The Mobile Ecosystem... no question that mobile is huge and the opportunity for developers and those porting web apps and services to the mobile environment is massive (just look around at career opportunities posted for mobile developers). 

To put in context, an overwhelming 95% of people around the world now own cell phones, according to a new nine-country study by SSI (http://www.lbszone.com/content/view/8155/2/). They also have found that among cell phone owners, 42% currently have smartphones and 58% are planning to make their next cell phone a smartphone. Of interest, iPad, Android and Windows Mobile 7 are now gaining market share in the U.S. and U.K. But mobile isn't simply about the smartphone either as Tablet usage is soaring. Tablet usage is up 84 percent since Q4 2010 and there's no signs of this slowing down. Sales of laptops are dropping off while Tablet use is picking up the slack.

As people continue to become increasingly mobile and strive for constant connectivity, mobile-device habits have shifted from larger devices like laptops to smaller, more portable devices like smartphones and tablets. Tablet usage has nearly doubled in the past year, growing by 84 percent since Q4 2010. Since last quarter, tablets and smartphones are showing relative growth in usage while other devices like netbooks and laptops have remained stable or declined. Tablet usage is up 20 percent, smartphone usage is up 24 percent and by comparison, laptop usage is down 10 percent. (Source: http://www.lbszone.com/content/view/8223/2/)

What this means for developers though is opportunity... lots of it and I have to add that with location being a ubiquitous feature of these mobile devices the demand on location-aware apps and services is huge. Developers need to decide, what kind of apps and services will they create (commercial or consumer centric), which platform(s) to design for, how to reach the customer (web service or application), to design for smartphone(s) and tablet, how to position in app stores, which social networks to integrate with the app, and so on... There's loads of developer resources on the web so to help the developer, here's a listing of just some of the fine dev resources, blogs, toolsets and more to consider when developing or porting your app to a smartphone or Tablet friendly environment.

SEE DETAILS AND THE BIG LIST HERE