What are Mobile Apps?
Mobile
Apps are applications or services that can be downloaded and installed to a
mobile device, rather than being rendered within a browser, which helps to meet personal use or
business requirements for the user. The app may
pull content and data from the Internet, in similar fashion to a website, or it
may download the content so that it can be accessed without an Internet
connection. A mobile app may be a mobile Website bookmarking utility, a mobile-based instant messaging
client, Gmail for
mobile, and many other applications.
The small-business demographic is pushing the envelope when it comes
to mobile technology adoption. The fact is that they have really being doing so
for the last decade.
The Corporate Mobile App Strategy Survey, published by
partnerpedia.com, found that 78 per cent of the large companies with 500
employees or more had a desire to purchase apps. Of those, 90.2 per cent intend
to buy mobile solutions
for use by employees, while 43.9 per cent wanted apps for customers. The
survey, which also included responses from companies with less than 500
employees, found that 22 per cent are buying apps for contractors.
And, close to 40 percent of small-business owners are using five more mobile apps to run
their business, according to an ongoing survey conducted by J2 Global.
The number of mobile business apps – some cloud-based, some residing
on the device – is proliferating. We can expect to see even more being
developed as a result of the new HTML 5 standard, says David Bradshaw, a
research manager at analyst IDC. HTML 5 makes it possible to develop apps
simultaneously for different mobile platforms, so that a business that chooses
to roll out a sales app. There are also a growing number of apps designed
specifically for mobile use. These can be very generic or targeted at
particular sectors.
Business Advantages of
Mobile Apps:
If personal mobile phones and tablets are now an integral part of
working life, how can enterprises turn this to business advantage? Many
organisations have started carefully, by allowing employees to access the
firm’s email and calendar applications from their mobile devices. Even this can
save time and money.
The advantage of an enterprise app store is that the IT function can
configure apps appropriately before they are downloaded, and create blacklists
or whitelists of apps for users. IT then has a single point from which to
manage the provisioning and decommissioning of apps and the implementation of
security policies.
However, most of the companies allow users to choose their own mobile
apps, because users understand their own needs better than the IT function. Whichever
approach is chosen, it is still hugely important to put security policies in
place to protect corporate data.
Mobile
Apps are popular with business owners and their customers. With today's market
going mobile, Apps help you keep pace:
Benefits
for Business – Apps:
- Build relationships
- Build loyalty
- Reinforce your brand
- Increase your visibility
- Increase your accessibility
- Solve the problem of getting stuck in spam folders
- Increase sell-through
- Increase exposure across mobile devices
- Connect you with on-the-go consumers
- Generate repeat business
- Give you tools that are driving the "New App Economy"
- Enhance your social networking strategies
Symantec's 2012 State of Mobility survey has revealed an uptake of
mobile applications within enterprises across the globe.
Commissioned by Symantec, Applied Research spoke with 6,275
organisations in 43 countries from August to November in 2011.
The survey highlighted an expansion of both adapting and customising
mobile software for business purposes across the board -- 71 percent of
enterprises stating that there were at least current discussions concerning the
ways in which custom mobile applications could assist their business, including
the idea of custom 'stores' for employees to download authorised and
corporation-related applications.
In terms of an improvement in business practices and increased
efficiency levels, according to the survey, 73 percent of small and large
corporations alike have enjoyed a positive result through the adoption of
mobile technology.
What’s New in Mobiles apps market?
As the smartphone market grows, so too do the
apps you can use on them, uses of mobile app technology to get you up to speed
with your handheld device and its potential.
Following are the trending Mobile Apps top opportunities that are
already taking hold of the mobile app market or that we expect to take off in
the near future.
Mobile Health
In the recent days Mobile apps are changing the way healthcare
industry do business, permeating every step of the health and core aspect of
their operations.
Nine percent of all cell owners
have apps on their phones that help them track or manage their health.
"I was surprised to see that
almost one in ten cell phone users have a health app. I thought it would be
lower,” said Susannah Fox, Associate Director of Pew Research Center's Internet
& American Life Project and author of the report, 85 percent of American
adults who use a mobile phone today 17 percent have used their phone to look up
health or medical information. The percentage goes up to 15 percent for mobile
phone users aged 18 to 29-years-old. Only 8 percent of mobile phone users aged
30 to 49-years-old and 11percent of aged people use health apps.
Urban cell phone owners are also
more likely than those who live in suburban or rural areas to have a mobile health
app on their phone.
Many consumers also have
health-related apps on their smartphones to get nutrition information, count
calories, calculate body mass index and learn new exercises, the survey found.
Localized Deal Updates
The
explosion of location-based technology was revolutionary in the app world. Now
we’re using that location information to deliver personalized and relevant
updates and alerts. The number of apps and services that support hyper-local
experiences is on the small side, but this is an area that is ripe for growth.
Location-based
services like Loopt, Foursquare and Gowalla are all
investigating ways to let users know not just when their friends are nearby,
but what offers are available in their areas.
Mobile Travel
Mobile technology has revolutionized the travel
industry: Countless travel apps have popped up, promising to enhance your
experience in foreign lands. There are lots of useful travel mobile apps helps
users to book the flights and also allows passengers to virtually "check
in" into airports using foursquare. Customers may also share their
experiences through other social networks.
Half of the airlines have already implemented
mobile services for flight search and check-in with close to half also
providing boarding passes, ticket purchase and flight
status notifications.
The latest Airline IT Trends
Survey reveals that a whopping 93% of airlines have mobile services for
passengers as a top investment priority over the next three years, with 58%
investing in major programmes. It predicts that information technology and
communications (IT&T) spend as a proportion of revenue is expected to stay
stable, at around 1.65% in 2012.
While only half the respondents,
made up of more than 50% of the world's top 100 airlines, expect IT spend in
2013 to increase in absolute terms.
Social
Media
Mobile social networking is social networking where individuals with similar
interests converse and connect with one another through their mobile phone
and/or tablet. Mobile Social Apps that can connect you to
twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, LinkedIn, Flickr together where you can post
status updates, share photos, videos, likes, retweets. For instance, the photo sharing apps that support the
widest range of share targets tend to be more popular. Even apps like Path — which
by design are meant to be private — have learned that it is essential to allow
users to post their data to other networks, like Facebook.
Mobile Commerce
The world is increasingly becoming mobile. The
technology creators of today are creating goods for the mobile consumer. The
concept of social commerce can be taken literally, as in making a purchase
directly through a social media property. Far more important is the degree to which content shared through
social media is influencing purchasing decisions, which is happening on a
massive scale. 33 million consumers shop with
a mobile phone according to research firm Experian Simmons. 24% of
U.S. adult online iPhone users and 21% of Android users have used a shopping application in the past
three months. (Source: Forrester, 2011)
The ways of communicating with your customers
is changing and businesses need to adapt to these changes in order to stay
ahead of their competitors.
Sources:http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/symantec-survey-shows-surge-in-mobile-apps-switching-it-focus/69999
