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You might think :

"Who has time to read this newsletter when there's so much to do before Mobile World Congress? "

And you might even utter:

 "Who has time to write a newsletter... don't you have a WIPJam to prepare? "

And a rack of tee shirts to line up! "

Yes I do and  many more things, too!! 

• Get the logistics sorted out with the WIP tips and SIM cards tips  and find new chairs as WIPJam is going XL with 100 additional seats available.
• Download the WIP Survival Guide to Mobile World Congress or even better get the mobile app version with the WIPJam app for Android,  Nokia and iPhone (visit your favourite store in the coming days and look for WIPJam)
• Sign up for some of the "cliffhanger" developer events:
  • What will Nokia announce at it's Nokia developer day on Monday ?
  • What's going to happen on the Meego front at Intel Appup Application Labs on Wednesday?
• Get my name in all the cool parties in town, using one of the zillion...

As I peer into my crystal ball I see a year of more growth coupled with higher expectations for mobile along with a few upsets along the way.

The Growth

If you didn’t rest over the holidays, don’t expect to relax anytime soon no matter where you fit in the industry.  We will continue to see more devices, more demand for apps, and more demand for developers. 

It was March when we declared 2010 The Year of the Mobile Developer.  Developers were in hot demand and were finally being embraced publically and vocally as a key piece of the mobile ecosystem.   

With that, we will continue to see huge growth in the number of mobile developers entering the scene.  I do think we will see a combination of really newbie/webby developers, given the rise in toolssuch as AppMobi.   As mobile has now become ‘mainstream’ we will also see more traditional software folks entering mobile.  Expect more development tools and enablers (analytics, advertising etc) on the scene too.  Choice...

I’ve spent a lot of time supporting; watching and monitoring operators roll out a variety of programs and services lately – new app stores, new networks, APIs, new and improved developer programs.  It got me thinking:  Is 99.999% (.99999) or ‘five-nines’ an outdated goal for operators?  I think it might be.

Five-nines is the standard for measuring the network availability, which is pretty close to always on, never down.  It equates to about 5 minutes and 15 seconds of downtime per year.  According to Tomi Ahonenand some banter we had on twitter this week:  “mobile phone network serving millions cannot go down for half a minute per year, unacceptable.. hence five nines needed”.

The fact is a network down or a dropped call is already a reality.  Rogers was down for an afternoon in Vancouver last week; and if you travel to London, New York, San Francisco you expect to have a few calls that won’t connect; and SMSs that go nowhere.   Interestingly, consumers have already accepted...

We released the latest edition of the WIP App Store Report last week, and in it, we take a closer look at the role aggregators are playing in driving up the number of app stores in the marketplace. We counted 94 app stores when we released the report, but the number in the wiki has already grown by one!

Aggregators play a huge role in the marketplace by supporting app store providers with a number of different models and services. From offering affiliate-based white-label web sites to end-to-end developer support and delivery, there's an aggregation model to suit almost anybody who wants to distribute apps. This may seem daunting for developers, but aggregators are also able to offer a wide reach through a single point of contact. For instance, through its Brew Distribution System, Qualcomm allows developers to potentially reach more than 50 operators with a single submission. On a smaller scale, other aggregators offer white-label web stores that reach across content niches...

A few months ago, I went on an app store placement spree in preparation for the Android App Store Competition in Berlin (promise I won't mention it anymore!). The results were telling, in terms of the variance of the usability between stores, and some of the rather uninspired error messages they returned:

• "Please provide an interesting and accurate description" -- Isn't it my right to putt something dull if I do not want people to spend time reading the description and download the app instead?
• "Illegal characters in description! Use English and numbers only" -- Something any person with a sense of logic and group theory awareness will object to.
• "Upload a jpg legend..." -- Which is a nice error when, in reality, the site only accepts PNGs.

I'm just finishing a new placement spree today, and when I started, I was full of hopes that things had changed. Judge for yourself by these messages I got:

• "Password Must contain both letters and numerals" -- What if I want...

The latest edition of the WIP App Store Report is now available for download. It's a PDF version of our App Store Wiki, the most comprehensive listing of mobile app stores available. This month, the report takes a look at the various end-user payment methods supported by stores in the wiki, and some of the issues they present to mobile developers. While there is a lot of buzz surrounding operator billing and BOBO, credit cards still lead the way, despite the shortcomings in user experience they can create.

Be sure to download the August report for more info, and to check out the details of the 6 new stores that were added over the past month, bringing the total number to 85.

I had the pleasure of being asked to speak again to the NGMN Industry Conference, this one was held in Shanghai from June 2-4, 2010 at the Shanghai World Financial Center.  The last conference was held in June of 2008 in Frankfurt.  Both times I was asked to bring the developer perspective.

For those who don't know, the NGMN or Next Generation in Mobile Networks is one of the most significant organizations in our industry.  Their mission is to: to complement and support the work within standardisation bodies by providing a coherent view of what the operator community is going to require in the decade beyond 2010.   It is a C-suite group that decided that LTE IS the next generation mobile network the industry will use.  I am always flattered to get the opportunity to present to this group, which also included presentations by the likes of Jianzhou Wang, Chairman and CEO, China Mobile.  I am also impressed that they have made the effort to think about the developer perspective at...

The July edition of the WIP App Store Report is now available for download. Based on data from the WIP App Store Wiki, the report this month takes a look at the growth over time of the number of app stores in the mobile ecosystem. The wiki now tracks 79 app stores; while that's up just 2 from June, it brings the total number of stores launched during the first half of the year to 36. So can we expect the number of launches to continue to grow so rapidly? Check out the report to find out our predictions.

Google announced yesterday that it's added iPhone and Android apps to its search results when users search from a mobile device running one of those platforms. So, for instance, if a user searches for "download shazam", the top search result should be a link to the relevant app in the Android Market or iTunes App Store. In theory, anyway -- Marshall Kirkpatrick from Read/Write Web says there are still some kinks that need to be worked out (indeed, I can't seem to get it to work on my Droid Eris running Androind 2.1 yet).

One of Thibaut's current interests is what he calls "App Store Placement Optimization", or APO for short. Just like search engine optimization, APO is concerned with making apps appear at the top of search and other listings in app stores. As the number of apps grows and grows, APO will become an important skill for companies and people trying to drive downloads and sales of their apps.

The question then becomes, how will Google's app results work, and how will...

The May edition of the WIP App Store Report is now available for download. The WIP App Store Wiki now lists 75 stores, up from 68 in April. The new entrants included:

• AndroidAppShop
• R-World
• TomTom App Store
• LePhone App Store
• Softwareload
• android.pdassi.de

The announcement of the TomTom App Store, which will sell apps for the company's new PNDs running a WebKit-based platform, brought up an interesting trend: we're starting to see more and more App Stores for devices that aren't phones (at least not in the traditional sense), but are open to mobile developers. For example, there's AutoLinQ from car parts maker Continental. The company is working on an in-car computing system that will run Android, and it will eventually open the system up for outside developers. Android's being used in several different ways beyond phones, including on web tablets and even televisions.

We decided to take a look at the App Stores we're tracking the wiki by the type of...