This report concentrates on the smartphone application market. The objective of this report is to provide companies from all different industries with guidance that will enable the successful development and publication of mobile applications. Before the advent of the Apple App Store, companies generally did not take advantage of smartphone platforms for the purposes of marketing, branding or sales. Originally, this market was dominated by specialist mobile software and game companies. With new smartphones becoming available and the new market model Apple has created, however, companies are now presented with a new, viable customer channel that can deliver immerse user experiences and useful services on a hand-held device. This study gives a comprehensive overview of the smartphone application market and its development in the coming four years. More than 100 companies participated and shared their views, experience and insights for the report.

Some of the participants include

	AOL		Apple		AT&T		Barnes & Noble
	BBC		Best Buy		Comcast		Deutsche Bahn
	Greenpeace		Deutsche Welle		Eurosport		Financial Times
	Flixter		Focus Magazine		GetJar		Handmark
	Handster		IBM		Kodak		Mobango
	Mobihand		Nasdaq		Nike		Nikon
	Oracle		PocketGear		Qualcomm		Reebok
	StudiVZ		The Weather Channel		Deutsche Telecom		TUI
	USA Today		Vodafone		Microsoft		Xing
. . .

More than 30 app stores and ten "best practice" examples have been analyzed for the purpose of the report. The report explores the smartphone application market and contains key insights for companies from diverse industries seeking success in app publishing.

The report covers the following areas in detail:

• The development of the smartphone application market through 2010
  
• Successful activities of corporate mobile application publishers
  
• A comparison, detailed description and performance ranking of today's 33 major app stores
  
• A projection of coming developments in the mobile application market from 2010 to 2013
  
• Guiding principles for corporations seeking to publish successful smartphone applications

Some of the main questions the report answers are:

• Why did the smartphone application market took off?
  
• How big is the market today and how will it develop in the next years?
  
• How do the main market characteristics develop e.g.: application prices, downloads, user number and spend
  
• What are the key trends in the next years every publisher has to be aware of?
  
• How do smartphone applications offer a great new channel to reach customers?
  
• What are "best practices" for companies publishing smartphone applications?
  
• Which app store offers the best publishing opportunities for smartphone applications today?

The report summarizes the key points from the perspective of application publishers. The objective is to highlight the guiding principles an application developer should follow in the coming years to publish successful smartphone applications. These guiding principles have been structured around the three main questions publishers must answer when preparing to enter or expand their presence in the smartphone application market:

• Application Strategy: How can I create a successful smartphone application that stands out against the growing competition?
  
• Multi-platform Strategy: On which specific platforms and stores should I publish my applications?
  
• Organizational Integration: How do I organize my business to deal with the increasing importance and complexity of smartphone application development and publishing?

As an additional service the report describes 27 major app stores in detail. All customer and developer front ends as well as advertisement opportunities are explained including web, mobile-web and on-deck front ends. This enables any reader to quickly understand the different concepts of the app store and helps to decide on which store to publish applications.