as these mobile applications become more capable and entrenched, they will slowly find their way onto the desktop and start to replace the traditional desktop environment for a lot of workers who do mostly inquiry, transaction processing and light editing.
There will be an ongoing data format battle for a long time, but ultimately the lighter and more efficient platform will probably win that battle. The future does not look all that good for MS right now IMHO. This is a war they cannot afford to lose.
Sixty-two percent of chief information officers and technology leaders see mobile technology as a high priority for the upcoming year, according to Forrester Research.
That finding comes as enterprise mobility is increasingly wedded to overall corporate information technology. As a result, 48 percent of companies plan to spend on making enterprise applications mobile. Another 37 percent are interested in mobile apps. Increasingly, these apps are moving beyond the standard email and calendar genre and into line-of-business software like field service, sales and business intelligence.
Meanwhile, 38 percent of companies are developing their mobile apps in-house with another 27 percent buying app stores. Twenty-five percent of respondents are using third parties to develop custom mobile apps, according to a recent Forrester report.
The move to mobile enterprise apps appears to have been prodded along buy consumer adoption of smartphones as well as Apple’s iPhone and Android devices. Productivity and faster decision-making were the two most often cited benefits to mobile apps. This shift toward mobile computing in the enterprise is a big reason why Apple is gaining corporate traction without much effort. The fascination with mobile IT also highlights why the iPad has been such a hit with corporations. Sybase’s Eric Lai has compiled a spreadsheet of iPad tests among companies.
Here’s the breakdown of officially supported mobile devices:
As you can see, Research in Motion and Microsoft are still entrenched, but Apple and Android have come from zero just a few years ago (a year in Android’s case) to making the supported list. It’s unclear what Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7—a break from Windows Mobile—will do to enterprise support.
And the app plans:
Related: Forrester: Apple’s iPhone, iPad secure enough for enterprises, but RIM rules security roost
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