Mobile Phone Applications, Directories and Platforms

I was just reading about Research in Montion and their innovation in Fast Company and about their applicaiton directory in Business Week.

I was also reading about Vodafone in Business Week.

Seems that open platforms and creating application directories are all the rage. All the mobile providers are seeing the success of namely IPhone apps and jumping on the band wagon.

So several thoughts are going through my head. Are mobile apps the next web? When you build a site for your company do you have to build applications for major mobile platforms too?

I am seeing Android being used for webbooks as well as mobile phones. It just seems like there were desktop apps, then there was the web. Now you have to consider IPhone, Blackberry, Android and other top players now when building online / cloud tools for your company.

I am sure this is asking a lot of small businesses who just realized that building for the web is a priority. Seems like the next wave though. Cloud enabled applications that run on any top mobile or web environment.