1.Bluetooth 3.0

Gartner: The Bluetooth 3.0 specification will be released in 2009, with devices starting to arrive around 2010. Bluetooth 3.0 will likely include features such as ultra-low-power mode that will enable new devices, such as peripherals and sensors, and new applications, such as health monitoring.

mblapps: Bluetooth 3.0 would allow for health care applications (and other unique apps)  that would sync with monitoring devices. If Bluetooth 3.0 uses less battery life that means more power to play games on your cell.

2. Mobile User Interfaces (UIs)

Gartner: UIs will be an area of intense competition in 2009 and 2010, with manufacturers using UIs to differentiate their handsets and platforms. Better interfaces will make the mobile Web more accessible on small devices, and will be a better channel to customers and employees.

mblapps: Customers will be more likely to buy more advanced phones (that can use more applications) if the phones are easy to use. Compiled by mobile firm Mformation, a recent survey found that 85 percent of users reporting they were frustrated by the difficulty of getting a new phone up and working. An easy-to-use interface could also make customers enjoy using their phones, meaning they would be more likely to use their phones for more and more tasks.

3. Location Sensing

Gartner: Location awareness makes mobile applications more powerful and useful; in the future, location will be a key component of contextual applications. Location sensing will also enhance systems, such as mobile presence and mobile social networking. The growing maturity of on-campus location sensing using Wi-Fi opens up a range of new applications exploiting the location of equipment or people. Organizations delivering business or consumer applications should explore the potential of location sensing; however, exploiting it may create new privacy and security challenges.

mblapps: Gartner above spells out how location sharing will help mobile apps. The more users have access to GPS-enabled phones, the more people using services such as Loopt, Brightkite, urbanspoon and other location-based apps.

4. 802.11n

Gartner: 802.11n boosts Wi-Fi data rates to between 100 Mbps and 300 Mbps, and the multiple-input, multiple-output technology used by 802.11n offers the potential for better coverage in some situations. 802.11n is likely to be a long-lived standard that will define Wi-Fi performance for several years. High-speed Wi-Fi is desirable to stream media around the home and office.

mblapps: Increasingly faster Internet offered on mobile devices means developers will have more access than ever to mobile phones — skipping the downloading-apps business model to make web-only apps.

5. Display Technologies

Gartner: During 2009 and 2010, several new display technologies will impact the marketplace, including active pixel displays, passive displays and pico projectors.

mblapps: Mobile phones can be used to play games, watch movies and share presentations — but better displays make cell phones direct competitors with devices such as the Nintendo DS, Sony PSP and ultra-portable computers.

6. Mobile Web and Widgets

Gartner: The mobile Web is emerging as a low-cost way to deliver simple mobile applications to a range of devices. It has some limitations that will not be addressed by 2010 (for example, there will be no universal standards for browser access to handset services, such as the camera or GPS).

mblapps: Better access to the web from mobile phones means some standardizing of mobile Web sites, more opportunities for Web sites and services who could develop mobile sites rather than mobile apps and a chance for companies to increase branding by offering a similar experience from physical locations, the desktop web and mobile phones.

7. Cellular Broadband

Gartner: Wireless broadband exploded in 2008, driven by the availability of technologies such as high-speed downlink packet access and high-speed uplink packet access, combined with attractive pricing from cellular operators.

mblapps: These advancements would allow for faster transfers of large volumes of data — a key development to make video work on mobile phones, less battery life wasted while waiting for data transfers and less dependency on mobile networks.

8. Near Field Communication (NFC)

Gartner: NFC provides a simple and secure way for handsets to communicate over distances of a centimeter or two. NFC is emerging as a leading standard for applications such as mobile payment, with successful trials conducted in several countries. It also has wider applications, such as “touch to exchange information” (for example, to transfer an image from a handset to a digital photo frame, or for a handset to pick up a virtual discount voucher).

mblapps: Companies and customers would become less dependant on things such as credit cards, business cards, USB cords, coupons and other items as those could all someday be transferred wirelessly using mobile applications.

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Jeremy Horwitz over at iLounge writes that the iLounge crew was deciding on buying the Chipotle app when it was removed from the store.

“We and iLounge readers had noticed that the app had for some unknown reason disappeared from the App Store shortly after being released,” Horwitz wrote.

TechCrunch got a hold of Sequence, the company building the Chipotle app, who provided this about the app: “The current goal is to have it back on the App Store in two weeks, along with some cosmetic changes (many of the user reviews that were left while the app was still available had some complaints regarding the user experience).”

This instantly reminded me of an Apple patent made public in 2007 about a way to order, say, a cup of joe from a nearby Starbucks. From the Forbes article on that patent filing: “In an application with the U.S. Patent Office published on Dec. 20, the Cupertino, Calif.-based computer and gadget company described a wireless system that would allow customers to place an order at a store using a wireless device such as a media player, a wireless personal digital assistant or a cellphone.”

The biggest question now is not when the Chipotle app will return to iPhones, but what companies will follow suit and if the same applications will be also available for phones running other operating systems.

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