Consumers will spend more than $4.2 billion on apps in 2013, up from $343 million this year, the research firm says, as smartphones become ubiquitous and app prices rise.

The average smartphone owner "downloads about 20 apps per year," says Carl Howe, director of consumer research. "It's a bigger market than a lot of people have been thinking."

$4.2 billion by 2013 is a very impressive number.

According to T-Mobile Chief Technology and Innovation Officer Cole Brodman, who spoke to Om onstage at our Mobilize 09 conference on Thursday, that’s because Android is the first platform that has lived up to the expectation of an open platform for the industry, one that brings together carriers, cell phone manufacturers and third-party developers. “I don’t see any other platform that is approaching it in the same way,” said Brodman.

Phone companies need to move away from the closed telco mind-set and more towards open, web-based infrastructure, said Brodman. The problem with the traditional closed telco model is that it takes way too long to get innovations to market, said Brodman, adding that, “I love the innovations I’m seeing on the Android platform.” The Android ecosystem is nearing 10,000 applications, he pointed out.

Co-CEO Motorola Dr. Sanjay Jha called Android a platform that would enable Motorola to innovate and solve problems that cell phone users have been facing. The Cliq will be available exclusively for T-Mobile customers later this year and T-Mobile’s Chief Technology Officer, Cole Brodman, who took the stage with Jha, called the Cliq, with its MotoBlur home screen, “the first phone with social skills.

There is no question Apple's wildly successful App Store has consumer appeal, but IT acceptance is another matter. The App Store and other online smartphone storefronts are designed mainly for consumers to download free and paid applications ranging from entertainment to education and productivity.

Enter Ondeego, which says it's come up with an enterprise-friendly App Store alternative. The company, a developer of mobile business applications, is announcing a beta of its cloud-based AppCentral Thursday at the GigaOm Mobilize conference in San Francisco.

Socialtext Mobile works on Apple's iPhone, Research In Motion BlackBerry smartphones and Android smartphones, allowing users to access Socialtext's Twitter-like Signals microblogging tool and browse through users' activities, content and contacts. Users can then access a contact's virtual business card by clicking to e-mail or call the contact from their smartphone.

Socialtext Mobile also lets users access their Socialtext Workspaces, or their wiki pages, blog posts and spreadsheets, Socialtext founder and Chairman Ross Mayfield told eWEEK. The app is only in beta and won't yet work on the Palm Pre or other smartphones.

T-Mobile added added another Android phone to its roster, but this time, it's Motorola-made. At GigaOM's Mobilize conference in San Francisco, Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha introduced the Motorola Cliq, the first device to run the MOTOBLUR overlay (A.K.A. a customized user interface). The Cliq will be available during the holiday season, but pricing has not been announced.

The report shows that the mobile video audience jumped 70%, while time spent watching online video increased 46%, or by 59 minutes over the same period in 2008, MarketingCharts reports.