At the ScreamingToaster consulting practice, I have been talking to small, mid, and large size businesses, in every imaginable vertical, for the last 3 years. The need for mobile initiative rollout was nonexistent for the last few years (since 2008). However, with 2011 everything has changed. IT and investment budgets are thawing and there is a huge market opportunity to leverage to make a lot of money in the smartphone software and services space. Hardware companies and telcos are leveraging this market and making a lot of money from it. Software on the other hand, is woefully outclassed and outpaced by hardware and infrastructure.

If you join us, with the simple solutions outlined above, we can turn this problem into an opportunity and reinvest out way out of this decade-old rut of web-complacency!

My hope is that this article will help people get a more realistic sense of pricing for their next mobile/smartphone project and initiative. Smartphones are new. This space is constantly evolving. It is always expensive to create novelty. Smartphones are not even close to being a commodity yet, so don’t make the mistake of applying commodity pricing models to it.

The problem with all the app stores today is that they suck as distribution channels. They do not allow their catalog to be easily discovered, leading to them invalidating their own existence. The whole point of the app store is not to promote the app store, but to promote apps in the app store. Eg, Newmans Own does not advertise. They leverage effective distribution networks (like grocery stores) to highlight and promote their products to retail consumers. This keeps the retail reseller in business, and the suppliers as well. With app stores/worlds, there is no such healthy ecosystem. The ego and self obsession with a vendor’s app store is what perpetuates the store but doesnt benefit consumers or ISVs that make software for consumers.

The first step is for you to select the right mobile platform for your mobile initiatives. The following table outlines the major differences between the major platforms and can act as rough guidelines to help you match your requirements to the right platform for you.