In fact, developers have found ways to profit off of their applications by selling them
. Others prefer to offer their contributions for free which is quite similar on how ordinary developers share their freeware applications. These free phone apps should be your first picks since some applications are well-written enough to rival their commercial counterparts. All it takes is for you to find these free phone apps so you can increase your phone's functionality without spending a single cent.
Official Digital Distribution Platforms
2008 marked the beginning of official digital distribution platforms when Apple launched their App Store for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and recently released iPad. Apple's competitors including Google and RIM followed with their own similarities offering applications of their own. These services work by letting developers submit an application while the company is in charge of approving them. It is up to the developer to set the price or offer it for free so you should check these platforms of updates. Look for an option to filter the list so only the free applications show up because these sites often promote the best paid applications.
Blogs
Every application has one or more developers that are involved with the coding and design of the application. These people do their own promoting of their free phone apps and they usually do it by posting in blogs to make it easy to post updates and get people subscribed. Other sites may blog about a number of free applications coming from different developers just give these talented developers more recognition on how they are contributing greatly by offering free things. With mobile advertising becoming more popular, it is expected for more people to offer applications for free that are backed up by advertising.
Videos and Podcasts
With the prices of faster Internet connections going down, more people can now stream content online and podcasters are taking note by offering more visuals and longer lengths. They can talk about all sorts of topics including mobile topics just to further promote these applications. Many of the latest smartphones even allow such multimedia content to be accessed from the phone allowing more free applications to be easily discovered.
Don't forget that there are various other online catalogs that may offer a number of free phone apps. Many of these third-party services have existed way back even before the App Store was introduced. Many of these sites continue to function and will update every now and then to serve mobile users.