It asked them which platforms they currently use and which they plan to develop on next year. The growth in the percentage of developers using Android to create mobile apps is nearly twice that of iOS; and it’s four times as fast (on Android vs iOS) for tablet apps.

Rani Molla/GigaOM

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What’s next? Faster and cheaper mobile networks, an array of new devices to connect to those networks, disruptive payment models, and more captivating user interfaces. So which companies are likely to help power that new wave of innovation? Welcome to The Mobile 15.

These aren’t necessarily the most successful companies in the mobile world, though you could argue that a few of them might qualify for those lists as well. Rather, what we’re highlighting here is simply innovation: These are the companies, startups and giants alike, that are changing, or could potentially change, the mobile landscape in the most profound ways. We’ll be talking about this list — as well as many of broader themes and challenges in mobile– at Mobilize, our conference in San Francisco later this week.

The Mobile 15 includes some big brands, like Alcatel-Lucent and Samsung, but also some lesser-known names, like the printed memory company ThinFilm and crowdsourced traffic app developer Waze. Some of our picks may surprise you, like the inclusion of long-suffering Nokia. We know Nokia has hit a rough patch in recent years, but we think its attempts to radically reinvent itself with a new OS and new technologies are compelling — see more on our rationale below.

A word about our methodology: To create the list, we didn’t simply pick a bunch of names we liked and throw them into a spreadsheet. Our team — which included writers Katie Fehrenbacher, Kevin Tofel, Ryan Kim and Stacey Higginbotham– submitted dozens of candidates in categories ranging from app development to handset technologies to infrastructure vendors. We even included the Internet of Things — companies are turning everything from medical devices, energy-management systems and product packaging into small mobile computers.

We then graded every company on several different measures of innovation. Those with the highest total innovation scores earned a spot on our Mobile 15 list. Some of these companies, like Israeli startup Intucell,  are working on one-time innovations, while others, like Apple, of course, have a longer track record of breakthroughs. What connects all the companies on our list is that they will have a big impact on the mobile industry.

So keep your eye on these companies in coming months. To the 15!

—Kevin Fitchard

Go to page 2 (of 16) on GigaOM .

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Both scenarios are enough to give any CISO heartburn, but neither option is the right answer. IT needs to provide a sanctioned alternative that allows employees to be überproductive while still maintaining security and control. For IBM, this came in the form of MyMobileHub, a homegrown solution that hosts all data onsite. That’s great for IBM, but the rest of us would be better served by partnering with a trusted cloud vendor. Here are some critical criteria that will help you differentiate between BYOD-friendly and BYOD-adverse vendors.

1. If my data is stored in the cloud, who has access?

The inherent benefits of data storage in the cloud are obvious: virtually limitless storage, no required maintenance or upgrades, and little to no administration overhead is required. But how can businesses trust that their data is safe when it’s stored in third-party data centers? A universal set of requirements seems to have standardized around encryption, backup, audit logging and check-the-box certifications. However, IT should press vendors to explain how data is protected at all layers in the security stack. Will data or credentials be cached and stored in the clear to optimize product performance? Will the vendor provide and manage the encryption keys that give full access to that sensitive data? Are the right controls in place to block unauthorized access by employees at the vendor site? Visibility into data access practices will help differentiate between vendors when AES-256 encryption at rest and 256-bit SSL encryption in transit become the norm.

2. How do existing security controls, such as data loss prevention (DLP) and eDiscovery, apply to my data in the cloud?

Productivity apps should not be exempt from any security or compliance policies that keep your business data protected. This means that interoperability is key. Are the audit logs associated with the service exportable in a format that can plug into a downstream log management tool? How does the vendor’s platform comply with eDiscovery mechanisms, including search and legal holds? Can your existing DLP policies map to affect the actions your users take within the productivity app? When looking for a vendor, try to find services that compliment your current security posture rather than introduce new complexities.

3. How can I differentiate between business data and my employees’ personal data?

One of the major concerns with BYOD is identifying which data belongs to the user and which belongs to the business. The legal headaches that accompany an accidental wipe of personal data is enough to scare IT away from BYOD altogether. How do the vendors you’re evaluating approach this dilemma?

Although the risks aren’t trivial, a future where BYOD is fully embraced within your business may be near. The good news for IT is that vendors are aware of the challenges and are developing innovative technologies to help facilitate a more confident transition. 2011 was the year of mobile device management (MDM), and 2012 will focus on extending a new level of protection to the actual applications and data on all devices, whether personal or corporate-issued. Partnering with a trusted vendor will enable IT to focus on solving the issues that matter, rather than funding and allocating resources to an internal “Siri-for-business” initiative.

Anthony Kennada is Symantec’s senior manager of emerging cloud products. Prior to joining Symantec, Kennada worked at LiveOffice (now part of Symantec) and Box.net.

Image courtesy of Flickr user FutUndBeidl.

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Leap Wireless, which operates the Cricket Communications prepaid carrier, has tapped Aepona to provide it with a managed API platform. Belfast, U.K.,-based Aepona plays two roles. First, it simplifies carriers’ complex and proprietary network APIs for billing, location and presence and exposes them to developers in a much easier-to-use format. Second, it handles the nitty-gritty of developer recruitment, relations and support – tasks that are not exactly the carriers’ forte.

On the standards front, the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) has grabbed the baton dropped by WAC and is developing its own network API framework that would allow HTML5 developers and device makers to dive into the hitherto murky depths of carriers’ core networks. ATIS, however, is a North American standards development group. Most U.S. and Canadian carriers are members, as are the big global handset and infrastructure ventures, so its recommendations don’t carry much weight over the oceans.

Herein lies the problem: while WAC’s mandate was truly global – its membership was comprised of 4 dozen operators from every part of the world – the efforts emerging to replace it are fragmented. And one of the biggest reasons (among many) developers don’t want to work with operators is the problem of fragmentation: signing separate deals with individual carriers and developing to each operator’s own technical standards and APIs.

WAC was a noble idea, but as Locaid CEO Rip Gerber wrote in a recent GigaOM contributed piece, operators are probably the most ill-equipped creatures to turn such a grand plan into reality. Ultimately WAC failed, Gerber said, for three reasons:  carrier collectives move slowly — even when the stakes are high – building API’s simply isn’t in carriers’ DNA and because WAC ultimately had neither the mandate, nor the wherewithal, to bring those APIs to market.

Gerber’s answer is to hand the work over to API specialists like his own location interface company Locaid, Apigee or Aepona. These companies obviously are better equipped than any carrier consortium to do the technical work as well as deal with the finicky developer community But the problem of fragmentation remains. Half a dozen API companies means half a dozen platforms with which developers must deal.

Kudos to ATIS for taking another crack at seemingly insurmountable problem, but it’s just one standards development body of dozens worldwide. The GSMA is also taking up WAC’s slack working with Apigee as part of its One API initiative. Canadian carriers are working with Apigee’s competitor Aepona. If all of this standards work results in a dozen different API frameworks, we don’t really have a standard at all.

I agree with Gerber that half a dozen simplified API frameworks are better than 200 complex ones. And some developers would be able to work within those divisions. In the unlikely event U.S. carriers adopted a unified API framework, it could be attractive to any developer building apps primarily for the domestic market.

Even if a carrier like Leap finds itself on an API island, it can still put those interfaces to work. Cricket has enjoyed quite a bit of success with its white-label Muve music subscription service. Using Aepona’s simplified APIs, it would be much easier for a Leap to recruit new content suppliers and launch their services.

But those kind of tight-knit carrier-developer relationships are a rarity and the tiniest fraction of the overall applications market. What carriers dream of doing is becoming part of the global app distribution chain, taking a cut of every app billed to their customers or charging fees to access their other APIs. Developers simply aren’t going to play that carrier game if they can get much wider exposure – and less headache – working with Apple, Google and Microsoft. Without some semblance of a common API, that carrier dream is never going to happen.

Featured photo courtesy of Shutterstock user Chantall; Puzzle image courtesy Flickr user Horia Varlan.

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The Daily, which launched in early 2011 as a tablet tabloid available only on the iPad, finally is adding an iPhone edition, with Android handsets to follow. The new app includes some free stories but readers will have to subscribe at $1.99 a month or $19.99  a year to get full access. That’s half the price of the tablet edition.

The addition gives the News Corp. startup its best chance for a burst of new subscribers in potentially meaningful numbers. The Daily said it had 100,000 paid subscribers in January; it’s going to need more than that to move from interesting experiment to profitable. Unlike the others, this subscription doesn’t come with a free trial. Instead, it’s a freemium model.

Current Daily subscribers can add the iPhone version at no extra cost. It should expand the amount of time they can spend on the “paper”;  at least, that will be the case for me as a subscriber now that I can check in on a story while waiting in line.

The Daily, started out as an iPad-only app, envisioned by News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch and nurtured by Steve Jobs. An Android edition launched in January but is available only on a couple of Verizon Samsung tablets. It’s pre-loaded so subscribers don’t have to seek it out. The Verizon version also has a slightly different sales strategy — monthly or annual versus weekly autorenewal or annual subscriptions.

I’m told the Android  handset version is “coming soon” and will be open, not limited to Verizon (which was The Daily’s launch sponsor). That will leave the web as the only major platform without a subscription option.

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He was talking about a now-familiar bait-and-switch that Google keeps running on web businesses. First, the search giant offers a little traffic boost to sites that organize data in certain useful ways. Then it turns the game on its head and — without any notice — starts using that structured data to inform its own services. Finally, with a disturbing inevitability, it launches its own competing product that steps in and replace yours.

By the time it starts happening, you’re already in… and there’s no way back.

Google has done this across a number of areas, perhaps most famously in local listings — witness the clash between Yelp and Hotpot — and travel (upsetting Kayak)… and it just keeps on going.

“What’s happened in the past has made us wary of them,” said the founder, who asked to remain anonymous.

“I can’t imagine Apple or Facebook behaving like this. I mean, why build for Google?”

Little respect

Those comments are not unusual. In fact, they come as just the latest in a series of growing frustrations and irritations that seem to be building among the developer community. Initiatives like Google+ and Search Plus Your World want to turn Google’s substantial reach inside out and become a serious platform, yet the company treats third party developers with little respect.

The result is that it gets very little love back.

Last year our own Barb Darrow highlighted problems with Google App Engine and its cloud services in a piece called “Why Google gets no respect from developers”.

 Google’s cloud, as massive as it is, is seen as something of a roach motel for applications: you can check them in, but not necessarily check them out should you opt for another deployment choice. Developers say once they write for GAE, the application is locked in.

That’s difficult to stomach from a company that has built its vast mobile business — among others — on the idea that closed is bad and open is good. Faced with privacy concerns, the company is happy to trumpet data portability for users (though quite where they can take their liberated data is unclear), while at the same time developers and information are effectively locked in.

And then there’s the problem of delivering on your promises. Android developers across Europe have been reporting that payments due from Google have not been delivered.

All of this has built to a point where, now, the people who build web applications are becoming incredibly cautious about the company that is, for many users, synonymous with the web.

Take the decision by Foursquare to drop Google Maps — part of a trend of companies to defect to other mapping services. Yes, there are financial considerations — but there’s also an issue of trust.

Just this week, in a notorious post why he left Google for Microsoft, former engineering director James Whittaker suggested that there were few reasons for builders to trust a company that is increasingly losing its focus on innovation in favor of a focus on advertising:

The Google I was passionate about was a technology company that empowered its employees to innovate. The Google I left was an advertising company with a single corporate-mandated focus.

Technically I suppose Google has always been an advertising company, but for the better part of the last three years, it didn’t feel like one. Google was an ad company only in the sense that a good TV show is an ad company: having great content attracts advertisers.

Take it with a pinch of salt, but it’s an important signal.

Would you trust them?

Mathew wrote yesterday about the problem with Google+ not being design, but demand. That’s true. But there’s a deeper, longer-term problem taking root here too.

Google realizes that its services must be platforms to succeed. After all, the companies it now eyes up enviously did precisely that. Facebook only became a truly significant force when it turned into a platform. Apple too, leapt up the ladder when it became an app platform that enabled developers to connect with users all over the world. And, of course, Microsoft blazed the trail by turning the whole operating system into the most powerful platform (there’s a reason Steve Ballmer made a fool of himself by shouting “developers”.)

Of course all these companies have had their problems in relationships with developers — whether it’s money, access, transparency or something else. But there’s no doubt that where the benefits outweigh the drawbacks, developers will vote with their feet.

And, as an increasing number of developers feel that Google will treat them poorly, or that it is simply too much of a threat, it’s lost the future. Yet Larry Page is even telling his own engineers that they should leave if they don’t agree with his plan to focus on a “single, unified, ‘beautiful’ product across everything”. If that’s what’s happening inside the Googleplex, what hope for those on the outside?

Let’s go back to where we started: the startup founder who sees Google as a drug dealer looking to offer him a sweetener that gets him addicted. Since he doesn’t want that to happen, he’s left with that single question.

“I mean, why build for Google?”

Why indeed.

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There’s no arguing that Google has big ambitions to expand further into the wireless space. Not only did it build an overnight sensation with Android, it’s exploring the cutting edge of handset technologies with its Nexus line and will broaden its device scope with the purchase of ailing Motorola Mobility. the search giant is one of the biggest players in mobile apps, and remains a looming presence on the mobile Web. So why wouldn’t it want to complete that dominance by controlling the pipes that the deliver its services?

There’s a big difference between delivering applications, services and devices and selling raw connectivity. Nowhere does this difference shine brighter than Google’s relationship with Verizon Wireless. Verizon benefits from the traffic that Android and Search deliver, and Google benefits from all of the Android devices that Verizon sells, but beyond that their common ground disappears, as the recent dust-up over Goggle Wallet shows. As an operator, Verizon has to carefully ration access to its network in the form of data caps and restrictions in order to make its profits. If Google were to buy T-Mobile it would be forced to do the same. As an apps and services innovator rationing bytes and bandwidth is the last thing Google wants to do.

But let’s play the hypothetical…

If Google did buy T-Mobile here are just three of many, many problems it would face:

•  Schizophrenia: How does Google balance the needs of the services and devices it develops against the bandwidth constraints of the network it purchases? Video apps like YouTube and Hangout consume a massive amount of data, and Google’s developers, I’m sure, are hard at work building more powerful applications to take advantage of new 4G network speeds. Consumers will expect Google to use T-Mobile as a showcase for its newest technologies, but as T-Mobile’s lack of an LTE roadmap exemplifies, its network resources would be severely limited. Google would likely invest in alternate access technologies like Wi-Fi and white spaces to supplement its capacity cheaply, but at a certain point it runs into a wall erected by physics. The limitations of T-Mobile’s network would curb the pace of Google’s service innovation.
• A sense of history: If any company can attest to the fickle tastes of wireless consumers, it’s Google. It became a monster in the smartphone sector in the space of a few years, as Apple did before it. What happens when the tides shift? What if Windows Phone takes off like a rocket eating into Android’s market share. Does T-Mobile not sell Nokia or other WP phones? If Apple reduces itself to offering an iPhone for T-Mobile’s AWS bands, does Google ignore it? In the last decade, we’ve seen multiple titans in wireless devices and software fall, replaced by new giants, many of which have since also tumbled from their pedestals (just ask RIM, Ericsson and Motorola). What happens when Android’s star dims? Google can’t subject T-Mobile to the whims of its applications business, but if that’s the case, what would be the point of buying T-Mobile at all?
• A customer relations nightmare: When was the last time you called Google customer service? The big-iron world of wireless base stations and towers, switching offices and utility trucks is radically different from the server-centric world of Internet services. There are lots of moving parts in wireless networks and they often fail, as Verizon can attest to given its recent string of LTE failures. When the iPhone first bum-rushed AT&T’s network, how much vitriol was directed at Apple for its un-ambitious choices in 3G technology and its decision to sacrifice RF design for industrial design? Not much. Whether it’s a justified perception or not, tech companies like Google are the darlings of the broadband age, while the operators are the evil gatekeepers preventing mobile data services from meeting their full potential. I think the carriers have come to terms with this perception as part of the course of doing business, but I don’t think Google is quite ready to deal with millions of tweets declaiming “f#@king Google’s network is down” whenever it has a problem.

What about Clearwire, 700 MHz and Google Fiber?

I’m anticipating some push back on this post, pointing out that Google has made numerous attempts in the past toward becoming an operator. Google invested $500 million and still remains a large investor in Clearwire. It entered the 2008 700 MHz spectrum auctions and bid heavily on the 4G spectrum Verizon eventually won. And Google has launched a fiber-to-the communities project designed to bring1 Gbps connections to the home.

These are all red herrings though. In every case, Google pursued these projects not with the intention to become a legitimate wireless or broadband provider. Rather, it used its enormous resources to upset the established order in telecom, thumbing its nose at operators in the process. Google invested in Clearwire because it wanted to prop up an alternative to the walled-garden data services that operators were then offering. It bid up that 700 MHz spectrum in order to force Verizon to accept open access provisions that would clear the way for its Android services in the future. And Google readily admits its fiber project is an experiment to show broadband providers and consumers just what’s possible with a lightening-fast connection.

Google doesn’t want to be a telecom service provider. It just wants to influence carriers to adopt business models and technologies more amenable to its business plans – either by shaming them by example or using its cash to force change. If it did buy T-Mobile, Google would join the carrier club and it certainly wouldn’t be able to pull such shenanigans anymore.

I don’t claim to be prescient here. SNL could very well be right, and Google may be making a legitimate bid for T-Mobile. If that’s the case then Google is suffering from hubris, somehow believing it could be ‘different’ then the rest of the wireless industry. But if Google does buy T-Mobile it may well wind up being a bigger disaster than AOL’s failed merger with Time Warner.

Book image courtesy of Flickr user crazytales562
Cash image courtesy of reserved Flickr user zzzack

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The San Francisco company has grown its customer base by about 400 percent this year to 75,000 developers, who build everything from group messaging and conferencing solutions to voice and text message notification apps and web-based distributed call centers. The Twilio platform lets developers plug in the basic communications components that used to come from traditional telecom vendors. Now, developers just pay for what they need and easily integrate a host of services without needing a strong telecom background.

Hulu, for example, was able to set up call centers on multiple continents within one month using Twilio. Twilio’s API is now the fifth most popular for developers, said Jeff Lawson, CEO and co-founder of Twilio, and half of all American households are now touched by apps using Twilio.

“We believe in opening up the black box of communication for developers,” Lawson told me. “People who wouldn’t have participated in communication because of steep technological or economic barriers are building things now.”

Twilio has been evolving the platform beyond SMS and voice services that hooked into old copper-based phone systems and this summer began offering VoIP services. It’s showing that it can grow even as old phone systems fade away and developers rely less on integrating text messaging and move to more app-to-app messages. The company got help from Dave McClure’s 500 Startups, which established a dedicated $250,000 Twilio micro fund last year and has committed to a second round, this time with matching funding for developers provided by Ron Conway.

Twilio, which is up to about 85 employees, previously raised $15.7 million including a $12 million round last year. Lawson said the company is looking to hire more engineers and more sales and marketing people. He declined to talk about the financial details but said Twilio has been growing revenues substantially over the last two years.

As the app boom grows, it’s back-end infrastructure providers like Twilio that continue to thrive as they help enable more and more of the mobile apps flooding the market.

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I’ve also spent the last three years helping develop Cisco’s cloud strategy, and am just about to begin an adventure as vice president of product strategy for enterprise cloud management vendor enStratus.

Now, as I find myself honored with the opportunity to contribute regularly to GigaOM’s cloud coverage, I find myself thinking a lot about what I’ve learned in those five years. So, for my first post–and in an attempt to put some shape to my model of cloud computing–I thought I’d walk through my most-important observations to date. At worst, if I get it wrong, I hope you’ll straighten me out.

The cornerstone of everything I believe about the cloud can be summarized in one simple statement:

Cloud computing is an application-centric operations model.

What in the world does that mean? Well, let’s begin with the “cloud is an operations model” part. I wrote a post that describes this concept in detail a couple of years ago.

The operations model is one that has been discussed ad nauseum in the last couple of years, but as a quick recap, it centers on delivery of IT capabilities at scale, on demand, typically in a multi-tenant environment. It is important to understand that, while new technologies are indeed being developed for cloud, these technologies are being developed to fit the operations model, not the other way around.

The application-centric part of that statement is derived from the very nature of cloud itself. Traditionally, IT operations has been a server-centic affair:

• We buy a server
• We assign that server an IP address and wire it to a switch port
• We choose an operating system (which, I argue, is actually part of the server from an operations perspective), then install applications
• Finally, we monitor the health of the system based on–wait for it–server metrics: CPU and memory utilization, I/O rates, etc.

Now, think about consuming a public cloud service. If you don’t own the infrastructure you are consuming, you don’t own the server. You may own the operating system if you are using an infrastructure service, such as Amazon’s EC2, but for most cloud services, you won’t even have that luxury.

What you do bring to the table–er, service–is code, data, configuration metadata and/or policies that are, in fact, what makes any cloud service valuable to you as an individual or an organization. Your task in consuming a cloud service is to deliver those elements to a service that turns them into functionality that drives business value.

Thus, a new order of operations has to evolve in order to meet the demands of this new model. The diagram below, borrowed from my first post on the topic of cloud’s effects on operations, is how I see that order breaking down. Read that post to get a sense of what responsibility is assigned to each of these roles.

In coming posts, I want to dig deep into the consequences of application-centricity in cloud, and in enterprise IT, in general. There are so many interesting corollaries, exceptions and possibilities that I’m looking forward to a long conversation with you, GigaOM’s readers. Please do not hesitate to give me feedback via comments. I can also be found on Twitter at @jamesurquhart.

Image courtesy of Gary Orenstein.

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