Companies that make an effort to connect with their customers through iPhone and other mobile applications stand a lot to benefit, assuming they can successfully navigating the complex mobile app development landscape. This is normally quite a challenge for businesses, especially in their first attempt to connect through an iPhone or other mobile platform.

The following list of ideas provides valuable insight for iPhone application developers and other key participants in the smartphone app development market.

• Deciding on a Platform or Platforms - Companies that intend to reach mass-market audiences via iphone and other mobile applications will find it costly due to platform fragmentation.  These factors include different carriers, different OS’s, different device manufacturers, different screen sizes and different App Stores. All of these factors lead to higher costs due to differences in required app porting, app maintaining and app marketing.
   
• Is it still Recess? - Casual gaming looks to continue its lead in subscriptions, micro-transactions, and in-application purchases. This type of action based trend also looks to be spreading into music, video and news.
   
• Leveraging Function - Near field communications, bar code systems and mobile augmented reality apps are likely to be future top revenue producers (behind casual gaming) in the smartphone space. Companies with an ability to leverage these mobility features and functions really need to start planning.
   
• It is looking more and more like 4G will have little impact on the mobile market in the near future. This appears to be driven by iphone and other mobile app developer’s unwillingness to build robust applications that have the ability to take real advantage of the additional bandwidth. This is not completely surprising given so few 4G devices being available to consumers prior to 2011 ending.
   
• Mobile functionality and offerings will rapidly expand and be accommodated through a far greater number of devices than currently exists today through iPhones, the Android platform, Blackberries and other mobile devices.
   

If you are a business owner or thought leader in your organization, hopefully this provided you just a bit clearer picture of how your mobile and iphone app development could be affected by trends in the near future.

Appiction LLC is the author of this article on iphone apps development. Find more information about mobile applications developers here.