Smartphone Trends: What are the top trends in smartphone application development to follow in 2011?

It is rumored that APPLE will include support for mobile payments in the release of the iPhone 5 this will allow you to make mobile payments right from your phone to a vending machine or transaction device. http://reviews.cnet.com/iphone-5-most-wanted-features

I have already used my iPhone as a boarding pass on my flights via USAirways, and I can say that it is much easier than needing to find a PC and printer on the road to print that boarding pass for your next flight.
I checked in online and downloaded my pass.
At security I hit the web link and my pass was displayed on the screen.
I held it up to the reader and "beep" the TSA was happy and I was on my way.
Then when I got to the gate, I used the same procedure.
Smartphone technology is here and is being adopted.
Best of all, it works!

Well Stated Dean.
Innovations in UX (User Experience) and NFC (Near Field Communications) ie payment and object recognition will be the domain of the Smart Phones and possibly Tablets and Pads.

Lean and Mean applications will render the telcos as dumb pipes and new telecommunications business models will emerge as a result.

Integrated UX in smart phones will spill over to Networkd TV, Car Dashboard, Pads and eventually back to Web 2.0.

These are interesting times for information technology. Smart phones and Pads applications will shape the development of the next Web and broadband Access technologies.

Android will increase in significance in 2011, especially since the OS has started to appear on lower-cost phones. There are still app store problems for Android, but the experience is improving.

Windows Phone 7 is potentially an interesting developer platform. You can develop using Silverlight or XNA frameworks, so Microsoft are trying to leverage skills that their developer community already has in place, i.e. Silverlight for web multimedia and the XNA Game Studio that Xbox developers already know. XNA games is probably the one to watch.

Lastly, the Wholesale Application Community (see http://www.jil.org/web/jil) is an interesting developer strategy, which addresses not just smartphones but potentially any phone that has an embedded browser. WAC allows self-contained applications (widgets) to be written in HTML/CSS/JavaScript to run in the phone. Potentially, this has the biggest developer community of all and the biggest marketplace.

There's some great insights here.
In addition to Android and Windows 7 as platforms Samsung's BADA platform and Qualcomm's BMP platforms are highly available developer platforms and both have a good distribution story within the lower end devices which could provide some interesting competition but more importantly accelerated maturity of applications.

We too have seen the development of more Smartphone type applications and UX leaps in the Telematics industry particularly in the Automotive and Vending sectors.

Lastly augmented reality and binding together the real world physical objectives and advertising structures to digital technologies will become more and more seamless. This will bring some huge opportunities for smaller more traditional businesses also who in the past may not have been able to budget for mobile technology development.

1. Write twice, again
Over the last year we have seen that developers are targetting a number of platforms (iOS, Android, Blackberry and Symbian) in order to get access to the largest number of customers. This year they will also have address form factor choices with the proliferation of tablets running iOS and Android.

2. Getting local
The success of app stores coupled with the availability of smart phones around the world will drive the creation (and reward) for applications that address local cultural, business and communication needs.

3. Location, location, location
The checkin and couponing craze is creating a lot of VC excitement right now showing that Google has not won the B2C search and marketing game. This year we will see continued me too activity and some true innovation. NFC, augmented reality and incentives will most likely be the primary drivers.

Enterprise applications growth. Mobile enterprise applications have barely grown while consumer applications exploded. The challenges of more complex applications in the enterprise will be solved by platforms which make it easier to integrate business processes and provide cross-platform solutions.

Michael

Tim Collins has highlighted a major problem/opportunity for mobile application development. As enterprises shift away from RIM as their primary mobile platform and look to Android, iOS, and probably to a lesser extent Windows Phone 7 and Symbian, the need to deliver applications across multiple platforms rises. In the short term "write twice" may be the most appropriate path to take, but it has to be acknowledged that this is an ugly solution at best. Great thought needs to be given both to application development systems that can allow a single application to function across multiple mobile phone platforms, and to applications that have greater awareness of the capabilities of the device that they are running on.

Secondly; consideration has to be the impact of "Bring Your Own Device" programs within enterprises. There is an immediate need for solutions that can provide both secure managed access to enterprise data, and at the same time freedom and confidentiality of the device owner's applications and data. Whether this be delivered at the application level, or through the use of mobile hypervisor technologies is probably more a matter of timing than anything else.

Regards

Simon

What will explode is the "Virtual Wallet" you will buy everything from your groceries to sodas in vending machines from your Smartphone.
Your credit cards will remain in your wallet.

I'm not convinced that NFC will breakout in 2011. Apps will be written, but adoption will trail. The cost of changing out every POS terminal to support PCI compliant NFC terminals has to be taken into consideration here.

I also believe NFC is a huge moment headed our way (and I'm personally very excited about it), but not until late in 2012. I am sure VISA will subsidize the initial POS terminals, but we will have to wait for consumers to be able to upgrade their devices in order to use this system and most users will wait out carrier contract terms before making the change.

I expect late sumer to early fall 2011 to start seeing a huge media push by VISA to start generating consumer excitement. Mobile payments are coming and it will successful, because it already is successful in other countries. I just think the US will take a little longer to transition.

Mobile Device Management is something I see for 2011. Enterprises HAVE to manage mobile devices and access to corporate resources, in a flexible and productive manner.

Local coupon apps are a hit this year (I am working on one as we speak). Seems like this market would be saturated by now but I see more and more each day. I can only attribute this continued growth to targeted sales. I get the apps that get the deals that I like. And they all seem to have different targets, which I assume is why we see new local daily deal businesses popping up more and more. And mobile views and buys is the best way to market this business.

The cues for emerging applications will come from cloud services providers. Microsoft's acquisition of Skype is clearly pointing to scalable multi-media collaboration. The cloud will enable seamless flow of content to the outdoors for a mobile workforce to get work done while on the move.