Navigating Industry Fragmentation in Mobile Application Development

Posted by Nextware Technologies on March 29th, 2017

Consumers are spoiled for choice when it comes to mobile devices.  Yet with the market split between iOS, Android, and other operating systems, businesses face a difficult choice when it comes to mobile application development.  Mobile apps are expected to cater to all device users, yet the number of disparate standards and platforms makes the creation of consistent user experiences difficult. 

Businesses face a tradeoff when it comes to mobile application development.  They can spend the resources needed to address the entire market consistently, or they can focus their development assets only on the most used platforms. 

This isn’t just a problem for small startups.  Large companies have also experienced the adverse effects of fragmentation to the mobile applications market.  When the BBC announced its plans to release a mobile news application, the developers noted that industry fragmentation hindered their ability to equally reach all consumers. Only industry consolidation or the creation of overarching standards will allow the mobile application industry become profitable. 

Small developers may not be able to enter the mobile application market successfully due to fragmentation.  Fragmentation increases costs when prospective developers are forced to follow many different procedures and standards before their applications are considered worthy to be in the market. The result is the increased time and cost involved in application development. This affects businesses that are working with mobile app developers, as well as consumers who may need to purchase apps. Moreover, developers may find it difficult to determine which platforms are here to stay. If they create an app for the wrong platform, they could be wasting a lot of time and money in the end. 

A response to the problem of industry fragmentation may be in the works.  The Wholesale Applications Community, for example, is an alliance of more than 20 mobile companies, including Sony Ericsson, LG, Orange, and Samsung. They aim to establish a mobile distribution channel to distribute apps to all devices regardless of the mobile platform. 

Having a standard for mobile applications should help reduce issues associated with industry fragmentation in the long run, but some developers have begun creating mobile web apps instead of native apps for mobile devices to make them more accessible from the browser. This way, mobile app development has become more accessible and doable, even to smaller developers, as mobile browsers have begun supporting Java and continue to improve. 

About the Author:

Afshin at Nextware Technologies brings more than twenty years of experience to the team in developing state-of-the-art IT solutions and re-engineering business processes. He joins us from Moog, Inc., a leading aerospace manufacturing firm, where he managed a team of engineers and IT staff supporting a global user base in 26 countries. Prior to Moog, he helped transform Curlin Medical from a struggling, single-product medical device manufacturer to a diversified, M powerhouse with 250 employees worldwide and a range of highly-differentiated flagship products. Afshin received his B.S. in Computer Science from California State University of Fullerton.