There's a rush in the mobile applications market. The market will reach 17.7 billion downloads in 2011, a 117% increase from an estimated 8.2 billion downloads in 2010.

Worldwide mobile application store revenue is projected to surpass US$15.1 billion in 2011, both from end users buying applications and applications themselves generating advertising revenue for their developers. This is a 190% increase from 2010 revenue of $5.2 billion, according to the Garter research group.

This rapid growth is driven by the concept of instant access to web browsing, email, document viewing, messaging etc. Everything on the fly. Welcome to Generation Facebook.

This growth is bringing with it a massive challenge of releasing stable apps that are robust when accessed from multiple mobile devices, across global telecom networks and locations. If you add multiple releases to this rich Internet applications (RIA) whether they're HTML5/Flash, developers have on their hands a complex, time consuming, costly problem. The objective is “reduce time to market” for these apps.

The Apple app store, Android Market, Nokia's Ovi Store, Research In Motion's (RIM's) App World, Microsoft Marketplace and Samsung Apps are the technology supermarkets of the world. Testing of this app and devices needs to be robust for companies to maintain the completive edge.

eggPlant delivers a robotic solution to user interface testing across all mobile operating systems and devices. Using RealVNC, generic VNC or emulators, eggPlant deploys patented intelligent image recognition technology to “see” any device display. This approach to test automation is easy to use, non-invasive and requires no special hardware. You can test the actual physical device across platforms, operators, and locations.

The eggPlant Mobile Testing Solution ( http://www.testplant.com/mobile/mwc) is a robotic test tool for GUI [graphical user interface] testing used by many software companies, by defence, security and aerospace organisations and by global media broadcasters and on-line entertainment businesses. The mobile testing solution extends eggPlant's reach into software running on smartphones and tablets across the major mobile operating systems. The launch is in partnership with RealVNC (http://www.realvnc.com), the original developer and provider of VNCtechnology used by millions of computer users around the world.

eggPlant uses RealVNC's VNC Mobile Solution to connect directly to a device. A true user experience test is created as eggPlant is capable of recognising icons, colors, text and fields on any display. A test script is automatically generated as eggPlant is trained to move around an app using its image store to spot and compare display prompts. Multiple tests become effortless and eggPlant reports test failures with helpful screen images of the exact point of failure. An automated test script can be created on one device (or emulator) to be repeated many times on other devices.