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As it’s time for predications and reflections I always go back to my previous predictions to see how I made out.  And contrary to the belief of Strand Consulting, they are not the only ones to publish their previous years, so you can see how I made out too! 

Here are the highlights and  links to those predictions:
2011 – Year of APIs, Growth of Discovery, Less BlackBerry, Less Android, More iPhone
2010– a Thibaut/Caroline combo here.  I declared:  More Android, More BlackBerry, Less iPhone, More Innovation/More funding
2009 Tough economic times, Access the new open, Less US centric, yet more fragmentation...
2008  The Rise of Tools, M&A, and ‘Open’
2007  More fragmentation, newbie developers, Usability; and Location, Location, Location.

It was pretty right on for last year, especially the bit about API growth and where I predicated More iPhone, iPhone being the easy choice for developers as  I saw “ developers abandoning BlackBerry and Android and heading back to...

Developers continue to be in hot demand as we enter 2012 with many events eager to cater to them - so many events it is becoming much harder to choose which to attend.  I see operators/carriers doing more and more to attract developers to their SDKs and APIs.  A couple of years ago, only a few were hosting developer events; now all are hosting at least one per year with many additional hackathons, seminars and workshops.

Much more emphasis will be placed on how developers can make money with their applications.  More events with this focus will be forthcoming in 2012 and beyond.  All conferences will include it as one of their conference streams if they are not dedicated the whole conference to it.  Other prominent areas include: Mobile Payments, NFC and Social Media and anything to do with Apps.

Mobile World Congress will continue to attract large numbers of mobile ecosystem members including developers.  GSMA really hit a home run with App Planet at MWC in 2010 and will...

Have you also noticed that 2011 has seen a drastic reduction in the numbers of predictions?

When this time of year is usually full of "Top 10 things that will happen next year in mobile" ... In 2011 pre-dictators (those doing predictions) seem to have disappeared or seem to be more quiet than usual!

What should we read in this?

Optimistic view
2011 has seen mobile finally booming (despite a slow economy) and people usually predicting at this time of the year are too  busy doing! (or resting from a long hard year)

Pessimistic view
2012 looks so muddy that most people do not want to venture in what could be a very very dangerous territory

Even more pessimistic view
The major mobile devices and mobile platforms (Android and Apple) have reached a stage of maturity where the rhythm of innovation inside and outside the platform is slowing down. There is no exciting future for 2012 just consolidation over existing technologies.

Realistic view
This is the end of...

There is too much going on with too many variables in the mobile industry for me to feel really confident about my predictions, but here are my 5 in no particular order.

1)   NFC finally takes off

Some quick research shows that the first NFC phone was the Nokia 6131, released back in 2006.  Fast-forward 4 years and the first Smartphone with NFC capabilities is the Android Nexus S. The only people so far who have truly taken advantage of it, are Sprint & Citi-Bank customers who can use their phone to pay where ever there are contactless pay stations. In short, not very many people at all.

With around 25 NFC phones released in 2011 and just as many confirmed for 2012, the industry is finally getting behind the idea. This in combination with more contactless payment stations are being installed in stores throughout the world and in society people are even becoming too impatient to scan a QR code.

2)   Android will continue to get simple

Apple and WP7 have done a really...

December has been crazy. What looked like it was going to be a peaceful month that would give me a chance to tie up all of 2011's loose ends turned into the usual maelstrom of travel, meetings, new business, old business and more. In short, December was just like the rest of the year! So perhaps it's fitting that the last thing I've gotten around to before I head out for the holidays is writing up my predictions for 2012. There hasn't been a lot of time for reflection on the year past just yet, so I'll start by taking a look at last year's predictions and see how I fared:

1. Platform-provided developer tools go cross-platform. - This didn't really pan out quite like I expected. There was some movement on this front, but not that much.

2. One of the major smartphone platforms sees the sun set on it. - Um, yes. The only argument here is whether you're talking about Meego, webOS, or something else.

3. Mobile APIs become the new App Stores. - Definitely; as the number of...

A couple of weeks ago, a post on the Guardian Apps Blog (which is a great read and sponsored by our friends at BlueVia) asked the question "Why aren't smartphone app developers going where the sales are?" and took a look at some recent data from Gartner on smartphone market share and Appcelerator on developer platform sentiment, trying to understand why developer interest doesn't map to market share data.

Unfortunately the post doesn't really come up with the right answer, because it's looking at the wrong data. While smartphone market share is an important metric for developers to consider, it's only one piece of the puzzle, and by no means the most important figure. The disconnect the author cites -- that developers are targeting platforms with "minimal market share" instead of the market-leading Android -- is due to the fact that app sales and handset sales are two very different things.

Not all smartphone users are created equal, and users display very different behavior...

TouchType's SwiftKey is one of the leading paid Android apps in several markets, and has seen a huge amount of success despite having a relatively small marketing budget. TouchType CMO Joe Braidwood was kind enough to share some tips gleaned from his experience at getting the keyboard app downloaded hundreds of thousands of times, and what developers can do to try and drive similar success from their own apps.

WIP: Hi Joe, can you tell us a little bit about TouchType, SwiftKey and what you do?

JB: Sure. Our company TouchType was founded in 2008 around the idea that we could use some recent breakthroughs in natural language technology and machine learning to make typing on touchscreen phones easier. After a couple of years of research and prototyping, we came up with a powerful language engine and strong UI that worked really well. SwiftKey was born.

SwiftKey replaces the keyboard on Android phones or tablets with one that has a smarter language engine, which learns your...