The mobile app space offers service providers the potential for new growth platforms. However, these are often small projects that are delivered quickly and are not a great revenue stream. But recent studies we came across reinforce our growing opinion that the mobile app space is changing.
Mobile apps are costing more and taking longer to develop; they’re far more expensive than expected. We believe there are a couple of reasons for this.
First, mobile apps are moving out of the experimental phase into the mainstream business and therefore are far more complicated. That alone requires more rigorous development and testing. But they also must be integrated in today’s IT ecosystem. So they are bigger projects that take far more effort testing. This should give greater opportunity for service providers to benefit.
Recall the early days of the Internet. In the beginning websites were simple and easy to launch. Now they are extremely important to eCommerce and branding and thus require significant resources to develop and maintain. We believe mobile apps are following the same path as the Internet.
So there is a frustrating aspect despite the fact that mobile apps are starting to generate revenue for service providers. Providers are impatient for mobile to take off and give them a new growth platform, but growth is slow.
