The mobile applications market represents a great outpouring of creativity thanks to the inventiveness of developers and the inspiration that the Apple iPhone and Android smartphones engendered. But I wonder if we’ll still be buying mobile applications 10 years from now. Will web services, cloud computing and faster wireless connections render mobile apps obsolete?

Compare your smart phone use to your PC experience. How many PC applications do you buy today? How many did you buy when you first got a PC? When we got our first PC, we invested in lots of applications from games and utilities, to tax preparation and personal productivity software. Today, most of what we need is available as a web service. The biggest buyers of PC software today are corporations but even these organizations are increasingly moving to web services. They’re cheaper and don’t require the endless maintenance that PC and server-based applications demand.

Market research indicates that games, weather and navigation software are the most popular mobile applications. And most smart phone users prefer mobile apps to browser-based services. But not all mobile apps are created equally. There’s lots of buggy software out there. The Android Market and iPhone App Store display the maturity of apps along with user reviews.

Researchers also indicate that the average smart phone customer uses only about 10 apps on a regular basis. I download apps every week and if they don’t grab me immediately, I tend to uninstall them. Buggy apps that deliver an error message upon start-up are also tossed. 

I’d argue that few apps really take advantage of the mobile nature of the smart phone. One early iPhone app that really lived up to the promise of convenience that comes with the smart phone is the Zip Car app. Zip Car is a short-term car rental service that’s popular in urban areas like New York, Boston and San Francisco among others. The app, which is now also available for Android devices, lets you make a reservation from your phone, find a car in your area, beep the horn to locate it and unlock the door. Fantastic!

I’d hazard a guess that mobile apps are largely responsible for the rapid shift from feature phones to smart phones. The latest research indicates that 40% of mobile phone customers in the U.S. use smart phones and that’s likely to accelerate as smart phone competition heats up, prices come down, and the viral effect of having the latest style icons takes hold.

But I’ve no doubt that some disruptive innovation is percolating in some entrepreneurs imagination that will entice us to change the way we do things and abandon those things we’ve become too accustomed to. Perhaps mobile apps will become a casualty of the next technology disruption.

The U.S. Department of Justice filed suit today against AT&T in it’s $39 billion bid to acquire competing wireless carrier T-Mobile USA. Today’s DOJ press release states: “AT&T’s elimination of T-Mobile as an independent, low-priced rival would remove a significant competitive force from the market.”

The DOJ’s action and reasoning is hardly surprising given that it took similar steps 30 years ago to break up the then regulated monopoly AT&T. At the time, the federal government thought that AT&T had gotten too powerful and was stifling innovation. The feds felt that the regulated monopoly they had sanctioned for nearly a century had served its purpose of bringing universal voice communications to consumers throughout the country. In retrospect, the DOJs actions made perfect sense and turned out to be a good move for consumers.

I’m not so sure I can say the same about today’s legal action. The communications landscape is far different today than it was in 1982 when the AT&T divestiture was announced. The communications sector is thriving with innovation and competition that goes far beyond the radio-based communications services that AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon and Sprint offer consumers.

As the bulk of consumer communications shift from voice to data communications, smartphone, PC and tablet users employ WiFi as an alternative to wireless radio communications. WiFi networks are a pervasive means for consumers to exchange email, instant messages, social network posts, and a myriad of other types of person-to-person and group communications. Consumers use the Internet and voice over IP software such as Skype to make voice calls around the world for the cost of their home Internet service, which in the majority of cases is provided by their cable TV providers.

Another market reality that the DOJ’s actions fail to take into account is that T-Mobile’s parent company Deutsche Telecom no longer wants to be in the U.S. wireless market, fully aware that the wireless business is a maturing and contracting industry. In most mature markets, you find two dominant players and a third, less dominant contender, which in this case is Sprint.

I think the DOJ’s actions are themselves anti-competitive. Let the market decide if this merger is good for consumers. If AT&T’s customers are unhappy with the outcome, they can switch to Verizon or Sprint, And they can use the Internet. Almost all mobile phones give users the option of using a WiFi connection instead of their wireless service. In all likelihood, by the time this legal wrangling is concluded, they’ll be some new communications options for consumers, given the hotbed of innovation the communications industry has become over the past 30 years.

I say “stand down” to the DOJ and let market forces take their course and let consumers vote with their wallets. A lengthy legal battle won’t guarantee that consumers will have more choice; but it will cost taxpayers beaucoup bucks. And that’s something we can scarcely afford in today’s economy.