I use so many Apps, it is difficult to remember my pre-Smartphone life! I use Gmail, Dropbox, Evernote and Google Docs daily as part of my working life; I love Pulse for getting the latest from my favourite feeds, and I’ve been exploiting the 10p Apps on Google. I spent the whole weekend playing Fieldrunners HD – so addictive!

(Obviously, I can’t say “SwiftKey“, right?!) – [you just did!]

Galaxy Nexus – and I love it.

1. dressipi – a personalized fashion/shopping service. I know some of the team there and they are a great bunch. My big tip for 2012!

2. rapportive – this is a tool I discovered a few months ago. As a gmail user for work email, this is just such a great product. I get rich contact email straight away, whether I am the sender or receiver. Very handy indeed when you are always working with large clients and prospects. [I agree, it is my favourite Chrome plugin]

3. WhatsApp – it seems to me that no-one is talking about WhatsApp, but they have a huge volume of messages over their system and most smartphone users I know have WhatsApp. Who needs SMS anymore? For me, this is a great example of frictionless implementation. Stuff that “just works”.

Bringing SwiftKey to the masses! We have had a phenomenal year – the top-selling paid App on Android three times and a great average rating of 4.6. This has really helped our profile and we are generally recognised now as having the leading product in our sector. We have lots of interest in embedding the product with handset makers for 2012.

Things that I will be watching intently are:-

SmartTV: Apple and Google seem to be really investing here, plus Vizio, Samsung, LG et al seem to be doing interesting things – are we due a living-room revolution?

mHealth: we have started looking at this sector and am sure some really interesting products and advancements will be made in 2012

the potential emergence of a Third Mobile OS. This year has seen MeeGo, Symbian (remember that?) and WebOs fall by the wayside. I think there must be a third challenger to the iOS-Android axis: will it be BB10, Windows Phone, Tizen or something else?

Aside from you, James? Well I’m going to pick one mainstream pick and name two future rockstars. If picking music rockstars, you don’t go for “U2 and Bon Jovi” do you? You pick the obscurer names that you think will be big in the future!

- Jeff Bezos at Amazon. Think about the perception of Amazon 3-4 years ago: an online bookseller. Now where are they? Well, they are outselling iPads at Best Buy with the Kindle Fire, they have a number of excellent cloud services and a huge consumer base who regularly go there to buy the latest content – for download or physical media. It all ties up into a really interesting end-to-end ecosystem. I don’t know how it is going to pan out, but Amazon are an incredibly disruptive force for mobile.

- Frederick Cheung, an ex-colleague of mine who is now CTO at dressipi. The best techie I have ever worked with, coupling ninja coding skills with a real appreciation for the business side of things. A rarity indeed!

- Finally, Joe Braidwood, our very own CMO. As mad as a box of frogs, but a touch of genius there. Watch out world, Joe is coming! (Hopefully he will hire me one day now I’ve said that.)

I joined a Cambridge-based billling software company called Geneva Technology Ltd. They had just been acquired by Convergys, a large US billing software company. I was thrown into the Product Management team with super-smart Cambridge grads left, right and centre. It was a fantastic environment to learn the Product Management ropes (I was one year out of Uni, so fresh faced and thought I knew it all already!). I still have some great friends from those days.

I am lucky enough to have had a number of great bosses. Most memorably, I worked for Sarah McVittie at Texperts, and it was a great experience. Quite a topsy-turvy ride – my first start-up and “cash strapped” doesn’t do the experience justice. Sarah’s endless enthusiasm and energy was a fantastic pick-me-up when things got really tough!

Sarah McVittie (@sarah_mcvittie) always has something interesting to say! She is now co-founder/CEO of dressipi.