I think I said then that a mobile application could (probably) be much more than an application built for the Apple’s IOS platform or the increasingly dominant Android stage or something that offers a  customized browser experience by re-purposing existing content for the smaller screen.

This isn’t always the case of course.  There are some great applications that do just that.  I have been a long term fan of the IMDB website being a bit of a film buff and I use both the iPad and iPhone ‘application‘ versions  – both of which are wonderfully designed for their respective screen sizes with not insignificant differences between the versions given the quite different opportunities that the iPad’s much larger screen real estate offers.

The IMDB applications are, indeed, both great examples of developing for the mobile platform but I would suggest, without any intended disrespect to the team (and all the software houses everywhere developing good mobile apps) that put these together that these kinds of applications sit, at what I would call, the trivial end of ‘apps’ scale.

I think where the big challenges lie and, therefore, where the big potential game changers and successes will come is is in the area where an application is being used in what I will call (for the purposes of this post) a genuine mobile situation  – an application that really ‘does the business’ when someone has a need in a specific ‘needs’ situation (with respect to needs for information, for example, or for a particular transaction) in a specific ‘physical’ situation – i.e. where they are – literally in terms of physical location to something – a physical thing or a service – or to another person.

The idea of location and location based services (LBS) has been with us for some time of course.  And GPS-locator enabled search, route finding on maps and the proliferation of checkins that emanate via Foursquare, Gowalla and from within the mighty Facebook itself are now commonplace.

But I would argue that whilst location based search and route finding offer real ‘common man-understood’ benefits and relevance, a large amount of location-specific transactions and data traffic are still driven from the ‘checkin’ camp – from Foursquare and the ilk which is largely (still) for the geeks (including myself) amongst us, and we are still possibly just scratching at the surface of what mobile might really mean when it comes to giving me and all of you what is ultimately relevant at a real need level with respect to our exact location and our pertinent needs of right there and then.

As I mentioned in my first post on this site I’m just on the ride with you and with everyone else as we keep up with the speeding express train that is technology and, in this case, the ubiquity of GPS enabled smartphones that means mobile is finally real and huge.

As we go on this journey, what will not be sticky (what will be no more than tech flashes in the mobile pan), as has been shown time and time again, will be the applications where it appears that someone has randomly cobbled together the latest location tech with an apparently arbitrary or made up need and made that equal an application.  I’m being a bit harsh of course, but as we speed into new avenues of opportunity, the cornerstones of application stickiness – the foundations of what will survive, gain traction and be successful remain the same as ever.  

There are people needs that will be met in all sorts of fantastic ways by the appropriate use of technology – one of the front-lines of which is mobile – specifically context ultra-aware (specific needs relevant to location) mobile applications.

The technology and the opportunities change but the rules that dictate long-term success and stickiness remain the same. 

I think this is very acute when it comes to mobile applications.  

And when people connect the user insights and understand the specific needs at specific times with that actual moment in that location, they will move from creating something that is simply an application on a mobile device to a truly sticky truly mobile application.