Major Challenges Faced By Enterprise Mobile App Developers

Bangalore: Mobile phones are a part and parcel of our life. Realizing the importance of mobile devices, businesses are trying to reach out to their customers through this platform.  

Reports from various researches done over the past 1 year have found that 94% of the respondents informed that enterprise mobility will play an important role in their IT strategy over the following year. By 2015, almost half of the personal computers in business organizations will be replaced by mobile devices. "Our clients are under increased pressure to meet the growing demands of a workforce and customer base that now treat mobility as mission critical to their business,” said Marie Wieck, General Manager, IBM Application and Infrastructure Middleware.

"C-level executives are beginning to understand the value of having reliable mobile apps to communicate effectively with a mobile workforce. This has resulted in software developers being tasked with demanding design briefs to develop multi-platform enterprise apps. But unlike fixed systems, the communication mechanism is unreliable and unless care is taken, data can be lost or transmitted twice,” explains Dr Tim King, Chief Technology Officer at 5app.

Let us have a look at some of the challenges in developing enterprise mobile apps as stated by Srinivasan Viswanathan in pcquest.ciol.com.

1.    Too Many Platforms, Too Little Time
With the availability of platforms ranging from BlackBerry to Android to iOS, developers find it difficult to develop an app that is compatible in all the platforms. Another issue faced by developers is to meet the deadline. Projects are given deadlines ranging from weeks to a couple of months to complete.

2.    Delivering a Quality Application
End users expect that their app will be free from bugs and defects. Before releasing the app to the market, intensive testing is required to ensure that the app doesn’t crash. The success of the app depends on the feedbacks given by the users. A bad app rating will affect the sale and popularity of the app.

3.    Making your App Impregnable
Although apps are becoming popular day by day, users are skeptical to download them. Users avoid downloading apps that obtain their account information. Developers need to make use of the security capabilities provided by the operating systems to ensure that their apps are secured.

4.    Accelerated Time-to-Market
The development lifecycle of mobile apps is expected to complete in a few weeks. This put immense pressure on the developers to meet the deadline as set forth by the clients. Developers would need to work as a team to meet the business objective.