The problem here is that brands often approach app development without even considering their customers' needs. Most users, for example, are not interested in apps that are just marketing vehicles for a brand and will leave negative reviews when they encounter such an app. Given the nature of mobile app usage, customers expect to get some value out of the app that is related to the brand and its products.

As Anthony Franco, EffectiveUI's co-founder and president, told us yesterday, a lot of companies still think of apps as "microsites" and don't consider that mobile apps have to offer more than just great visuals and good copy. That doesn't mean that users don't want good design, too, though. The majority of respondents (57%) noted that apps should be well designed and 74% said that they want apps to be easy to use (leaving us to wonder if there are users out there who want apps that are badly designed and hard to use...). Even more importantly, though, 73% of those surveyed by Harris Interactive think that mobile apps should be easier to use than the brand's website.

As we noted earlier this month, the average price for iPhone apps continues to fall, but the average price for the most popular iPhone apps is around $2.43 in the U.S. - which - judging from Mplayit's data - indicates that most users would like to pay less than $2 for their apps, but are more than willing to pay extra for the best and most popular apps.

Bonus: Percentage of Games in the Top App Stores

In talking with one mobile developer recently, we spoke of all the platforms their app was available on, but one was missing - RIM. BlackBerry, they explained, was simply a pain to develop for.

Today, the company behind the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and new QNX-based BlackBerry smartphones confirmed that it would support Google Android apps on these devices moving forward.

It's a much-repeated mantra of the mobile space that the apps make the platform and RIM just opened up the floodgates for apps on its devices. As Digital Daily's John Paczkowski points out, "PlayBook isn't launching with 100 apps. It's launching with well over 200,000."

According to the company's press release, the PlayBook will support both Java and Android apps using "app players," which provide an "application run-time environment." The apps will then run inside of these app players, which is little in the way of hindrance to gain access to thousands more apps than would otherwise be available.

The move is a risky, but bold, move by a company that has been steadily losing ground. At the same time, it could be the risky, but bold, move that saves it from going the way of the dodo.

"The mobile experience is all about convenience and instantaneous access," Wang said. "The advantages of mobile apps could lead to a new content distribution environment for paid and ad-supported media services."

Although Wang contended that mobile apps will not completely replace Web browsers, distributors that rely too much on the mobile Web may lose audience and revenues.

While that statement may have developers running to download native SDKs (software development kits) for iPhone, Android and other platforms, a word of caution from us: this research was based on a survey, where apparently the question asked was: "I prefer apps over a Web browser when accessing mobile content. Agree? Disagree?"

As you know, surveys that ask users to identify their own behavioral patterns aren't as viable as those that actually measure the behavior itself.

It's also worth pointing out that these findings contradict two other reports we've seen this year. One report was from a mobile search company (and app maker) Taptu, which said that the future of the mobile Web is likely to be dominated by cross-platform browser-based mobile websites, not native apps. Adobe, too, released a report in October saying people prefer the mobile Web to apps.

In other words, take this latest with a grain of salt until more research arrives. But do consider that there is likely an obvious truth here: native mobile apps will always be preferred when the mobile Web experience (slow loading times, no mobile site) remains poor.

"The combined revenues from apps funded by pay-per-download (PPD), value-added services (VAS, including freemium and subscription) and advertising is expected to rise from just under $10 billion in 2009 to $32 billion in 2015."

An additional issue is the relatively constrained area where smart phones are used with any frequency - industrialized countries. Even there, they are not as common as feature phones. Either smart phone use will need to grow or apps will need to adapt to feature phones as well.

Photo by Cristiano Betta

We got a lot of great comments on your favorite Mobile Web apps in the contest post, which we will analyze soon. Keep telling us the Mobile Web apps you use, e.g. in this comments thread too, because it's great to know.

Publishers can now use Zong apps to offer their customers polls, quizzes, alerts, RSS feeds and more via SMS shortcodes and responses. The company says its API also allows publishers to leverage web content, serve up and bill customers for a wide variety of applications beyond SMS interactions.

Publishers are expected to charge customers for use of the apps and billing functionality is built into Zong. The US carriers will take 40 to 60% of revenue from the apps, Zong will take less than 10% and the publishers can pocket the rest. That sounds like the kind of revenue split that could prove viable in the long run. While a lot of the apps we'll start seeing soon will probably be pretty corny, there will be some good ones too. Good mobile apps that work are something I'm willing to pay to use.

Competitor Golife Mobile just began offering limited Java application access last week. Some comparison to Google's Android Mobile OS can't help but come to mind - but Zong is a far more limited application framework, is explicitly commercial in its relationship to end users - and it's live now. While the Android SDK has been released - the Operating System isn't live on any phones yet.

As an attendee at SXSW, it seemed like Foursquare and Gowalla were the most used. Brightkite seemed to drop off the radar of SXSW attendees, but perhaps that was because Foursquare and Gowalla had the most press attention at that time. Whatever the case, it was an inconclusive result at SXSW and there was a sense that none of the 3 leading location-based mobile apps 'won' that battle. It's now a month later, so we thought we'd poll you again to see which - if any - of these apps you use regularly now.

See also:

• Two-Thirds of iPhone Users Now Use Location-Based Services at Least Once a Week
• Top 10 Mobile Trends of 2010, Part 2: Apps, Apps, Apps

Join us at the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit on May 7, in Mountain View, CA, to discuss location-based apps and other hot topics in Mobile. If you're in town for the Web 2.0 Expo that week, our Mobile Summit is the day after. We'd love to see you there! Register here.

Mobile Web apps don't require Apple's approval to be accessible, but for now Chomp is limiting its index to the thousands of mobile Web apps that have been checked and approved by Apple. (Did you know Apple maintained a list of approved mobile Web apps?) None the less, it's an important development in the app ecosystem.

Chomp believes it offers a better app discovery process than Apple's own iTunes store (VentureBeat has a good in-depth overview). The company has served up tens of millions of app recommendations since launching in January and now has a few million reviews posted.

The Google Mobile team launched an app-discovery feature in its search results this week but doesn't include mobile Web apps and is very limited. Chomp's approach is better, but is still limited to Apple-approved apps. The company says it wants to keep users safe with a good experience, but it's also clear that basing its Web app index off of Apple's is the simplest way to include any Web apps. Chomp also requires that you download and launch a specific app for app discovery, rather than surfacing web apps through everyday casual mobile Web use.

Chomp looks and works much better today than it did at launch and is worth checking out. As a news event, bringing together native and mobile web apps into one search interface is definitely notable and likely a sign of things to come across the whole app ecosystem. Combine this with Google's recent announcement that it is advancing access to hardware for mobile web apps and the division between the mobile web and native app ecosystem feels less important every day.

Earlier today our resident Mobile Web expert Sarah Perez listed ReadWriteWeb's top 10 Mobile Web products of 2009. As for your choices, we discovered that you like social networking on the go (Facebook, Foursquare), Twitter clients (Tweetie, Twitterrific), Google (Google Maps, Google Mobile), and innovative mobile-focused apps (Evernote, Shazam). The top 16 is listed below, with commentary. Also at the bottom of the post you'll find a spreadsheet of the entire list.

Many of our readers use iPhones, so the above list features more iPhone apps than apps from Android, Blackberry, Nokia, or other phones.

Facebook was the most popular mobile app listed by you all. Facebook has been improving their iPhone app all year and this survey shows that our readers are liking those iterations. As Sarah Perez noted earlier today, "if any application deserves an "app of the year" award, it's Facebook 3.0 for iPhone."

Not far behind Facebook was Tweetie, a popular mobile Twitter client, which released a major new version of their app in September. Tweetie 2 introduced features like video tweets, offline mode, geolocation and more. Other mobile Twitter apps mentioned multiple times include Echofon, TweetDeck and Twitterific.

Google has always been popular in our Mobile apps surveys, since we began doing them in 2007. They're listed three times in the above list, including at number three with Google Maps.

Several mobile-centric apps (i.e. apps developed specifically for mobile, rather than the desktop computer) made our top 16 list. Foursquare is a trendy new mobile social network; Evernote is a great note-taking tool; Shazam is a head-scratchingly good app for identifying songs — to name just a few.

Click here to see a Google spreadsheet featuring the entire list of nearly 200 mobile apps listed by our readers.

SEE ALSO: Top 10 Mobile Web Products of 2009

Indeed, the FDA is proposing a set of guidelines, outlining the types of apps that it plans to oversee. This won't be all apps in the "Health" category, but will include those that, in the FDA's words, "could present a risk to patients if the apps don't work as intended."

But the FDA says that it needs to do more to make sure that consumers and medical professionals are getting accurate information when they turn to their mobile devices for information and diagnoses. There are apps, for example, that warn breastfeeding mothers which medications to stay away from, ones that help monitor heart irregularities and ones that offer basic diagnostics and disease information (such as WebMD).

The FDA says it doesn't plan to review all medical apps. Rather it will monitor and approve those apps that are used as an accessory to an FDA-regulated medical device or that transform a mobile platform into a regulated medical device. Based on the wording in these draft guidelines then, the oversight will be geared towards apps that are aimed at medical professionals, not at the general public.

The general public is, of course, welcome to give the FDA feedback on these proposals. FDA is asking for consumers, health care workers and others to weigh in on its proposed guidelines during a 90-day public comment period.

The results are not hugely shocking, but contain some interesting tidbits nonetheless. The list is broken down into three rankings: overall usage, male usage and female usage. The top half of each list is littered with the apps you'd guess were popular: Facebook, Gmail, Maps, YouTube. Pandora, Words With Friends, Twitter and Amazon's Kindle app all make expected appearances in the top 20 as well.

• 21% of American wireless subscribers have a smart phone at Q4 2009, up from 19% in the previous quarter and significantly higher than the 14% at the end of 2008
• 14% of mobile subscribers have downloaded an app in the last 30 days
• Average number of apps: Smart phone: 22, Feature phone: 10

Among other conclusions of the survey is that games, both free and paid, are the most downloaded of apps. No surprise there. On smart phones, vs. feature phones, the most popular are Facebook, Google Maps and Weather Channel.

Facebook is also the most popular in the social app category, but LinkedIn is popular with adults 25-44 and MySpace is more popular with teens than one might expect, given its leveling off.

The greatest surprise is that news barely makes a ding in the apps market, at least according to this study. Getting news tailored to your needs is one of the most gratifying elements of the new world of information. But maybe we're somewhat prejudiced.

Loading basecamphq.com on your mobile device will take you to the new version automatically. Makers of the several 3rd party Basecamp mobile apps, who were probably making a fair sum on their software, are unlikely to be pleased. I'm excited to use it though. I really hope it supports Backpack soon.

The company says the web app will work on the following devices: iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad, Motorola Droid X, Motorola Droid 2, Samsung Galaxy S, HTC Incredible, HTC Evo, Palm Pre 2, BlackBerry Torch, and any device running iOS 4+, Android 2.1+, webOS 2, or BlackBerry 6.

Right now Facebook users on the iPhone and iPad who are using the mobile web site (m.facebook.com) will be able to get bookmarks to the mobile versions of these apps.

This is the beginning of bringing Facebook apps to mobile - parallel viral channels will come to Android soon.

Facebook Mobile Bookmarks

When an app is used, a bookmark is added to a user's main navigation on Facebook. Anyone who uses Facebook on the iPhone, iPad, and the mobile website (m.facebook.com) will get bookmarks to the mobile versions of these apps.

Facebook Requests For Mobile

If a user gets a request from a friend to join an app, they can easily accept the request from their iPhone. This goes for games, too. For example, if someone sends you a request to Sims Social and you look at it on the Facebook app of your iPhone, you'll be taken to the Sims Social app. If you don't already have the app, you'll end up in Apple's App Store. Android users will go to an HTML5 version in a mobile web browser.

Facebook News Feed

While it's already possible to use the feed dialog, now users will be able to interact with those stories on mobile. Tapping on the link will land you on the mobile version of that app, whether or not it's native iOS or a mobile web app. Clicking on news feed items will also send you to the HTML5-based app or the iTunes store to download the native version of the app.

Facebook Credits Go Mobile, But Not On iOS

Facebook Credits for mobile web apps, a payment system for virtual and digital items, are also available. In order to use Apps on Facebook, you'll be required to use Facebook Credits as your exclusive payment method.

And here's the big catch, from the Facebook Developer blog: "Native iOS apps and mobile web apps that are running within a Facebook iOS app may not use Facebook Credits." In plain English, that means Facebook Credits are available on all mobile apps *except* iOS. Using them on iOS would violate Apple's in-app purchasing rules. Because Facebook Credits is a native app, iOS users can't use credits where they otherwise should be able to. So really, Facebook won't allow users to use Facebook Credits on the native iPhone or iPad apps. Facebook has handed over control to Apple. We saw it coming.

Facebook Users' Relationship with Mobile

Facebook claims that more than 250 million people interact with the platform through mobile devices, according to Researcher Benedict Evans. Of that 250 million, 86 million come to Facebook from the iPhone, and 76 million come from Android.