Application and technology developers rely on old-fashioned marketing strategies, such as convincing an operator to market their product or buying television ads, not by choice but by necessity, said Dan Shapiro, CEO of Ontela. It would be better to hope for the same kind of viral marketing that has driven the major success stories of the Internet, he said.

On the Internet, sites such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace grew so big so quickly based on word of mouth, he said. People told their friends about the sites, and those people told their friends, who immediately could use the sites on their computers. Growth didn't depend on huge traditional marketing programs, he said.

But that kind of viral marketing doesn’t work in mobile. “We do not succeed or fail by building brilliant services that people tell their friends about,” he said.

He blames technology fragmentation. A mobile application can’t go viral if most people don’t have the systems that the application was written for, he said. For example, if an Android user tells a friend who uses Windows Mobile about an application, chances are the app won't be available to the Windows Mobile user.

Shapiro pointed to some other reasons why viral marketing doesn't work in mobile. If a person wanted to tell friends about a new mobile application, that person would find that 65 percent of their friends didn’t have a data plan and so might not be able to use the app. In addition, 75 percent of the friends wouldn't be on the same operator, and if the service were specific to the carrier, those friends couldn’t use the app. If the application were an iPhone app, 98 percent of the person’s friends wouldn’t be able to use it because those friends wouldn’t have an iPhone.