Enterprise smartphone and media tablet adoption is providing the foundation for enterprise app development and deployment.
Users
of enterprise B2E (business-to-employee) and B2C (business-to-customer)
smartphone and media tablet mobile applications are forecast to grow at a
compound annual growth rate of nearly 90 percent and exceed 830 million active
users by 2016, according to a report from IT analytics firm ABI Research. These
numbers include such B2E apps as line-of-business apps and B2C, branded company
apps. In both cases, enterprises are leveraging their vast stores of corporate
data to make employees more efficient and to foster greater customer intimacy,
the report noted.
Enterprise
smartphone and media tablet adoption is providing the foundation for enterprise
app development and deployment. But, according to enterprise practice director
Dan Shey, mobile suppliers are providing the critical enablers boosting app
adoption.
Shey
said there are two important supply-side drivers.
"First,
the supplier market offering mobile application platforms has exploded. With
these platforms, an app can be written once and deployed across multiple
devices in the highly fragmented smartphone and tablet supplier market," he
noted. "Many platforms also provide management and system integration
capabilities, and are highly cost-effective."
Second,
Shey noted many mobile application and app platform providers now offer cloud
services as a component of the application or app platform. He said this
reduces the investment for businesses, opening up the market for smaller
organizations.
The
majority of users are B2C customers, with a large share from branded banking,
airline and shopping apps. But according to Shey, active B2C customers could be
a much larger group than they are. "There is no reason why most businesses
could not offer B2C smartphone or tablet apps to their customers, regardless of
business size," he explained. "The challenge for mobile suppliers will be to
promote and facilitate application development for all businesses with the
opportunity to generate greater app service and management revenues."
The
report, "Mobile Enterprise Applications for Smartphones and Media Tablets,"
provides a quantitative, review of the enterprise mobile application market for
smartphones and media tablets. Particular emphasis is placed on dissection of
the technology drivers and the opportunities and challenges for nine segments
of the mobile supply chain. Included are B2E and B2C app customer and service
revenue forecasts segmented for seven world regions and by device type as well
as 2010 industry B2E app estimates.
Nathan Eddy is Associate Editor, Midmarket, at eWEEK.com. Before joining eWEEK.com, Nate was a writer with ChannelWeb and he served as an editor at FierceMarkets. He is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
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