According to the report, there are now roughly 466,000 jobs in the so-called “App Economy” in the United States. That’s a dramatic improvement over 2007, when that number was… well, zero.

TechNet also found that these App Economy jobs are spread throughout the nation. The top metro area for App Economy jobs is New York City and its surrounding suburban counties, although together San Francisco and San Jose together substantially exceed New York.

“America’s App Economy – which had zero jobs just 5 years ago before the iPhone was introduced – demonstrates that we can quickly create economic value and jobs through cutting-edge innovation,” said Rey Ramsey, President and CEO of TechNet. “Today, the App Economy is creating jobs in every part of America, employing hundreds of thousands of U.S. workers today and even more in the years to come.”

“The App Economy, along with the broad communications sector, has been a leading source of hiring strength in an otherwise sluggish labor market,” said Dr. Michael Mandel, the report’s author and President of South Mountain Economics and former Chief Economist for BusinessWeek.

To read the full report, click here.

Along with the growth of sales receipts is the growth of the App Store’s offerings. As of this writing, more than 18 billion downloads have been initiated through the App Store. And that number stands to compound exponentially in the months ahead as refreshed iOS-powered devices roll out.

Industry analysts believe the iPad 3 will arrive within 60 days, bringing with it a likely surge in app purchases.

Although Google Chairman Eric Schmidt predicted last month that mobile developers will soon make Android apps a higher priority than iOS apps, it’s doubtful that Android will wholly trump Apple as iOS continues to be the most lucrative and high profile operating system to develop for in the entire mobile space.

That said, it could come as a significant blow to Apple that a growing number of mobile application developers are favoring the Android platform over iOS.

Based on the findings of Ovum’s second annual developer survey, the independent technology analyst reveals that Android looks set to replace Apple’s iOS in terms of importance to developers within the next 12 months.

However, the report adds, “despite a clear vie for ultimate supremacy between these two platforms, almost all developers support both.”

The research also shows a move away from traditional cross-platform mobile application development approaches (e.g. Java, Flash, WAP). Instead, developers are focusing their efforts on web-based standards (e.g. HTML5), which seem to be the preferred approach to building cross-platform applications.

“A smartphone platform’s success is dictated not only by the pull of consumers and the push of handset vendors and mobile operators but also by a healthy economy of applications delivered by third-party developers. Therefore, it is important for all players in the smartphone ecosystem to understand the choices developers are making today and the downstream impact of those choices,” say Adam Leach, devices & platforms practice leader at Ovum and author of the research.

According to the latest information and analysis provided Tuesday from IHS Screen Digest, the best way to make money in the smartphone apps market is to give the apps away for free-and and then generate revenue on subsequent sales of in-app purchases.

The new projections published today from IHS show that in-app purchases will rise to account for 64 percent of total market revenue in 2015, up from 39 percent in 2011.

Revenue from in-app purchases will increase to $5.6 billion in 2015, up from $970 million in 2011, according to the IHS Screen Digest Mobile Media Intelligence Service.

“Smartphone users overwhelmingly prefer free apps to paid apps, as we estimate 96 percent of all smartphone apps were downloaded for free in 2011,” noted Jack Kent, senior analyst, mobile media for IHS. “In 2012, it will become increasingly difficult for app stores and developers to justify charging an upfront fee for their products when faced with competition from a plethora of free content. Instead, the apps industry must fully embrace the freemium model and monetize content through in-app purchases.”

IHS Screen Digest calculates that 68 percent of the top-grossing U.S. applications featured some form of additional content or functionality available via an in-app purchase.

Do you have as much faith in the business model of in-app purchases as all the analysts and mobile experts do? Please weigh in with a thought or comment below.

“Today I’m thrilled to announce the beta launch of Android Training — a collection of classes that we hope will help you to build better Android apps,” writes Reto Meier, Android Developer Relations Tech Lead, on the Android Developer’s Blog.

From designing effective navigation, to managing audio playback, to optimizing battery life, these classes are designed to demonstrate best practices for solving common Android development problems.

“Each class,” Meier says, “explains the steps required to solve a problem, or implement a feature, with plenty of code snippets and sample code for you to use within your own apps.”

For now, the initial aims of the Android training program are small, but it is “just the beginning,” Meier says. “Over the coming months we will be increasing the number of classes available, as well as introducing over-arching courses and sample apps to further help your development experience.”

To learn more, click here.

Dubbed “FreeMyApps,” the new solution was designed to help developers and marketers “overcome the notorious advertising challenge of cost-effectively driving download volume and profitable revenue growth of paid apps,” according to a company press release.  The solution works by leveraging what’s called Fiksu’s “Traffic Enrichment Layer,” which enables premium apps the ability to drive traffic, increase purchase rate and heighten word of mouth awareness.

Powered by the same proprietary algorithms of Fiksu for Mobile Apps, FreeMyApps targets and optimizes the best mix of advertising traffic from ad networks and real time bidding exchanges.  Through its Traffic Enrichment Layer, FreeMyApps drives higher conversion rates and volumes of app downloads by enriching the user value through engagement after a click on a banner ad but before presenting a link to download an app from Apple’s App Store.

“FreeMyApps was incubated in Fiksu Research Labs because our clients and the app development community have been searching for a viable alternative for marketing their paid apps,” said Micah Adler, CEO of Fiksu.  “With FreeMyApps, it’s a win for everyone – paid app developers can be profitable at scale without switching to a free or freemium model, free app developers can expand their reach and consumers can get paid apps for free.”

The new solution even includes benefits for consumers, as it provides the ability to access some of the most popular paid app titles for free.  Users can download and launch apps from a menu of free “sponsor apps,” which allows them to earn credits that can be redeemed for paid apps.

Fiksu has already managed to gain the attention of large-scale developers such as the makers of Skyfire, a popular mobile Web browser app for iPhone and Android.  “People who try Skyfire’s paid apps love them and tell their friends, but we are always seeking to grow even faster in cost-effective ways,” said Jeffrey Glueck, CEO of Skyfire. “We are excited to be a launch partner for FreeMyApps, to reach more users and grow revenue.”

Formerly known as the Omniture Summit, next spring’s event will convene thousands of marketers, advertisers, publishers, agencies and developers across industries “to examine how to better manage, measure and optimize digital experiences.”

On Thursday, Adobe announced that digital marketers, advertising professionals and business leaders can now register for the Adobe Digital Marketing Summit 2012.

According to details made available in a press release hyping the event, Summit 2012 will be hosted at the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City, Utah from March 20-23, 2012.

“Attendees will immerse themselves in up to four days of informative sessions, training workshops and numerous networking opportunities focused on gaining a competitive advantage, deepening customer relationships, harnessing digital content to engage and acquire customers, and extending brand value,” Adobe says.

For more information about registering and pricing click here.

Just six months ago Google announced that it had surpassed 6 billion total downloads, which means it almost doubled that number in only six month’s time.  The company said it took 21 months to reach its first billion downloads.  Recent research from Ovum pegged total mobile app downloads next year at an estimated 18 billion — a sharp increase from the 7.4 billion downloaded in 2010.  Ovum also predicted that a total of 8.1 billion of those apps will be Android.

To celebrate the milestone, Google has decided to offer 10 of its premium apps for only $10 cents a piece.  These apps include SoundHound, Asphalt 6: Adrenaline HD, Minecraft – Pocket Edition, SwiftKey X Keyboard, Endomondo Sports Tracker, Great Little War Game, SketchBook Mobile, Fieldrunners HD, Color & Draw for kids:phone ed and Paper Camera.

According to mobile analytics firm Mobilewalla — Apple, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7 have collectively hit 991,524 apps available in their stores, with the major 1 million app milestone set to be reached within the next week.  This is a significant milestone considering the modern mobile app ecosystem really only got its start in mid 2008.  Further still, the data leaves out apps from platforms such as Symbian, Palm and older Windows mobile apps that would inflate the total even further.  It’s also worth noting that while Android and iOS developers alone have created and submitted more than 1 million apps combined, many of them have been pulled overtime for one reason or another.

Breaking things down a bit further — Apple continues to dominate the market with 59.6 percent, rounding out at 591,428 apps while Android comes in second with 321,020 apps or 32.3 percent of the market according to data from Mobilewalla.  BlackBerry is currently boasting 43,544 apps, good for 4.4 percent of the total, while Windows Phone 7 has 35,248 apps or 3.5 percent.  It’s been reported that Apple’s developers are adding about 1,000 new apps a day while Android developers are uploading about 1,400 a day.

It’s safe to say that 2011 has once again been a breakout year for the mobile app market — just like every year prior for that matter — with the market more than doubling between January 1st and now.  We ended 2010 with roughly 484,000 apps according to Mobilewalla.  The top app categories across all platforms are Entertainment (16.68%), Games (13.36%), Lifestyle (8.02%) and Utilities (7.13%).

The prestigious university is launching a new online class to help students learn to develop applications for Apple’s iOS 5.

Best of all, the course is free. The lectures for learning the basics for coding in iOS 5 can be downloaded at no charge from iTunes U.

The downloadable lectures are described by iTunes U as follows:

• Tools and APIs required to build applications for the iPhone platform using the iPhone SDK.
• User interface designs for mobile devices and unique user interactions using multitouch technologies.
• Object-oriented design using model-view-controller pattern, memory management, Objective-C programming language.
• iPhone APIs and tools including Xcode, Interface Builder and Instruments on Mac OS X.
• Other topics include: core animation, bonjour networking, mobile device power management and performance considerations.

It’s no wonder that Stanford University has expressed a great deal of enthusiasm for iOS 5 and the mobile app community as a whole. After all, late Apple CEO Steve Jobs was a big fan of Stanford and delivered a stirring and memorable commencement address to graduates there back in 2005.