Mobile apps mark a distinct era in consumerization, noting a sharp shift for companies heading into the software distribution business.  The global app marketplace is becoming more and more populated by apps encompassing various domains, from health (fitness and diet apps), money (like Mint.com) and entertainment (digital pets and games) to media, education (learning tools of all kinds) and content access (media players and so on).  The App Genome Project has analyzed over 500,000 Android and iOS applications and noted a growth in the number of apps on the Android Market increased by cca. 127% since August 2010, in comparison to Apple’s modest growth of 44%.

These software apps access personal data of various kind, but the most prominent data made use of is location; 28% of all apps in the Android Market and 34% of all free apps in the Apple App Store have the capability to access location, whereas 7.5% of Android Market apps and 11% of Apple App Store apps have the capability to access users’ contacts. Location info is used by a mobile app created by Garmin, the navigation company, delivering real-time information about your vehicle, like trip distance, RPM, throttle location, mileage estimates, lateral acceleration and so on. By this means, Garmin managed to leverage the growing mobile platforms, instead of losing relevancy with their navigation devices, providing a clear example of how a company adapts to changing patterns.

This is a pattern replicated with several cloud companies shifting from hardware to software in the past decade or so, as the enterprise required more virtualized systems than physical. It ties into a larger trend around the general commoditization of hardware services, with software and virtualization offering solutions for the evolving space.

A relevant example of such a company is Egenera Inc. that cut a quarter of its staff for its transition from the hardware domain to the software domain. “We started down this market before there was cloud computing, unified computing or whatever buzz-word you want to attach,” said Pete Manca, CEO of Egenera. The latest news from Egenera is on its partnership with Data Connections Inc., the merger providing an “integrated, tested and certified open converged infrastructure solution to its customer base.”