What's in store for the home of mobile apps?

It seems there are going to be as many ways to run a mobile application store as there are stores themselves.

RIM's BlackBerry App World is a model of how mobile OS vendors are trying to balance consumer needs and carrier needs.

One of the big topics at CTIA Wireless 2009 in Las Vegas last week was mobile applications, as RIM unveiled BlackBerry App World and Microsoft talked about its forthcoming Windows Marketplace for Mobile.

The dam has truly broken with mobile applications. For years, most consumers seemed indifferent to third-party applications but now they are viewed as an essential part of any smartphone.

Most of the credit for that trend has been prompted by the success of Apple's App Store, as both Apple's friends and enemies in the mobile world will readily admit. But few competitors are attempting to pull off Apple's my-way-or-the-highway approach, preferring to integrate the wireless carriers in a nod to the entrenched power those companies have in the mobile world.

Some might argue that's because they don't have devices with the consumer cachet of the iPhone. But it's clear after talking to several companies on the sidelines at CTIA that they think there's a way to make sure they offer quality software to their customers without cutting the carrier almost completely out of the equation, as Apple has done with AT&T.

Still, the burning question is whether the carriers and handset makers will permit software companies to do what they do best, or whether they will continue to try to put their stamp on mobile application development in order to avoid their possible fates as "dumb pipes" or widget makers.

"There's a big measure of trust there," said Morgan Gillis, executive director of the LiMo Foundation, which was created by a foundation of carriers and handset makers to develop software that provides a common underpinning for developers to write mobile applications. "We have to trust that the companies that build the devices and the operators that package this know what they are doing."

The idea of mobile application stores is not new but the faster networks and more sophisticated devices available these days have created a way for users to download applications directly to their device, bypassing the PC altogether. There are various ways that mobile companies are approaching this new reality.

Apple's approach has been covered exhaustively. But Apple has a unique advantage compared with its competitors: its applications only have to support two devices that are essentially identical (the original iPhone and the iPhone 3G), and for the most part Apple works only with a single wireless carrier per country.

Therefore, it can have a central application store and guarantee that those applications will work on any iPhone, and at the same time not have to worry as much about ensuring its carrier partners have unique ways to sell the same phone.

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