Apps developers will crown the victor -- iPhone, BlackBerry or Android

By Carl Bagh: Subscribe to Carl's RSS feed

August 6, 2010 12:00 PM EDT

The corporate world's darling RIM's BlackBerry will not be able to stop the iPhone and Google's Android juggernaut as it lacks a key arsenal in its armory - applications.

A CNN report says currently Apple has close to 250,000 apps, Android has 100,000 followed by BlackBerry with 8,000 and Palm WebOS with 3,500 apps.

A recent report by Nielsen revealed that 50 percent of BlackBerry holders are contemplating to switch over to either an iPhone or an Android based phone. BlackBerry can plug this migration of loyal customers if it is able to increase the number of applications available for its phone.

Applications provide customers the opportunity to personalize their phones. With wallpapers, social games, music downloads and new icons, thus making applications a critical minimum for smartphones.

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In fact, the current success of the present smartphone industry is largely driven by the acceptance of the smartphone OS by developers. Apple iPhone App Store says its applications for iPhones are provided after vetting them thoroughly, thus paving the way for developers to produce the best apps for Apple.

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Ovum, a Datamonitor company, reported that iPhone manufacturer generated 67 percent of all mobile application downloads in 2009, though its smartphone market share was only 14 percent.

Ovum expects mobile application downloads from non-operator application stores to increase by a compound annual growth rate of 41 percent through 2015. Total downloads over that span are expected to jump to 21.3 billion from 2.69 billion in 2009.

Generally, developers prefer ease of coding in an OS that allows them to migrate successfully to other platforms.

Nonetheless, the Nielsen report suggests that Androids have taken over Apple being an open source platform. Thus the Android will compete on the basis of quantity of apps while Apple iPhones will compete on the basis of quality.

But legalizing jailbreaking could be a game-changer as it allows reconfiguration of iPhones to adopt Apple's restricted applications. It allows a fair play between Android and iPhones.

This leaves BlackBerry and PalmWeb OS in the lurch. Not long ago, Palm ruled the corporate market and its Pre-model was considered to be an iPhone killer but due to lack of apps it was swapped by HP for a paltry sum of $1.2 billion.

Lack of applications hinders the popularity of smartphones. In case of BlackBerry, users have to wait for another launch instead of updating their devices with new apps.

Moreover, new applications are a key source of after-sales revenue for companies which BlackBerry may miss out.

Thus it's the developer who will decide the future of smartphones. Currently, developers closely watch the new phone sales figures to anticipate the market direction as they get the lead time to write suitable applications.

The battle will be a choice exercised by developers between competing OS and as of now Google's Android and iPhone iOS are leading the pack. Otherwise, the situation is quite reminiscent of the bygone days of open-source Linux vs. Microsoft Windows battle.

This article is copyrighted by International Business Times, the business news leader