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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...

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...

Sprint announced its "Place Your Ad" program this week, which will allow developers and publishers to bid on featured placement in its tab in the Android Market and its Sprint Zone app for its customers. This follows in the steps of other App Store providers like GetJar that use similar systems to sell their featured slots, but it also reinforces the need for developers to do their own marketing, rather than solely relying on app stores to do it for them.

This was a point that came up yesterday in the WIPJam at Apps World NYC, as Caroline mentioned in a tweet:

It's become clear over the past several months that the app store world is becoming more and more like the world of content decks in some ways from several years ago. Apps from big publishers are dominating the top-download charts, and once those apps get in the charts, they're hard to dislodge. When they do get knocked out, it's often by an app or game from another big publisher.

This used to happen because these...

There are many great Mobile and  Developer events taking place in the next few weeks.  At WIP, we partner with many of these event.  You can find out more in our Mobile Community Calendar where we track events taking place all over the world.  If something is missing, please add it in or let me know!

Developer Webinars

A series of App Development Webinars are taking place from June 8th - June 17th leading up to the Muther!.   Webinars hosts include: deCarta, Immersion, AT&T, HPwebOS, BueVia and NAVTEQ. Learn about new APIs, SDKs , tools and features to enchance your apps.
 

Developer Events

NAVTEQ will host Developer Days in London on June 8,  Berlin on  June 14 and San Francisco on June 23. 

For Advanced Qt Developers, Nokia is offering Qt Training in Vancouver, Canada on June 13 & 14, in Sunnyvale, CA on  June 16 & 17, Sunnvale, CA,  and in Dallas, TX on June 22.

FREE Passes

See WIP Marketplace for details.

Mobile Computing Summit, June 28 - 30, in San Francisco...