The mobile application has come a very long ways from the crude hangman game and the basic phone book accessed by a lot of thumbing and fumbling back in the day. Today mobile applications can have much of the flexibility, if not the size of any application running in the home computer. Mobile application development may focus on a particular phone model, or platform or it can be intended for a wider market.

Devilishly clever and addictive games, applications to bring Wall Street and the Stock Market right into the Blackberry and multimedia apps are easily found for today’s smart phones. Most phone carriers will offer their own little download store where applications that will run on their particular phone are available for sale. It is all available for a price and can add functionality to their phone beyond anything ever believed possible.

Of course for every application available, there are multiple software programmers who have worked behind the scenes to provide the development for the newest application only for that particular brand of phone. Java ME has become a favored development platform for applications intended to run on several different devices. This is a safe choice for developers who simply created an application for personal pleasure or plan to market it to the cell phone companies.

The Java ME platform can run applications, which take up no more than 1MB including data. This can cover many functions and Java ME combined with JSR help to allow the phone user limited access to the software while restricting certain functions. Blackberry phones command a large share of the market and no application intended for general distribution is complete unless there is a version for the BlackBerry.

There are other smart phones on the market and eventually one will become the next big name that every mobile application released will have at a version to fit. However, until that time, one of the most popular languages for mobile application development is the JavaME, which covers many of the top brands in cell phones. The developer who hopes his application reaches as wide an audience as possible will generally choose a language such as this.

Mobile phone users are dedicated users and the BlackBerry earned the nickname CrackBerry simply because users can access mail, twitter, use ICQ or even Google talk right from their phone. Smart phones have helped staying connected reach hitherto unknown heights and the cell phone can be seen almost anywhere you look. This makes for a tremendous market for application developers for cell phones.

The mobile app store is a moneymaker for many mobile phone services. While in the first decade of 2000, ring tones were must have for any cell phone, times have changed. A smart phone is judged by the mobile phone applications it sports or supports.

The smart phones support applications intended to appeal to a younger market as well as a 20 something market. Social connection, financial information and multimedia capabilities appear to be a focus of this popular device and the multitudes of applications that can run on it. This market share has helped BlackBerry to dominate the smart phone market.

Author Bio: Be the first to market in the new