Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/29/mobile_apps_market_readiness/
One day my mobile apps prince will come
Soon, soon, soon
Posted in Mobile, 29th October 2007 07:02 GMT
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Mobile Business Expo The mobile applications market is poised to take off with the emergence of devices like the iPhone, faster wireless networks and web services - but independent software vendors (ISVs) are asleep at the wheel.
That was the consensus of a panel of Motorola, BlackBerry and AT&T executives at the Mobile Business Expo in New York last week. There are few off-the-shelf, plug-and play mobile applications to be had, they said.
But Apple's iPhone SDK (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/17/iphone_sdk/) (software development kit), speedier Wireless-N networks, and mashup craze will speed up the process. Few expect the iPhone will be widely used by enterprise businesses, but pervasive use by consumers will force all devices manufacturers to improve their displays and platform vendors to create better tools for developers.
"The iPhone is cool but it's not the device you should be using in an enterprise environment. When it comes to mobile business applications such as enterprise asset management, sales force automation and federated IM, the iPhone can get you into trouble," said Cindy Zanelli, executive bizdev director at AT&T. "But consumer applications and devices will bleed into the enterprise space and force change."
Michael Saitow is the mobile-savvy CIO of M.S. Walker, a Somerville, Mass. wine and spirits importer, who has deployed sales force automation, point-of-sale, field service, mail and warehouse management applications on Palm devices, rugged Symbol handhelds and, more recently, on HTC mobile devices running Windows Mobile 6, Mobile Exchange and Pocket Advantage.
He came to Mobile Business Expo in New York because he wants to move beyond those traditional applications and deploy a direct store delivery application. But he can't find a mobile Windows application.
Scary process
"SFA, POS, mail and warehouse management is easy, but this application is hard to come by," Saitow said after the panel, noting that none of his suppliers or competitors are taking the plunge because change management is very important. "It's a scary process and no-one is doing it."
The technology pieces are in place. But the same challenges that stalled adoption in the past persist: uncertainty about how to manage mobile data and devices; who should sell and service mobile applications' and which platform will be the standard.
"We're seeing some maturing of mobile applications but the overall ecosystem is trying to figure out the business equation," said David Heit, a director in the enterprise software group at Research in Motion, maker of the BlackBerry. "Carriers want to target SMBs and they have to rely on VARs and resellers."
"It's spotty at best," said Phillippe Winthrop, an analyst at Aberdeen Group. "Mobile messaging is pervasive but the question of how to take back end applications and leverage the client is a challenge."
But the mobile applications market may be moving out of idling. Microsoft and IBM are said to be developing in their labs homegrown off-the-shelf mobile applications and services.
Microsoft's new Unified Communications application platform (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/17/microsoft_announces_unified_communications_software/) can be used by developers to build VoIP applications on dual-mode smartphones. And on the device side, a growing number of handheld devices have built-in GPS, and this is beginning to drive a new crop of location- based mobile applications.
Some ISVs who provide tools for building mobile applications say there's a lot going on in the background.
Sanjay Shirole is president and CEO of a mobile ISV called Xora, which has tens of thousands of SMB (small and medium business) customers. A few large enterprises are beginning to adopt his location-based application. He has sold his software to the largest beverage distributor in the world and recently inked a deal with the City of Chicago to track the location of 3,000 workers.
"Web 2.0 is eliminating the barrier to entry for customers from a financial and maintenance standpoint," he said, expressing relief that his application was not responsible for the New York City taxi strike (http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN2246131020071022) that slowed down Interop travelers on Monday. "The cost has come down substantially with the software-as-a-service on demand model because customers don't have to have anything installed on premise."
And he believes fear about Big Brother will subside as workforces are educated about the benefits of such mobile application.
Timothy Jasionowski, a senior technologist in Nokia's Enterprise Solutions, says insurance companies and real estate firms are beginning to integrate location-based services with established business processes. This helps to speed up claims and automate the process of listing and removing properties on the MLS. Shipping companies with large warehouses are using RFID tags and VoIP on their PDAs to get rid of mobile phones, he added.
Some customers might be waiting for the inevitable shake-out among platform vendors, but that should have no bearing on ISVs - because the standards for tools are there today. He predicts there will soon be a list of devices that support mobile Java, HTML and Ajax so that applications can be more broadly deployed across corporations.
Monster Mash
"When you get to the point where you can build an application and get it to run on several devices, that's when you'll see enterprises paying for mobile applications," said Jasionowski.
"There are a lot of opportunities to take navigation and location-based services and mash it up with other business processes."
One executive at Motorola said there is common misperception that web-based applications can be easily ported to smaller devices. This simply ain't so. Unique requirements and usage scenarios and unique constraints – such as display size – requires innovative new applications.
Apple's toolkit is good for the Macintosh environment yet it's likely to bump other manufacturers and platform providers into action on the ISV front. "It's a pretty cool device SDK for building web-based applications for Safari but that won't cut it for the enterprise, said Ben Wesson, a senior director of product management at Dexterra.
It's not clear why ISVs are dragging their feet because demand is there. The majority of business execs would love to fire up their handheld and get inventory updates – without lengthy PC bootup times and 20-click journey to the right data, one Mobile Expo attendee said.
"We have a long way to go, especially from the handheld, applications are sorely lacking," said Greg Bentham, an information architect at EDS who was at the conference. "I don't think people are raising enough hell about it." ®