Deploying mobile business apps

Ikea has developed a so-called augmented reality mobile application that allows its customers to add items from its catalogue to digital images of their homes. Pic credit: IKEA

At the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona last week, the world’s largest mobile operators announced they were joining forces to launch an open international applications platform that would compete with Apple’s App Store.

Called the Wholesale Applications Community, the alliance will see the pooling of resources from 15 mobile operators, including AT&T, China Mobile, Orange, T-Mobile, Telefonica and Vodafone.

However, the formation of this alliance will not necessarily make life easier for CIOs looking to deliver a mobile business application to their customers, according to Nick Jones, Gartner vice president and distinguished analyst.

“I’m very sceptical about this. I wouldn’t rely on the operators to roll it out as it is not in their interests to create a vendor-agnostic platform,” explained Jones.

But the move does demonstrate increased interest in the area – something that was corroborated by Google CEO Eric Schmidt who said last week that the firm was giving smartphone app development priority over PC apps.

“The uptake of business-to-consumer mobile applications is growing and a lot of organisations are already delivering them – there’s huge interest currently,” said Jones.

So what are the issues that enterprises need to bear in mind when looking at delivering a business application over mobile devices?

First, the company’s overall strategy has to be nailed down. “Quantifying what your firm’s aims are with respect to mobility should be a primary goal for the thinking behind any deployment of mobile applications or even web site ‘mobilisation’,” said Gartner’s Jones.

Targeting your user base correctly may mean that a cheaply developed application that covers more of your customer base would be preferable to deploying an expensive, richer application that targets a small percentage of that base.

Who develops the application is another consideration. Should a firm develop applications in-house, or outsource to expert developers, who may be thin on the ground? For example, Ikea outsourced development of its mobile catalogue app to the Cake Group.

Jones said one way is to have “mobile skunkworks projects”, whereby an in-house group of application development experts works autonomously on application projects.

Perhaps the primary consideration for mobile app developers is deciding which mobile platform to deploy to. Jones said 75 per cent of the population probably does not have a smartphone, so “if you’re thinking clearly about reaching customers, you need to consider what mobile devices they use.”

Native applications as opposed to applications accessed through a browser will be useful for companies with valuable clients that are prepared to spend money, but are costly to develop.

As a differentiator for businesses, mobile applications that offer customers a different type of service could pay dividends for firms bold enough to roll them out. For example, alongside Ikea’s launch of the standard mobile catalogue, released as an iPhone application in December 2009, it also produced an application allowing customers to take a digital picture of their rooms and clip images of Ikea furnishings on to it. This lightweight, augmented reality app could preface a much more innovative cycle of business mobile application development, differentiating companies from their competitors.

Businesses must also consider not just how many people are using their mobile business application, but how they are using it. That means some form of mobile analytics, which look at user behaviour, is required.

These differ from web analytics in that there are so many mobile features that need to be monitored over a multitude of different mobile phone types. In a white paper entitled Actionable and Accurate Analytics on the Mobile Internet, mobile analytics vendor Mobilytics said there is a need to track more than 100 different device features and capabilities – including which mobile networks are supported, and what audio, image and video support exists on the device.

Companies’ long-term strategies must also take into account developments in mobile networks. It will be no use developing rich media mobile business applications if mobile operators’ networks cannot cope with the bandwidth required for a satisfying end-user experience.

Quocirca communications analyst Rob Bamforth explained that there have been bottlenecks in the base station/handset radio efficiency, as well as the backhaul network as a result of increased data on the network.

“It has been widely reported that O2 and AT&T – both early iPhone carriers – have had problems with data overload, from smartphone users in the main. 4G technologies such as LTE and WiMax will help, but will require significant investment from edge to core by the mobile operators,” he added.