In the era of smartphones, telecomm has become so much more than just a landline, and entire industries that rely on mobile and broadband communication for business are springing up nationwide.  The Wall Street Journal points to the development of mobile applications as just one such example:

Despite the recession, hundreds of start-ups have sprung up in the area since Apple Inc. launched the iPhone two years ago and opened up the device so third-party developers could create games and other software applications for it.

The app industry in the San Francisco Bay Area is thriving, and while the iPhone is popular, competitors are ramping up for the challenge:

The popularity of the iPhone App Store had led its competitors to provide similar offerings. Research In Motion Ltd., Google Inc. and Palm Inc. have opened similar stores and have been trying to woo app developers with promises of better support. Though the costs of developing applications for all the devices are prohibitive to many of the smaller developers, some companies, like Flixster, a San Francisco-based movie sharing social network, have created apps for all of them.

San Francisco may have never guessed that five years ago it would be the development of mobile phone apps that would spur economic growth and job creation.  We can’t predict the industry of the future, but encouraging investment in broadband deployment and infrastructure growth should be top priority not only for the industries of tomorrow, but for the thousands of businesses and companies spanning from IT to financial services to graphic design that exist today, and depend on high-speed Internet and a robust communications network to run more efficiently and effectively.

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