Building applications for mobile devices
These days almost everyone has one or more mobile devices, ranging from Smartphones to tablets. From a business perspective, widespread use of mobile devices is useful, as it allows immediate access to information for employees who work remotely and/or travel frequently. Customers also have easy access to information about products and services.
While the “App Stores” offer thousands of mobile applications, employees need mobile applications that will integrate with line-of-business (LOB) applications and unstructured information. Mobile applications built for customers, must help them in their relationship with the company by informing them about the status of purchases, providing information about products and allowing customers to ask questions or place orders.
Developers who work with RPG or COBOL on IBM i servers will find building applications for mobile devices a very different experience. Mobile devices are smaller, operate on a limited power supply, store much less data on the device and human interaction is touch. The devices have additional capabilities including cameras, location awareness and gyroscopes. Mobile applications can be browser based, native to the mobile device, or a hybrid of both. Native applications written for mobile devices don't use RPG or COBOL as the development language, and the device constraints require different application architectures and design principles.
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The Business Challenge of Going Mobile
With the rampant explosion of wireless smart phone devices in the marketplace, it should be no surprise that more and more businesses are delving into the mobile world. Whether it's for productivity gains by arming staff with more ready access to data, or from marketing pressure to remain competitive and become more visible and viable with prospects, or to meet customer trends by appealing to the next generation audience – today's business applications are going mobile.
Beyond email and messaging services which are already widely used, mobile applications could range anywhere from event registration or other form-based applications, scanning for inventory updates, field worker schedule task lists to shopping cart applications and marketing schemes based on GPS locations and more.
Less than a decade ago, the choices were largely between Palm OS or Windows Mobile, and the primary challenge with wireless business applications involved available bandwidth and network coverage. Data throughput capabilities were, and can still be, more limited, with spotty reception in some remote geographical areas. Today, there are so many more devices that support varying platforms and operating systems (Apple iPhone, RIM Blackberry, Google Android, Windows Mobile, Palm Pre, Symbian, etc), and so much more diversity in application technologies along with faster networks and coverage. With such diverse and ever changing capabilities along with aggressive competition for market share, the business decision of going mobile is no simple matter and constantly evolving.
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