotel costs and the most costly thing of all… your time!  

It is all about mobile!  The mobile trend will continue for the foreseeable future.  Conferences that traditionally catered to C-Level executives and telecoms suddenly want mobile...

Blaug : The mobile prediction octopus.

Exclusively with us this year for the usual end of year predictions!

But before I get into it I was bragging last year about providing measurable predictions... let's see the results!!

1) Android saves Google in Europe in the face of increasing legal & regulatory pressures. 

small tick!!!  Definitely a shaping topic this year... as the EU flexes its regulatory muscle but Google' (lawyers) resist well... and Europe (aka EUOS) uses subsidies to fight back with WEBINOS and SYMBEOS

2) Android becomes the de facto standard for enterprise application and devices 

small tick!!!  A hotly debated subject, with a fight of figures... summary is roughly that enterprise Android growth (~30% of new acquisition in 2010)  has outpaced overall Android's already astonishing growth (~18% new handset market share in 2010)

3)The mobile developer / marketing scene reorganizes

small tick!!!  Just because this one is definitely one of the...

It's that time of year when we put our thinking caps on, peer into our crystal balls, and prognosticate on what we think is going to happen over the next 12 months. Over the next several days, the WIP team will share our predictions for 2011, and you can vote on whether or not you agree. Also leave your own predictions and thoughts in the comments!

Now, on to the hard part. I used to live in Las Vegas, if I was any good at this sort of thing, I'd never have left! In any case, here are a few thoughts about what's going to happen in our corner of the mobile industry over the next year.

* Note:  This is a first in our series of 2011 Predictions.  Check back every day next week for others, and on January 1 for a collection of all of them, and to vote for your favorite.

One of my favourite people in the mobile developer ecosystem is Ed Schmidt from AT&T.  Ed is a Director in their Developer Program which is a nice title and all, but doesn’t really speak to the volume of his knowledge of mobile development nor his passion for developers.  I thought it would be fun to interview him and get his predictions for 2011. 

Deeper Apps vs Lighter Apps

As other technologies are evolving around mobile development, Ed sees a trend toward deeper and more capable applications coming in 2011.  Ed’s definition of Deeper Apps is similar to what we at WIP have been calling Mobile Apps 2.0 – a confluence of stronger technology, better tools, and better product/life cycle development.

Ed noted that some of this will come because of ‘the cloud; and the networking based...

Thanks to the upcoming Christmas and New Year's holidays, we're on a slightly accelerated schedule with the latest WIP App Store Report, a monthly report based on our App Store Catalog, the most comprehensive collection of information on mobile app stores available -- so think of this as an early present!

The number of stores in the catalog grew by only one during the month, edging up to 110 now. But it's the growth during the year that we want to focus on. As you can see from the chart above, one year ago, the WIP App Store Catalog featured just 32 stores; since then, it has more than tripled, giving developers an unprecedented array of distribution outlets. The overall growth has been driven in absolute numbers by independent app stores -- a reflection of the fact that today’s smartphones allow for open distibution channels, and that anybody with a decent level of technical skill could conceivably start their own app store. But it’s worth highlighting the growth in a few...