Social mobile app developers prefer Google’s immense stack of assets over Facebook’s 900 million users, according to a recent IDC/Apcelerator study, drawing a clear depiction that while developers think that there is a big opportunity in the world’s largest social network, they are still not sure how to leverage its social graph and strategies.  Arguably, Apple remains on top of the pile with a recent milestone of its own, but there the impact  of emerging technologies like HTML5, cloud-based services and social networking application development tools are also to be taken seriously.

Along with the proliferation of smartphones and tablets are mobile applications and software that power it all. People are so drawn to apps that developers are now coming up with “apps for every occasion and location.” The money involved in the market is a huge factor, flourishing now more than ever.

Mobiles Republic

With the growing interest of mobile development comes the inevitable expansion of various platforms and tools. For the case of Mobiles Republic, their growth was fueled by their recent $3 million Series A round.  The money will be used to expand their popular news apps including News Republic, APPY Geek and Glam Life globally.

Mobiles Republic CEO, Gilles Raymond shares his excitement and insights on the organization, saying, ’“with this investment, we will be able to accelerate our growth, continue to federate more publishers on top of the 300 that have joined us, and continue our expansion capitalizing on our multilingual semantic engine. We are very pleased to have the support of XAnge Private Equity and Creathor Venture, who believe in our mission to be the worldwide leader in personal media apps on the four screens.”

Investors were impressed with how Mobiles Republic has penetrated markets in both the United States and Europe. They are also thrilled to see how the news app sector will garner more attention in the future, making a personalized play to incorporate more data and social integration.

PlayPhone

California-based PlayPhone is also flexing its muscles for its app developer platform,  revealing technology that will allow fast-action multi-player gaming between players from different platforms and network carriers. This means that gaming across iOS and Android devices, connecting players with random live opponents or computer-managed robots.

Following the announcement, PlayPhone CEO Ron Czerny took pride in pioneering a technology in today’s stiff market competition:

“We consider this a major engineering feat. This is just one part of a multiple layered gaming network. It’s not easy to copy. It is like what Yahoo did for web games in 2000 and what Microsoft did for console games with Xbox Live. This new infrastructure is a major event for mobile game developers.”

The social layer of this multi-player feature will propel more gaming interactions, discovery and even more revenue for the company with its virtual goods ecosystem. This product supports Android, iOS, HTML5, Adobe Air, Unity and soon Windows Phone 7 (Mango). At this point in time, PlayPhone has not crafted a plan to add cross-platform play with PC players. Their focus is on mobile.

HP

A world leader in cloud-based solutions, HP is also interested in simplifying enterprise mobile apps development. Hewlett-Packard launched the Application Transformation Suite—a collection of services and software that will allow developers and teams to collaborate using social media-influenced tools. Also included in the suite are intelligence and management tools for lifecycle development and mobile app testing service with partner Pefecto Mobile.

Matt Morgan, Global Sr. Director of Product and Solution Marketing at HP’s IP solution business unit what prompted them to come up with such suite, saying, “the line of business is becoming more aware of the capabilities, largely through consumerization. They go to the Apple Store and learn about all this stuff and ask, ‘Why can’t I have this?’ So their requirements of their IT shop are evolving.”

HP also feels that this is the perfect time to innovate and change the processes around creating and distributing software.

The interest in mobile development tools remains high and will just continue to mount as mobility engulfs the planet. There are still loads of opportunities that can be explored in this industry. So, until we can fully say that this is just Apple or Android’s world, it is still anybody’s game.