Apple’s App Store has sold 1.5 billion downloads since its launch a year ago.

Mobile applications could continue to rise in popularity and number until they peak at 10 million by 2010, according to app online store, GetJar.com. 

At the MobileBeat conference in San Francisco, mobile “apps” were at the forefront of debate, with many companies commenting on the future of the market.

According to the BBC, GetJar said that apps will become “as big as the internet”, but the developer community will decline drastically as each developer makes less money.

Since it launched its App Store around this time last year, Apple has sold 1.5 billion downloads – it now offers 65,000 apps. Other smartphone manufacturers, such as Blackberry and Nokia, have followed in its footsteps, but may take some time to catch up.

However, organisations such as the Symbian Foundation are moving the industry forward – last week it previewed Symbian Horizon, a break-through application-publishing programme on schedule for general availability in October 2009.

With Symbian Horizon, developers will receive assistance in building applications for Symbian devices and in placing those applications in the stores which reach Symbian customers, and will receive promotional assistance for bringing those applications to end users.

Equally, the GSMA’s OneAPI programme announced in February aims to open up mobile network interfaces to developers to make it easier for software companies to create advanced mobile applications that will run on any operators’ network.

According to the Symbian Foundation, applications will become more personal and practical as their numbers grow. Executive Director, Lee Williams, said: “The App Store is flawed - right now [it] is just a bucket of apps. You need to get beyond that bucket and give the consumer the opportunity to wander down a really relevant aisle of content and applications that they can get access to.

“When this problem is solved, the type of application you will see will be about more than an iBeer drinking app or a candle that flickers in different colours.  The type of application you will see will help enrich your life in some way. It will let you do your image sharing, your social networking and establish presence with your friends, colleagues and family in completely new ways – which is really what mobile applications are all about.”

The Symbian Foundation is an independent, non-profit organisation whose mission is to enable an open ecosystem that collaborates to create the most complete and richest user experiences for mobile devices. Symbian maintains the code for an open source software platform based on Symbian OS and software assets contributed by Nokia, NTT DOCOMO, and Sony Ericsson, including the S60 and MOAP(S) user interfaces.