Research firm Gartner highlighted the importance of apps as a tool to increase smartphone customer loyalty, as part of its analysis of the device market in the first quarter of 2011. In a statement, Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst for the company, noted: “Every time a user downloads a native app to their smartphone or puts their data into a platform’s cloud service, they are committing to a particular ecosystem and reducing the chances of switching to a new platform. This is a clear advantage for the current....