You can’t turn around at the moment without bumping into yet another excitable article discussing how ‘apps’ are the future, everyone needs them, and how they are revolutionising, well, everything.  All these articles cite the huge number of apps, the massive number of downloads and the amounts of money being poured into them.  The Angry Birds case study never hurts either – who can resist the idea of becoming a multimillionaire simply by making a simple, repetitive game? (Albeit a really great game!)

But we’re yet to read a great deal about the underlying business fundamentals which mean these are – or aren’t – a great idea.  In fact it’s all sounding suspiciously similar to the early days of the tech boom and bust of the 90s…boundless enthusiasm married to an ‘everyone’s doing it, we should too’ mentality.

It’s never too difficult to come up with reasons why producing something will be beneficial to your business……“If they play my branded game, they’ll feel positively about my company and buy some products” – really? Does providing a child who has asthma with a loosely-related game app actually provide benefit beyond the feelgood factor? We certainly think it’s hard to quantify at best.

It’s worth knowing that 97% of downloaded apps are never accessed again after the first time….quantity definitely does not equal quality in this market currently.

So what would our golden rules for apps be at the moment?

1. Your app must support your core business. Sounds really obvious, but its amazing how many requests we are getting for things which are great fun to develop, but will ultimately not impact the bottom line.

2. Be specific, be targeted. ‘Everyone’ is NOT going to download your app…or even see it. How you launch an app is already critical to get any sort of uptake – and if you haven’t got a clear target audience in mind you’re likely to get lost in the noise

3. Be realistic. Your cable channel programme schedule which is only shown in the UK is NOT going to get as many downloads as Plants vs Zombies. You might be fascinated with cardiothoracic surgery – and so might your target customers – but just ‘sticking it out there’ isn’t then going to magically mean they all find it.

4. Be critical. We’ve discarded ten times the number of ideas as we’ve developed. Its easy to get attached to an idea which doesn’t really stack up, and it’s a very common mistake. If your first idea isn’t quite right, rethink it until it is.

There really are huge possibilities offered by proper mobile connectivity – particularly in the fields of medicine and direct sales – which can benefit both your company and your customers or clients….just make sure you plan first and implement second.

So if you’re thinking of apps….really consider your objectives first and the App second. ‘Just do one’ is never the answer.

Symbian still has the largest market share, but it has fallen dramatically – mostly to Android – during 2010 (by over 12%) (and given that Nokia have now declared they will be killing it off, that’s pretty much that.) Android grew from just 3.9% of the market in 2009 to 22.7% in 2010 – with everyone else growing a little (Apple) or shrinking slightly (Blackberry, Microsoft and others)

The Android App marketplace grew in-line with the sale of devices, adding 200,000 apps to the store in the last 3 months of 2010 alone. Apple App development has slowed – partly due to Apples more stringent quality checks and desire to reduce the volume of “tasteless, low quality and pointless Apps”; and partly due to shifts towards Android development.

Tablet sales showed a similar trend. During 2010, some 20 million tablets sold worldwide. At Q3, 95% of the market share was owned by Apple; by Q4 that was down to 75% – with 22% sales of Android based devices. With another wave of Android tablets to come in 2011, along with the Android 3.0, we expect the growth rate to remain strong.

Business-Technology customers, including many legacy system providers, are helping to drive the conversion to Android due to the flexibility offered to tie in to existing systems – such as finance and people management. Apple development continues to evolve, however, and it seems that the complexity of development will ultimately determine which devices are required for which tasks.

Currently the Apple iPad has no peer as a presentation tool, but remains difficult in terms of greater engagement and interaction with other information and data.

The market for healthcare applications has recently been estimated at around $84million for 2010, with suggestions that this could double in 2011. Health Apps growth has been particularly strong during 2010, and the greater increase cost price of apps of this nature has contributed in part to this figure. It is estimated that 50% of doctors now use a smart device regularly (up from 38% in 2009)

Whether Apples iPad 2.0 can protect their market share remains to be seen – though it is worth noting that Apples approach is more about margin than volume. The iPad2 is slimmer, slightly lighter, has a forward facing camera and the ability to take HDMI out – which means you can finally connect it to a projector and use as a group presentation tool. A second processor too – though speed wasn’t something greatly complained about before. Will these incremental changes ensure continued dominance? The next 6 months should give a much clearer picture of whether the market is more likely to settle.