The 50 most innovative mobile apps in the world

We round em up. You write in indignantly.

1. Google Voice

The app so potentially disruptive to mobile industry economics, Apple wouldn't let it onto the App Store. Google Voice gives people their own 'Google number', complete with voicemail, that they can route to any device they like at any time. It also transcribes voicemails. Great for anyone with lots of phones who wants to tie them to a single number, but pretty worrying for the mobile operators. Google Voice is still something of a niche, being most popular among the more hardcore Android users in the US. This will change in 2010.

2. Spotify

Much of the hype around Spotify has been based on fact: its excellent user experience on both desktop and mobile. When it launched for iPhone and Android, Spotify's app wasn't the first streaming music application. However, it was the first to use 'caching' technology to let users save their playlists for offline listening. At a stroke, it addressed the biggest criticism of these apps: 'what happens when you're on the tube or plane?' Its rivals are now scrambling to offer similar features in their own apps.

3. Foursquare

Is Foursquare a social networking app? A location-based service? A game? It's all three. It revolves around users 'checking in' to bars, restaurants, nightclubs and other public spaces, letting their friends know what they're up to but also earning points and achievement badges. It's recently expanded beyond its initial list of cities to let people add venues and check in anywhere, and is now seeing a check-in every second. All it has to do now is find an effective way to make money out of all this...



4. Pocket God

The games industry has been banging on about episodic content for years, without ever really nailing the idea. Pocket God managed it in a matter of months on iPhone. On the surface, it's a simple-yet-fun god game set on an island, yet by delivering (more or less) weekly updates with new features and content, it built a ferociously loyal audience and remained at the top of the App Store charts. More recently, it was one of the first iPhone games to succeed with in-app payments too.

5. Layar Reality Browser

Expect to hear a lot of excited talk about augmented reality at Mobile World Congress, even if opinions vary greatly about a.) what it's for, and b.) what the business model is. Layar is the most intriguing mobile AR app, thanks to its structure. Developers are encouraged to create 'layers' - from gig listings to house prices to Beatles magical mystery tours - making it a platform for rapid, creative innovation. Its most recent iPhone update suffered from bugs, but in 2010 Layar could do great things.

6. Eliminate Pro

When Apple removed its restriction on allowing free apps to use in-app payments, the games industry wondered who'd be first to make the 'freemium' plunge. It turned out to be ngmoco with Eliminate Pro. It's a visually impressive online first-person shooter - a genre previously restricted to console and PC - but the innovation is in its business model. The game is free, but funded by payments for energy packs, which are required to level up your character. Did it work? We don't know yet, but it was important to try.

7. Google Maps Navigation

How big a deal was Google Maps for Navigation's announcement late last year? Ask the GPS navigation companies whose share prices plunged in the aftermath. In a nutshell, Google Maps Navigation marries mapping with navigation and voice search. Crucially, it does it for free, undercutting the premium pricing structure of its established rivals. Restricted to Android 2.0 handsets and above, for the moment it's niche. But like Google Voice, this app will have a huge impact in the year ahead.



8. Firefox Mobile

Just to make your head spin, number eight is a mobile browser whose innovation is that it might help the industry to focus less on apps in the coming years. Mozilla's Firefox Mobile is currently only available for the Nokia N900, but it's shown that it could have a significant impact as it spreads to other devices. It can sync bookmarks and other data with the desktop version, allows developers to create add-ons for extra functionality, and handles multimedia content without a fuss.

9. Tweetdeck

There are many mobile Twitter apps, with new features being launched every week, so ordering them by innovation is a hiding to nothing. Even so, Tweetdeck looks well set. It has all the power features, including the ability to manage multiple accounts, create groups, browse Twitter lists and geo-tag tweets. But so do its rivals. What made us place this higher was its synchronisation with the desktop version of Tweetdeck: an example of proper cross-platform design.



10. The Guardian

It'd be easy enough to take a newspaper website's RSS feed and whack a nice app UI around it, then boast about your iPhone-straddling zeitgeistiness. However, the Guardian took its time, and came up with an app that shows a more interactive and relevant way to go mobile. Users can customise the homescreen, mark their favourite sections and/or journalists, and specify which bits they want to read offline. Podcasts ensure it's not just text and pics too. An example to its rivals.



11. Gowalla

One of Foursquare's main rivals, Gowalla offers a similar mix of checking in and game-like aspects, complete with virtual items.



12. Facebook

By far the most polished social app on iPhone, while its BlackBerry incarnation makes excellent use of the device's push capabilities.



13. Tap Tap Revenge 3

iPhone's premier music game, which has switched to a freemium business model and sold more than a million in-app track downloads.



14. Shazam Encore

It's been around for years, but Shazam caught fire on iPhone and other platforms in the last 18 months, with regular new features.



15. ShopSavvy

Barcode scanner apps are all the rage, but ShopSavvy was one of the first to popularise the idea, on Android.



16. Buzzd ...