- Adweek Staff

NEW YORK Applications of every sort have become ubiquitous in the mobile space.

On the heels of Apple's success with the App Store, unveiled in July 2008, other device manufacturers and operating system providers, including BlackBerry and the Android platform championed by Google, opened their own virtual storefronts. Still others are readying for launch later this year, all hoping to take a bite out of Apple.

eMarketer projects that mobile Internet access, through either traditional browsers or installed applications, will see significant gains over the next five years, reaching 134.3 million mobile Internet users in 2013.

For many marketers, mobile applications constitute an increasingly necessary avenue for reaching and engaging with their customers, whether by building a proprietary application or sponsoring a third-party effort.

In both cases, the essential challenge remains: to understand consumer behavior and craft experiences that resonate with a target audience and integrate with other channels.