PDA's used to be about data such as names and addresses an appointments. Today, they are about 'us' and what we want to have at the touch of a button. APP's are changing the way we use our cell phones and I do not see this letting up anytime soon!

iPhone believed they had the corner on the APP market ~ then Android appeared. Blackberry has APP's more related to business needs while the iPhone brouht APP's to everybody. The market was amazed at how quickly and strong customers took to the iPhone APP phenomena. Many watched believing that it would be a fad quickly past. They were wrong.

I was told 10 months ago that my company should write APP's and I said that I did not want to learn anything new. Today, my company is in the process of writing 13 APP's with our first one hitting the market next month. APP's are hear to stay, but not all APP's are equal.

33% of APP's are free, or so you believed. You go shopping and download many different APP's to find out that after 1 month you need to pay for using them. Many cell companies offer different free APP's that are excusively for their customer base. For instance, Sprint offers their customer a great navigation APP free while T-Mobile charges $70 a year for the same APP.

Only 1% of all downloaded APP's are used 1 month after download. This statistic surprised me becasue the ones I have downloaded I actually use. The flashlight, not so much, but it is used.

Paid APP's are used more frequently but it is still below 10%.

Subscription APP's are becoming the most used APP's on the market. They are an actual program with useful data being kept current via a monitored database. There are not many of these types of APP's around but I believe in 2010 you will begin to see more of these. I will write an entire article on Subscription APP's next week.

Gaming APP's and Entertainment APP's are the most popular. You have tv.com APP where you can watch full episodes of many TV programs to Flixter that allows you to download and watch movies as well as find theaters in your area.

What I have found with the APP's that I have downloaded are that you get what you pay for. If it is free, it is just a simple APP, or just a sample of what you get from the paid APP. I downloaded CardioTrainer. It is a grea program and very accurate. I press start and it tracks my steps via GPS navigation and stores the information. It is a great program but uses the battery life quickly and only gives me access to parts, as it is advertised as FREE.

iPhone APP's have to be approved via the iPhone store whereas Android APP's can be marketing many places, including your own website. iPhone is currently only sold via AT&T whereas Android has phones at T-Mobile, Sprint and Verizon to name a few. Android is open source whereas iPhone has many development limitations.

The number one question I keep hearing, since we are now writing APP's, is 'What do they do?' As popular as they are you would think that everyone would understand what they are, but that is just not the case. Over the next few weeks we will be disecting the APP world with APP reviews, comparisons between platforms and the best places to download. I am very excigted about these articles as I believe once you understand what an APP is then you will not just download and forget, but download and use the program.