Spreading your bets

One of the largest problems faced by companies wanting to go mobile with their services and products is the choice between mobile channels and the choice between mobile operating systems. This choice is an ever-growing problem, with new mobile platforms coming onto the market and existing platforms releasing new operating system version updates more regularly.

Backing a single platform creates a massive risk for companies.

Arno du Toit is CCO for Virtual Mobile Technologies.

The perfect solution would be if companies did not have to make this choice and their solution ran on all mobile channels and all mobile operating systems. The fact is that this solution does exist; it is possible to align mobile requirements with a suitable solution, without having to sacrifice a large segment of the market or the user experience.

Backing a single platform creates a massive risk for companies. Investing in a solution and not achieving the desired results is not something that is explained away easily. Besides the cost impact on the company, there is a missed opportunity risk and a reputation risk. There are several examples of companies heavily investing in a mobile solution and ending up with very little to show for it. In most cases, the reason is not that there is not a willing market waiting for a solution, but rather that the company failed to provide an acceptable solution for its market.

Managing single ad hoc mobile platform solutions in large companies further creates an almost unmanageable problem. Imagine the resources required to manage and maintain multiple business units with multiple mobile solutions, all with multiple operating versions. Now imagine the complexity when a new mobile operating system like Windows Mobile 7 comes onto the market, and all the solutions in the company have to be updated. This problem is exactly what is starting to develop in a number of large companies, and is one of the main reasons that there are so many unsuccessful mobile solutions in the market.

Looking at the global industry, there is a constant change of opinion and actual market shifts in what is the current mobile platform leader and who the leader is going to be tomorrow. For many years, Nokia was the undisputed king of the mountain, with a staggering market share that seemed unassailable. With the release of the iPhone and the rise of smartphones, this market share started disappearing at an alarming rate. The iPhone was hailed as the new leader, and to many people it is still the platform that seems untouchable; however, in recent months Google Android has overtaken iPhone as the leader in the smartphone market with more devices shipped daily. This continuous shift is bound to be repeated over and over again; to back one platform and not take future platforms into account when designing a solution is a very high-risk strategy.

The problem created by a single platform approach in the consumer market is twofold. Either a solution is too “smart” or it is too “dumb”. Examples of this would be an iPhone application versus a USSD application. In both scenarios, the solution is unlikely to gain traction in the market, due to either being incompatible or providing a sub-par user experience for the majority of users.

The default platform for companies is still the iPhone. Decision-makers are sticking with the argument that it is because the Apple App store is an easy way of delivering applications and that Apple users are by far the largest consumers of applications. Both of these arguments are true, but the real reason is that if the application fails, it is the easiest decision to defend.

Apple generates massive online noise and it is easy to validate a decision with a multitude of articles of iPhone success stories in other markets. However, it is only a matter of time before the powers that be start asking the right questions, demanding to see the market research, determining the actual device breakdown of the target market, questioning solution security and asking if a platform like BlackBerry, Android, Windows Mobile 7 or Java was not the best route to go.

The mobile market is slowly but surely maturing. Many companies in SA have finally developed a company-wide mobile strategy, allocated a budget, and are trying to determine how mobile is going to fit into their overall infrastructure. The days of ad hoc single platform development are over; companies are now looking for returns on their mobile investments, and this can only be achieved by providing a solution for all customers and not just a small subset of users.