In case there was any doubt about the growth potential of mobile applications, this eMarketer article provides some interesting forecasts:

• US Mobile Internet users to grow from 73 million in 2009 to 134 million by 2013
• Smartphone sales to account for 14% of all mobile phone sales in 2009, rising to 38% by 2013
• Business mobile application spending to rise from $1.7 billion in 2009 to $7.5 billion by 2012; consumer mobile application spending to rise from $1.1 billion to $5.6 billion over the same timeframe

The bottom line is obvious: smartphones and mobile applications are quickly going mainstream.

Fred Wilson’s post on What Drives Consumer Adoption of New Technologies and the 300+ thought-provoking comments to the post provide some great insights on why iPhone, Facebook, Wii, Blogger, Twitter and others became the most popular consumer technologies in recent years. A neat framework is proposed that a technology needs to be sexy to get people to use, social to get them addicted and truly useful to keep them. One of the most repeated themes in the discussion: the technology must be extremely easy to use and focused on doing one thing really well. We couldn’t agree more - too many companies try to do too much and don’t pay enough attention to product usability.

Canada made the list of the 5 safest locations in the world for outsourcing while Bogota, Columbia has the honor of the top spot on the list of The 10 Riskiest Locations in the World for Outsourcing. Other risky countries, based on concerns about terrorism, crime, pollution, political stability and other factors, include: India, Thailand, South Africa, Malaysia, Israel, Brazil, Philippines and Jamaica. 

 Some argue that Bogota doesn’t deserve such a bad rap. Probably true. Trying to get a solid read on the risk of a low-cost offshore location may itself be the real risk.

Eye for Travel has put together a detailed Mobile Technology in Travel report. Through a series of case studies, it provides some great examples of how mobile applications are sweeping the travel industry. bitHeads was asked by Eye for Travel to contribute to the report as an expert on mobile application development best practices (see section starting on page 52). More detail on best practices is given in bitHeads’ white paper Mobile Application Development: Challenges and Best Practices.

We’re pleased to be featured in the latest BlackBerry Alliance Partner E-Newsletter. It requires alliance member login to view, so I copied it below. The fastest growing company claim refers to our 2008 Software 500 ranking as the third fastest growing software company in our revenue category.

“One of the fastest growing software and services companies in the world”
For over 12 years, bitHeads has been a trusted behind-the-scenes mobile application development partner. With a unique focus on the creation of new mobile applications for others, bitHeads has built an enviable track record for quick and reliable delivery of award-winning products. Rising demand for its BlackBerry application development expertise in recent years has contributed to bitHeads’ ranking as the third fastest growing software and services company in the world.

bitHeads’ ProductStream™ service draws from their North American staff of mobile software experts to rapidly assemble a team of world-class designers and developers for each project. bitHeads uses a proven agile-based development methodology to effectively collaborate with stakeholders and reliably develop commercial grade software.

bitHeads’ many years of experience and ongoing investment to maintain a world-class team of mobile experts enables them to quickly define solid architectures, design great user interfaces and develop high quality software. ISVs tap these bitHeads capabilities to innovate, reduce risk and accelerate new product launches. In addition to their mobile technology leadership, bitHeads’ has extensive experience building transactional enterprise systems, communications products, web 2.0 applications and games. They’ve created applications that support millions of users.

bitHeads will continue to work closely with RIM to expand the availability of BlackBerry application development expertise and resources to meet the growing demand for innovative applications across a wide variety of product categories. “

It’s no secret that the economic downturn is putting extra pressure on software companies to cut costs and capture more revenue. This leads to a familiar scenario: in order to close a deal, your company commits to the development of some product extensions, custom applications, customer-branded user interface or other new work. Over time, the unpredictable, fluctuating development load looks like the yo-yo chart. The response of most companies is to cannibalize the core R&D team to handle the peaks, constantly distracting them from work on the strategic product roadmap. Since the customer-specific work usually requires knowledge of proprietary software and direct interaction with end customers, outsourcing isn’t often considered for this type of work. With the right partnership model, however, some companies have used outsourcing to become more responsive to customers and reduce costs. Vaultus Mobile, Bridgewater Systems, Brix Networks/EXFO, Nakina Systems and others have had good success with a partnership model where the outsourcer (in these cases bitHeads) invests in building and maintaining an R&D bull-pen that is familiar with their products and can be called on as required to handle the development peaks. They have reduced average development costs by up to 50% by only paying for productive development teams when they are needed and not having to ramp-up new contractors each time. Also, by keeping their core R&D team focused on new features and next-generation products, these companies will be in a stronger competitive position as the economy recovers. Read more about these case studies in the white paper on Responding to Customer-Specific Requirements.

Surprising most (I’m guessing, anyway) was the release of some sales stats from The NPD Group recently that show the BlackBerry Curve as the #1 selling smartphone out there, beating out the iPhone 3G for top spot with the BB Storm and Pearl in the #3 and #4 slots.

What may be the most significant part of the stats is that RIM (with four devices in the top 5) still sells 50% of all smartphones, which is pretty telling as the company spreads out more and more into the consumer space while maintaining it’s position as the go-to guys on the corporate side– a market that the iPhone is still trying to crack.

I’m sure the folks at Apple aren’t sweating it too much after hitting the 1,000,000,000 download mark on the App Store last month. I’m guessing the new BlackBerry AppWorld hasn’t quite hit those numbers yet…

That being said, both RIM and Apple should be lauded in doing God’s work for the application development industry as the increasingly-sophisticated consumer base demands more and more higher-fidelity and feature-laden fart machines in the palm of their hands.

Malcolm Gladwell

This New Yorker article by Malcom Gladwell (author of best sellers The Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers - all highly recommended) points to a fascinating study of every war fought in the past 200 hundred years. In lopsided conflicts where the underdogs were at least 10 times smaller, they won a remarkable 28.5% of the time. When those underdogs acknowledged their weakness and chose an unconventional strategy, the winning percentage jumps to over 63. When underdogs choose not to play by Goliath’s rules, they usually win. Pretty encouraging for start-ups and small companies in industries dominated by a Goliath.

When Pigs Flu

Okay, maybe there are other perfectly valid uses for the Internet (like, say, countdowns to the end of the world or really awesome corporate blogs), but one use of the Internet for good can be found out there with Google Maps mashups showing geographically where the global cases of Swine Flu Pandemic are being reported.

There is definitely something to be said about too much information leading to panic, but I think in cases like this, it’s probably a good thing that people are educated as to where the hotspots are (and aren’t) entirely so they don’t panic.

But don’t get me started on society’s obsession with anti-bacterial “everything”. That’s probably what causes superstrains of flu in the first place. That’s right, you Purell hand sanitizer people…I’m looking at you.

bitHeads is sponsoring RIM’s Wireless Enterprise Symposium (WES) again this year. It’s in Orlando this May 5-7. Contact us for a sponsor discount on the registration fee. WES is THE event for BlackBerry business solutions. bitHeads has been busy developing new BlackBerry applications for HP, EMC, InfoLogix, Cellcrypt and other software vendors that will be exhibiting and talking about their new applications at WES. It will be a great opportunity to meet us and some of our customers. Look for us at booth #913.