Three implications of mobile devices for businesses

04 Jul 2012

Gartner analyst David Mitchell Smith gives his views on what IT teams must do to adjust to the ‘post-PC’ era.

“The release of the iPhone back in 2007 marked a shift towards a mobile-dominated future.” That’s the view of David Mitchell Smith, an analyst at IT research firm Gartner, who says that the era of running applications solely on desktop and notebook PCs “is rapidly being superseded by a fast-moving, diverse era of ecosystems that span consumer electronics, business computing, fixed-location clients and mobile clients.”

1. IT organisations must rapidly evolve mobile applications and interfaces to meet sharp increases in demand across B2B (business-to-business), B2E (business-to-employee) and B2C (business-to-consumer) channels.

“Too many IT departments and end users still assume that only desktop applications are needed,” says Smith.

Gartner’s recommendations: Perform a mobile-only, mobile-first or legacy assessment during development; identify specific demand for mobile applications in B2E, B2C and B2B sectors during the next 18 months; implement an architectural and tool framework for future context-aware apps.

2. Application developers need to retool as mobile-centric design replaces desktop-centric design for user interfaces.

Mobile interfaces are setting expectations for the “usability, appearance and behavior” of future systems and applications, according to Smith. “The leading edge of this change is the touch-and-gesture interface that is fundamental to mobile devices, but beyond this, both audio and video channels are being used to expand this new user interface (UI).” Spoken commands drive searches and application actions, he points out, while the emerging video channel is leading to facial recognition and in-air gestures.

Gartner’s recommendations: Track advances in new UI techniques (such as touch, audio, video, gesture, search, social and context) and create a roadmap for short-, medium- and long-term potential; factor in ‘ensemble interactions’, where applications integrate the experience across multiple devices into application architectures; build application with simple, focused capabilities and interactions, but also creating links across applications for coordinated operations.

3. Organisations need to reallocate resources as mobile advertising projects targeting smartphones and tablets will outnumber native PC projects by four to one by 2015.

“When building UIs for multiple screen sizes and operating systems, new tools are needed to make applications function correctly on different devices. There’s no automatic way to do this – it takes engineering skills to design the right outputs,” says Smith.

Gartner’s recommendations: Make tactical investments in mobile app development tools; enhance (automated) testing and support plans; use HTML5 as the lowest common denominator cross-device and cross-vendor UI model, though you should not expect it to address all needs.