Mobile technology has seen major advances over the course of 2010, with new platforms, new services and new usage trends all taking hold to spread the adoption of not just the mobile Web, but the Web itself. The number of smartphone owners are increasing, mobile operating systems are proliferating and apps have become the new go-to tools for accessing mobile content on the go.
When you look back at the past 12 months, it’s almost hard to narrow a list down to only 10 top products, in fact – there’s so much innovation happening around mobile today. But we think the list below stands out as representative of the most important products from the year.
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iPhone 4
In June, Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the newest iPhone at a packed press event in San Francisco. The iPhone 4 introduced a number of mobile innovations, including front-facing cameras for the phone’s new Facetime video chat feature; gyroscopic controls that let developers create more advanced games and other apps using location and the position of the device in 3D space; an updated OS that introduced multi-tasking; app folders; and more, and perhaps most memorably, an updated design where the antenna wrapped around the outside of the phone, leading to degraded performance. Ah yes, Antennagate 2010, which only showed that not only can Apple make mistakes, doing so has no impact on its sales whatsoever. iPhone 4 sales reached record numbers, despite the buzz around its signal issues.
“Apple’s continued success proves 1) apps and the Web are becoming more important than the ability to make a voice call; 2) consumers have little problem with Apple’s heavy handed control of the end-to-end experience, in fact they appreciate it; 3) no one has come close to matching Apple’s alchemy of great hardware, software, and marketing,” explains Charles Golvin, an analyst at Forrester Research.
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