It seems that “attenuation” is the mobile buzz-word of the week.  In a press conference last Friday, Steve Jobs addressed the minor crisis that this word has presented for Apple and (as Jobs was quick to point out), more broadly for all mobile device manufacturers.  Besides Jobs’ announcement that Apple will give attenuation-combating bumpers to all iPhone 4 buyers through September (and/or refund all bumper purchases made since the phone’s release), Apple’s new “Smartphone antenna performance” page highlights just how common the Smartphone flaw is.  The page features demonstrations of “attenuation” on Apple’s own iPhone, as well as other popular mobile devices including the BlackBerry Bold 970, the HTC Droid Eris, and the Samsung Omnia II.  This reaction is surprising, given that Apple is not known for yielding to consumer complaints, and especially not for acknowledging engineering flaws in their product-lines.

But maybe Apple’s acknowledgment represents the first step towards improving the functionality of Smartphone devices and, ultimately, towards refining users’ mobile experience.   At any rate, criticisms like those against the iPhone 4 indicate that mobile innovation still has some way to come before the user experience is flawless.

For example, as rigorous as the process for getting accepted to Apple’s app store is, spend even a few minutes browsing through the store checking out various featured apps and you can’t help but notice all the reviews for apps that are “buggy” or fail from a usability standpoint.

But Apple is by no means alone when it comes to these QA issues.

The expansive Android app store, favorite of some, who praise it for being open and nonrestrictive—therefore giving developers more freedom—is certainly not immune to such unfavorable charges.

In fact, the problems are so pervasive that Fast Company recently ran an article pointing to two major issues that detract from Android’s app store: the low, sub-standard quality of apps accepted to the store, and the rampancy of malware and spam apps, some of which are dangerous to Android users.

Worse yet, is that (thus far) Google has done little to address these issues.

So, was Job’s press conference concession last Friday a sign that the standard of the mobile experience is on the rise? Or was it just a reactive gesture to counter the negative press Apple received from Consumer Reports?

At this point, it’s hard to say for sure.

But with the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) predicting another year of sky-rocketing growth for the mobile web (and in turn, mobile devices) it’s very likely that issues like these will be ironed out—at least to some extent.  While we aren’t predicting Mobile 2.0, we are hoping that as mobile technology progresses so will the standards and expectations of users and developers alike.