Fast forward to this year. You've got the must-have iPhone. For open source fans, there's the Android phone. The idea of shopping for, buying and downloading new apps isn't remotely unusual. Browsing online means seeing Web sites that look just like they do on a computer.

It's the ultimate dream of the mobile phone industry, but it wasn't created by the mobile phone industry -- the dream was actualized by outsiders. The result is that today, the traditional phone makers are playing catch-up and some are in such a struggle to do so that their future existence is uncertain.

What the traditional phone makers must view as a double whammy -- competition from the iPhone combined with the economic nose-dive -- end users are finding translates into better phones with more applications.

Apple's introduction of the App Store this year dramatically changed the way the people use their phones. While in the past users rarely downloaded applications to their phones, now the experience is easy enough to go mainstream. That's good news for users of essentially all smart phones, who can expect to see a steady stream of new applications in the future.

In addition to ease-of-use for end users, the App Store also has made it dramatically easier for developers to build applications. As a result there are now 10,000 apps in the store, a figure disproportionately high for the number of iPhones on the market, compared to other phone platforms.