An application provider may impose terms on your use of their application.

As the distinction between network operators and application providers continues to blur at an eye-popping rate, how will the government be able to keep up?

The service enables application providers to work more deeply with advertising agencies and brands to further monetize their app platforms.

These are sometimes used to gain a commercial advantage over third-party software by providing additional information or better performance to the application provider.

This payload is digitally signed using the private key of the application provider.

By signing up with an application provider, "we've eliminated having to spend a lot of cash upfront," Mr. Golden said.

And by the end of 2004, according to Cahners In-Stat's forecast, more than three million small businesses will be using application providers.

Small businesses typically look at application providers as a way to "take away all the pain," of computing services, Mr. Kieffer said.

Meanwhile, big corporate computing departments are also rushing to strike deals with application providers to shed at least some of their applications.

Because of that confidence, they are willing to make the offerings of application providers available to more employees.