Cloud computing represents a real opportunity to combat fragmentation and address a broader market but the entire apps market is still in early stages and has a number of challenges to overcome.

One of the biggest problems facing the mobile application market today is fragmentation. Developers are faced with the dilemma of creating applications for a single platform or modifying their creations for a myriad of operating systems and devices. This is why many experts are now looking to a new model based on cloud computing – one in which applications are hosted remotely from centralized servers – as a promising alternative.

In its July 2009 report, Mobile Cloud Computing, ABI Research predicts that cloud computing will radically transform the development and distribution of mobile applications. The market research firm expects that by 2014, the cloud-based model will be the dominant method for delivering mobile applications and will bring in annual revenue of nearly USD 20 billion.

ABI also predicts that by 2014 nearly one billion mobile subscribers will use remotely-hosted applications such as location-based services which are expected to be amongst the most popular.

Simplified development and access to a larger market are the main advantages of the cloud-based model. However, this model is not without its own challenges. Jan Gabrielsson, a research and development expert at Ericsson says that building applications for the cloud may not necessarily be the path of least resistance.

Gabrielson says that server-based applications based on HTML5 – the next major release in the primary internet programming language – will also need to factor in screen size, resolution and other device-specific capabilities to be competitive. “Some device specific modifications will need to be taken into account, just like with JME.”

Gabrielsson also says that since user experience is the driver of demand and development for applications today, it is important not to be too generic.

“Write once and deploy everywhere may not create the winning user experience.”

However, there is still a large un-serviced market for mobile applications that server-based solutions could help to address. According to Gartner, smartphones – which comprise the majority of all devices with the capacity and processing power necessary to utilize mobile applications – represent only a fraction of the total device market (around 12 percent).

Gabrielsson says that mobile cloud services can help to bring applications to this market but most likely it will be a gap-filler solution. Trends in the device market indicate that capabilities unique to smartphones today will most likely be a standard on a broader range of phones in the future.

Whatever the future for mobile cloud services turns out to be, it is no mystery who the major players will be. According to Yahoo Tech, 20 percent of the world’s servers are owned and operated by just four companies: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Amazon.

By David Francisco

Links:
 
ABI Research
Gartner
Yahoo Tech