Why mobile apps are not just for consumers anymore

In Hong Kong mobile phone penetration is currently 213% and smart phone penetration is 61%, the second highest in the world^1.

Mobile apps are one of the main reasons smart phone are becoming so popular. According to a recent research by IPSOS Hong Kong, 71% of smartphone owners in Hong Kong use social media apps on their phones, followed by game apps at 46%, and news related apps at 43%².

In fact, mobile apps have become a rapidly growing trend worldwide. With over 775,000 apps on the Apple App Store and over 700,000 apps in the Android Market, consumers have gone crazy for downloadable mobile applications.

And while over 1 billion people have downloaded Angry Birds, the mobile app market is not just for fun and games. Established enterprise players like Cisco and Citrix are quickly embracing the app model to deliver mobile versions of their products, while hot newcomers like Box.net and Dropbox are combining the power of cloud computing and mobility to drive rapid adoption of their business and personal productivity solutions.

Meanwhile, companies themselves are developing apps, initially for their end customers, but increasingly for their employees and business partners to access corporate applications, collaboration tools, intranets, and messaging.

The trifecta of advanced mobile devices, Web-accessible enterprise and cloud applications, and the rapid uptake of downloadable apps is turning virtually every user-owned smartphone and tablet into a “business” device – with or without the CIO’s active involvement.

Because employees are likely to own their own smartphones and have become familiar with apps for personal reasons, they are eager to use them for work-related tasks above and beyond email. And the surge in corporate iPad deployments, with their larger screen size more suited to enterprise tasks, will only accelerate the “there is a business app for that” trend.

Enterprise collaboration – sharing documents, project management, instant messaging etc. – will be especially popular via apps downloaded to mobile devices.

As an article titled “Mobile App Innovation Inspires Enterprise Collaboration” points out, “mobile apps are becoming more effective than the mobile web because they allow users to complete tasks without confusion and interruption. As companies shift towards a mobile workforce, the use of apps will become an integral part of the workflow, and as a result will facilitate better collaboration.”

IT managers know their employees and partners want mobile apps that deliver access to corporate applications, and they are actively implementing mobile apps for that purpose.

Ovum’s recent report revealed that “bring you own device” (BYOD) is becoming very popular among MNCs in Asia-Pacific with over 70 percent of the surveyed companies already having policies to support approved employee-owned devices³.

This is not surprising when you consider the productivity benefits of an always-connected workforce. Companies embracing widespread mobility are also more responsive and competitive because they can share critical information more widely and rapidly than their less-connected rivals.

However, enterprise-focused mobile apps also present complex IT management challenges – from supporting and training employees on app usage, to managing a diverse array of enterprise apps and unifying them with cloud services, to securing corporate data downloaded to mobile devices via apps.

“Supporting the plethora of apps and platforms will stretch already taxed budgets”, said a recent report from Forrester Research, titled Mobile App Internet Recasts The Software and Services Landscape.

“Given the rate of innovation at both the application and device/operating system level, each platform IT chooses to support will likely require three to four releases per year. This rate of speed will tax a whole range of IT processes from project management to release management and testing.”

Employees have made mobile devices and apps an integral part of their personal lives, and they’re now insisting on using these tools for their work lives as well. Forward-thinking companies are embracing, not fighting, this trend, and are enabling their employees to be more productive, more connected, and more collaborative. How are they doing this?

First, they are proactively defining specific “Bring Your Own Device” policies and objectives.

Second, they are deploying centralized mobile security and management platforms to ensure policy enforcement and control mobile access at the both the application and device level.

Third, they are investing in tools and technology to help them deliver enterprise apps more consistently, securely, and easily across multiple platforms. By helping companies take these three steps, the channel can enable businesses to reap the huge productivity and competitive advantages that mobile apps can deliver, while minimizing security and compliance risks, management complexity, and ongoing development and support costs.
 

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¹Office of the Government Chief Information Officer. Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. April
2012

²IPSOS Hong Kong. March 2012

³‘Multinational Corporate Survey 2012: Mobility Services in Asia-Pacific’, Ovum, December 2012