Juniper Research has revealed the winners of its first Future Mobile Awards for mobile applications. The Future Mobile Awards are given to companies that Juniper believes have made significant progress within their sector during the previous year.
Junipers first Gold Award for mobile apps goes to acrossair for its augmented reality app, Nearest Tube, developed for the iPhone 3GS. The app, which is awaiting approval by Apple, enables you to find out where your nearest London Underground startion is via a 3D map.
The Silver Award went to Tapulous, developer of the successful Tap Tap Revenge and its recently published sequel, Tap Tap Revenge 2 games. Other award winers were:
- Future Mobile Gambling: Gold mfuse; Silver Spin3
- Future Mobile Games: Gold Apple; Silver: Fishlabs
- Future Mobile Music: Gold Apple; Silver Shazam
- Future Mobile TV: Gold Telegent; Silver: Rok TV
- Future Mobile Adult Services: Gold DisPlayBoy; Silver: Cherrysauce
- Future Mobile UGC Services: Gold Twitter; Silver: MocoSpace
Junipers report, Mobile Applications & Apps Stores: Business Models, Opportunities & Forecasts 2009-2014 says that storefronts are increasingly likely to offer the facility to upsell premium content from within the app itself (including the App Store, starting later this year). The result being that the freemium business model whereby applications are offered on a free to download basis but subsequently offer incremental revenues from subscription-based services and additional content options – will become increasingly prevalent over the next five years.
The report also notes, however, that widespread deployment of the freemium apps model would pose a significant challenge to network operators, given that it offers the opportunity for much existing (and potential) content revenues to be directed through app stores (and the apps themselves) rather than through traditional distribution channels.
Theres more information about the report here. 
