Gartner Identifies 10 Consumer Mobile Applications to Watch in 2012

The most important mobile apps in 2012 will be those that are purpose-built to take advantage of mobile device capabilities and situational use cases, say analysts at Garner. Perhaps the most interesting apps will combine multiple mobile-specific features that use sensor information, combine it with other user-supplied preferences, and then create some sort of commerce activity.

In other words, the mobile experience is becoming a distinct medium from the location-based experience, representing something more than simply a smaller-screen, out of home or "on the go" version of the tethered Internet experience. If you had to pick one element that is most distinctive, it would be "location," the smartphone's ability to use the actual user location, as it changes, to modify the application experience.

Most of the distinctive mobile apps will use location, mapping and directions, in conjunction with other user-supplied data and preferences, to create new experiences and new business models for application and service providers. Context awareness is the new wrinkle.

Gartner Identifies 10 Consumer Mobile Applications to Watch in 2012