Era of Mobile Apps: Yet to Reach its Peak Date:   Tuesday , November 05, 2013 Bangalore based Remo Software is a provider of system utility software which specializes in developing data recovery, file repair and secure data erasing tools. Remember the days when the snake game for mobile was introduced by Nokia in its earliest handsets with a commercial of Bill Clinton playing this game on a holiday? Yes! That was one of the earliest mobile apps for purely entertainment purposes - The real beginning of the \"ERA of mobile Apps\". First-generation mobile phones were designed and developed by the handset manufacturers. Competition was fierce and trade secrets were closely guarded. They did not want to expose the secrets of their handsets, so they developed the phone software in-house. Developers that were not part of this inner circle had no opportunity to write applications for the phones. The applications developed in this period were directly related to mobile communication such as contacts, calendar and messaging services. During this period Nokia first introduced \"time-wasting\" games like snake game and tic-tac-toe to name a few. These apps changed the way people thought of mobile phones with support of dropping prices, improvised HW, battery and more coverage area made these phone no more novelty. With introduction of mobile internet the modern era of app development started and very soon WAP based browser applications became popular. But the WAP era did not sustained for a long time because of numerous problems like content issues and payment mechanisms to name a few. This made way for proprietary platforms (Palm OS, Blackberry OS and Brew.) which gave birth to a new breed of developers. With Apple, Windows and Google joining the race, the app development propelled to a new level. New improved Android OS and Windows 8 mobile platforms have made APP markets more competitive and making IOS to lose its dominance. In the beginning, Android was open source and adopted by many of the mobile handset manufacturers. Overnight Android emerged as an alternative to iOS and solved the issue of the software development for smart phones which was lacking with the non IOS phone manufacturers, this increased competitiveness among mobile manufacturers. Mobile manufactures started rolling out mobiles with better HW specs to differentiate themselves from other manufactures. For example Samsung S4, Nokia 920, LG optimums G2 and Lenovo K900. Samsung started this trend and others followed the suite. This situation made mobile manufacturers to look into value added services and unique software features. Now it is turn of APPs! Everyone wants to introduce phone bundled with unique native APPs to increase the USP of the phone. But the real problem was to develop these apps as there are issues with IP infringements, targeted talent pool and time to market. The quick and best solution for mobile manufacturing companies is to go for strategic partnership with App development companies, as these companies are expertized in specific area of app development. This will provide unique opportunities for App development companies and \"Go-to-market\" solutions to mobile companies which differentiate their phones in the market from others. The bundling of apps is not only a trend with mobile manufacturers, it is gaining huge popularity among MNOs (Mobile network Operators), since MNOs offer different manufacturer\'s handsets to user, adding unique apps will give edge on other MNOs. Future looks very bright for mobile APP market, according to App economy forecasts the direct and indirect income from Smart devices APP is around 68Bn$ and expected to grow 143Bn$ in 2016. The trend shows that the value of App revenue is steadily growing with respect to handset revenues and expected reach 33 percent in 2016. With the fast growing cloud technology and upcoming new wearable devices by big names, will make the APP world very interesting and it will not be a surprise if all the 5 human senses will be concurred by next generation apps. To conclude we can expect lot more to come. The ERA of APPs has not reached its peak.