Enterprise Apps: The Value of Mobile Screen Space

One look at the screen on your iPhone, Android, or Blackberry and it’s plain to see which mobile apps (e.g. Facebook, Safari, iTunes, Pandora) command valuable real estate on your phone. If you think real estate in places such as Hong Kong and London is sky high, they pale in comparison to the 20 quarter-inch squares that populate the home screen of your smartphone. As Byron Deeter of Bessemer Ventures Partners points out in a recent LinkedIn post, it’s a land grab for mobile app developers and not just for apps that are being targeted at consumers — but for enterprise apps, as well.

The rise of the bring your own device (BYOD) movement is creating tremendous opportunities for enterprises and developers of mobile enterprise apps to land a highly-coveted spot on the home screen of employees’ mobile devices. In fact, a recent study conducted by End Technologies finds that 91% of developers either have or are planning to work in mobile this year, up from 66% in 2012. Most of that growth is due to the increased need for mobile apps in the workplace.

Some of the more popular iPhone apps for enterprise users include TurboScan for filing expense reports and Evernote which can aid in taking notes at industry conferences — but regardless of the enterprise apps that a company makes available to its employees, organizations can strengthen the adoption of mobile apps in the workplace by providing staff with an enterprise app store that makes it easy for workers to locate and download the types of apps that can assist them in their jobs.

Mobile application management (MAM) makes it easy for companies to make mobile apps available to employees through an enterprise app store while providing IT with the ability to manage, monitor, and secure enterprise apps and data. Just as icons on a smartphone make it easy for people to find and use popular apps such as Facebook or Gmail, enterprise app stores supported by MAM make it simple for employees to locate the types of apps that employees want to use to do their jobs more effectively and efficiently. By simplifying the ability for employees to find and download the types of mobile apps that can help them do their jobs, companies dramatically improve their chances of landing coveted real estate on employees’smartphones and other mobile devices with mobile apps that will drive productivity and generate operational cost savings.