The development of applications for smartphones has opened up an entirely new industry and market. This helps both programmers and entrepreneurs, who can now sell their ideas and programs to a wider audience through one place such as Androids Marketplace.
It is possible to find an app in almost every niche imaginable, from the smartdate app for dating, to apps that can control home security cameras, it seems that the limits of what can be done have yet to be reached.
These applications will continue to grow in complexity and usefulness in tandem with the phone manufacturers making more powerful handsets. This in turn encourages more and more people to write them.
As time goes on, it seems that the application market will be divided into several camps. One, is the iPhone side, which arguably have the highest quality apps available at the money. These are written on a 'closed system' though, and so there are restrictions on what can and can not be done.
The Android camp on the other hand is an open system, where almost anybody can write and develop an app if they so wish. This encourages more people to write from the open source philosophy, where software is free. The future for apps looks interesting, and who knows where we will be in five years time.
