Mobile Internet New Gold Mine: Enterprise app Market surging

Business-to-business applications have become a force in the application market in recent years, and as more and more companies communicate with customers through mobile FX, mobile change in the business world has begun.

Our correspondent

Feng Haixu

As the mobile wave seats come, changes in the business sector have begun.

It is reported that there are less than 30% developers who can make a profit in the current mobile application field. China's mobile-oriented teams and individuals have been surging in recent years, but more than 700,000 of apps make the competition nearly brutal. When many mobile development enterprises also fight in the personal consumer market, the enterprise-oriented mobile development market is finally waking up.

With the rich experience of portability, touch-screen and HD, mobile devices, represented by the ipad, are quietly changing business operations. People began to migrate financial services, graphics, design, mail, personal affairs management to the ipad platform. In the past, the complex, cumbersome sense of enterprise-level applications, gradually deployed in mobile terminals. This allows the products originally defined as consumer equipment to be used in the business sector gradually, thus prompting the enterprise-class applications to shift the focus of research and development to the mobile application platform.

According to a new study released by IDG Connect, a market research firm, 12% of ipad business users say tablets have replaced laptops as their portable devices, and 54% of users say tablet parts have replaced them.

As more and more companies communicate with customers through mobile FX, the iphone and ipad have become indispensable communication tools. Sometimes even face-to-face communication is a form of mobile application. It is undeniable that business-to-business applications have become a force in the application market in recent years.

In the July 2011, Apple App Store jumped out of the consumer market and formally expanded into the corporate sector to launch an enterprise-oriented application bulk purchase project. And just last month, Apple announced that it would launch business-to-business bulk-purchase apps in 9 countries, such as Britain and Japan, outside the United States, the first time the project was launched outside the United States. It is reported that the project allows program developers to sell their programs to companies and educational institutions in bulk.

Earlier this year, the Research Institute of ICT Professional Research published the first domestic enterprise mobile applications White paper-"2011 Enterprise-level mobile application ecosystem development Status white paper." According to forecast, "the next 5 years China's enterprise-level mobile application market scale of composite growth rate of 42%, is expected to 2016 China market size will reach 32.74 billion yuan, enterprise-class application market is about to become the next main battlefield mobile internet." ”

The time has come for the mobile internet to enter enterprise-class applications.

The trend of business mobility, iOS temporarily lead

It is inevitable for mobile internet to enter enterprise application, but the problem of the network environment of mobile Internet is not stable, the application experience of mobile terminal is too poor and the business model of enterprise-level mobile application is immature for a long time.

But these problems are being resolved. First, with the popularization of 3G or even 4G, wireless network bandwidth and stability greatly enhanced, and the tariff will be greatly reduced; second, the rise of the IPhone, ipad, the user experience of the problem has been effectively resolved. Further, with the promotion of HTML5, the application experience of mobile terminal equipment will be more friendly and even surpass PC. Third, with the telecom operators of enterprise-level mobile applications, mobile payments, Third-party payments, lbs and other applications mature, complete enterprise-class mobile application business model is possible.

In fact, a pioneer has given us an effective example of mobile application development for the enterprise--is gradually fading out of our BlackBerry. When we were still using Nokia 3310, the BlackBerry was already starting its own enterprise-class mobile application platform in Europe and North America, but it was an era when corporate mobility was mainly about email. But for businesses, employees ' preferences are shifting to mobile devices such as the iphone, ipad, and Android, which feature a lot and have a great user experience. With the help of the employees, many big corporations and government IT departments have gradually poured into smartphones and tablets. Today, with its own lack of openness, the BlackBerry is struggling to compete in the fierce mobile terminal market dominated by iOS and Android, but its former glory does confirm the market outlook for enterprise-class mobile development.

Now, enterprise-oriented mobile client development, and enterprise-owned information applications for mobile client integration, the Enterprise app market is just beginning, but it is undoubtedly a huge prospect, and has been the market certification.

In foreign countries, enterprise-level mobile applications are already very common. Many foreign doctors on duty in the emergency room have two things to do without a stethoscope and his ipad. Nearly a year after using the ipad tablet, it has become an indispensable tool in the treatment of patients. They explained that by scrolling through the virtual emergency ward patients on the ipad panel, "When I walked from one ward to another, I knew who the next one needed to see, and I felt very uncomfortable when I had no ipad on shift." ”

This application is only the initial application of enterprise-level mobile development. At present, a major trend is that mobile applications and the original enterprise ERP, CRM and other systems to do docking, to achieve the mobility of staff office, to facilitate the leadership of special orders for the approval of projects to enhance the efficiency of the enterprise. This is the SAP, Ufida and other companies are fully committed to the field, but also many entrepreneurial companies are flocking to the opportunity.

From the perspective of the entire mobile internet ecosystem, there are five very important roles: terminal, platform, developer, App Store and operator. These roles are now becoming more mature. While the role of Taiwanese businessmen is becoming more and more important, Apple is also seeing this trend before beginning to spare no effort to push business-to-business applications. But the entire mobile operating system is forming the Android, IOS, Windows mobile three camps. Despite the largest number of Android devices, a new study by Appcelerator, a US mobile platform developer, shows that iOS is ahead of Android in enterprise application development. Apple's iOS is now reported to be more popular among developers in the individual application market and in the enterprise-class application market. In addition, the survey shows that developers are starting to switch from personal apps to enterprise app development, with two-thirds of respondents developing apps for their companies or business customers. There is no doubt that the success of the ipad tablet is the biggest guarantee that the iOS platform could lead. The fragmentation of Android devices can pose it challenges and tricky issues, and Android malware is often seen in newspapers.

Surveys show that more than average companies, the world's top 500 companies to the introduction of these products show greater interest. With the help of the Business-to-business App Store, Apple is sure to take action in the corporate-level marketplace. "The advent of business-to-business apps means Apple is going to infiltrate the business in a curved way because there are now too many employees who choose to bring their iphone and ipad into their daily work," said Carl Howe, an analyst at Yankee Group. Rather than let them in all kinds of unfamiliar business software unprepared, rather than to create a faster and more convenient service system. ”

At the same time, Apple attaches greater importance to providing better security support to companies, and it works closely with companies such as Mobile Iron, SAP Afria and Symantec. Apple's promotion of its products on the official web is also very successful, from a detailed description of how the product is used, the publication of the list of manufacturers to enumerate security features, a variety of promotional tools, the site also shows the creative uses of the ipad, while helping users in the business environment can better use and integrate the ipad In addition, Apple has a corporate customer service specialist in every retail store.

On the other hand, currently kingdee, SAP and other companies have or plans to launch their own app Store, using their own customer resources and industrial chain integration advantages, the main enterprise mobile application banner.

Nuggets have a big chance to start a business

Over the past two years, many companies have begun to focus on the market and have tried to develop solutions to address the trends brought about by new mobile devices. These companies have traditional big companies, and many small companies take their innovative solutions to market.

However, different companies enter the Enterprise app market in ways and paths vary.

Li Yong, Senior technical advisor at SAP China Institute, told reporters that there are several levels of mobile applications at the enterprise level. The first is the application level, is a lot of the original through the desktop or notebook computers to access the backend of the CRM system, such as mobile transfer; the second level is mobile device management (MDM), which includes the management of proprietary devices that employees bring into the company, mainly in terms of availability, security, and controllability, and the third level, are application development tools and publishing platforms, including a range of development environments and tool components, as well as stores that are released and sold, such as the iOS App store.

It has been shown that the international IT giants have long been laying out the mobile wave when it comes, lest they miss the chance. In addition to Apple's almost guaranteed share of the ipad, Microsoft's potential could not be underestimated. While Microsoft is still relying on Windows Phone to pursue Android and iOS in the Mobile world at this stage, Microsoft will be able to provide an integrated solution that is enterprise-class if it is successful in its mobile client layout. IBM is also working to build its own mobile dynasty, which prepares a complete set of tools for its latest mobile strategy to provide enterprise developers with End-to-end Mobile application synergy, development and management systems.

In addition, Kingdee, Ufida, SAP and other traditional enterprise information service providers are also trying to complete this transformation. These large software companies are gradually opening their own partners to their own ERP, CRM and other applications of the interface, and then derived from the matching mobile client applications. Sun Xiaoqun, President of SAP China Institute, recently interviewed by The Economist, also bluntly, SAP is interested in moving mobile as one of the most important areas of investment, and will launch the integration of its own and the vast partner resources of its own business app Store, in order to get the development opportunities.

On the other hand, the early development of the enterprise-level mobile app development team also has great opportunities, and because of the disruptive impact of mobile wave, the advantages of start-up companies gradually reflected. The box founder Aaron says good products speak for themselves. Through the web-based promotion model and freemium free trial mode, the start-up company's products are entirely likely to open up new Horizons. In addition, the new mobile enterprise market has a very high heterogeneity, a monopoly of the market is being divided.

In fact, in the field of enterprise app, a large number of outstanding startups have sprung up in the US market, they are using mobile internet funds and thinking to do enterprise-class applications, this is the unique gene of the start-up company.

We can list a large number of pioneering business-to-business mobile app startups: Using Hadoop as an Open-source technology to help companies build their own big Data system Cloudera, dedicated to providing enterprises with "post-PC" Device Flash service nimble Storag, Web-and cloud-based employee management tools Okta, allows developers to create HTML5 app Sencha on any device, Mobileday to provide convenient mobile phone conferencing services, and a big Switch to provide new network virtualization technology NX, Focus on providing human resources and financial management mobile solutions for workday ...

It is worth noting that the team that entered enterprise-level mobile development in the early stage will take advantage of the future enterprise-level mobile development market competition. This is because, on the one hand, they can establish their own image ahead of time to study the enterprise-level mobile development technology and user needs. At the same time, many companies do not understand their own mobile applications needs, and pioneers in this time period can be more profound understanding of the needs of mobile applications and usage, and then to make suitable solutions for enterprises.

However, now enterprise-level mobile development is still in an embryonic stage, the domestic market is in a dormant period. If the land on the hard work, from scratch to establish their own brand and market is not a myth, that year's BlackBerry is the way to come.