The ever-increasing ‘applications’ requirements in the fast-paced mobile computing scenario – thanks to the emergence of iPhones, BlackBerrys, Droids and various other handsets – has brought about a multitude of business opportunities for app developers.

Noting that app developers help “people run their entire lives, even their entire businesses, from their mobile phones,” Lisa Allen, a board director of Mobile Monday Mid-Atlantic, said: “Today's mobile phones are as powerful as many desktop PCs — more so, if you consider that they're also location-aware and have a built-in billing and payment system.”

Going by the statistics put forth by the global information technology tracker Gartner Inc, the last-year revenue figures of the App stores stood at over $4.2 billion; and analysts project the revenue to touch a whopping $29.5 billion by 2013.

Apple, which boasts as many as 100,000 titles in diverse categories like games, news, business, health, and sports, has already announced that almost 3 billion apps have already been downloaded from its App Store this month.

While Apple is currently dominating the apps scenario, industry observers opine that competitors will catch up notably in the near future – already, BlackBerry App World has 4,000 titles; and the Google Android Market has 20,000 titles available for download.

In fact, prospects appear bright for the Android, which has an open source programming language, and the Android Market has no tedious app ‘approval’ process like Apple.