Asian mobile developers eye business apps

Software developers in Asia are starting to focus on enterprise related mobile applications, finds an IDC survey.

Titled Software Developer Collaborative Survey on Mobile Application Development, the study surveyed over 500 software developers across 18 countries in the Asia-Pacific region regarding their adoption of mobile application development.

"The survey results suggest that mobile application development will be more geared toward meeting business requirements as the number of mobile employees is increasing," Prianka Srinivasan, a market analyst for software research at IDC's Asia-Pacific Software, told ZDNet Asia in an e-mail interview. Mobile applications for businesses include e-mail, CRM, and mobile field force automation.

The study, which was conducted in 2006, showed a higher interest in multimedia development compared to office productivity applications. About 60 percent of respondents said they will develop audio and video applications over the next 24 months, compared to 22 percent who will focus on Word, Excel and PowerPoint applications, and 18 percent for PDF.

The results of the study also suggest a growing demand in software quality assurance and requirement management tools.

"IDC expects vendors to accelerate their product awareness efforts and cash in on the shift towards using more application life-cycle tools in the mobile application development market," Srinivasan said.