Without economic guidance, technical excellence is pretty much worthless. And so, once in a while, as a person with an economic background, I like to step aside from development and take a look at the markets and opportunities they have to offer. Today I would like to share with you why I am interested in mobile development and Bada in particular.

I guess most of mobile developers, just like myself, do this for two reasons:

• they like to play around with gadgets and “teach” them to “do stuff” and
• they like to distribute their solutions / apps, make them available to others and get paid directly or indirectly (by money or simply recognition )

In most cases the motivation that moves us is a combination of those two reasons and the motivation intensifies as technical and economic opportunities become larger. What motivates me most is hearing about a certain technological market, within the scope of my interest, that will grow insanely within a relatively short period of time. That kind of thing makes me want to learn and do more in that area of technology.

An interesting thing that I have read recently were some conclusions from the Global Smartphone Application market report 2010 by research2guidance. The report is 280+ pages big and costs almost 2000€, in case you want to read it Anyway, the report forecasts that the number of consumers using smartphone applications (102 million in 2009) will grow to 974 million in 2013, hence almost a billion smartphone users! Basically a 9-fold growth within 3 years! Who can stay indifferent hearing that?!

The same reports talks about the app store markets growing from $1.94 Billion (USD) 2009 to over $15 Billion (USD) 2013. There is a whole new landscape of business opportunities opening up for developers like us! This does not necessarily mean direct sales of applications only, though. In the next years more and more companies will understand that smartphone apps offer perfect platforms to stay in touch with their (potential) customers all the time – because they stay directly “in the pocket”! For us, it means that we can build new potential income streams by developing custom apps for corporate clients or by selling “add space” (maybe in less-intrusive forms) within our apps.

Today we can already witness new mobile add networks appearing almost on a weekly basis.

So where does Bada fit in this picture?

Samsung strives to bring the smartphones to a broader market through a strategy of low prices. Although the flagship bada phone, Saamsung S8500 Wave, will be launched probably at a remarkably high price (around 500€??), Samsung did make hints about releasing Bada smartphones for as low as 199$ in 2010 already. I have even heard rumors about price targets of lower than 100$, especially after all those new cheaper-to-manufacture processors have been announced at the Mobile World Congress last month.

All in all this means that there will be many million users holding bada phones in their hands by the end of this year. Yielding millions of opportunities to get your application to them . If you decide to pursue mobile development, you most likely won’t regret it.

Related posts:

1. 2010: 8 Bada Devices, over 20 Million Users
2. 2 billion bada phones?
3. What is the deal with the bada app store?