Applications for mobile devices are in their infancy (think of Hollywood in the 1930s). Apple’s App Store is one year old, barely out of diapers, and in that time customers have downloaded more than 1.5 billion applications. More than 65,000 apps populate the store, and the number of developers is growing by the month.  Blackberry entered the game in April with its own App World, already featuring a few thousand apps.  And Android Market – designed for Google’s platform – provides another venue for mobile applications.  There are currently about 6,000 apps available for Android.

Many businesses have recognized that a well-designed app can have benefits on many levels including revenue generation, exposure, access to early-adopter customers, and viral-marketing.  If you are considering this, ensure you have a proper App Development Agreement in place when engaging a developer, and consider intellectual-property ownership, cross-platform concerns and potential trade-mark issues.

Related reading: Apple’s battle over apps

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