Who's in charge of mobile app development? Everyone and no one

Summary: A recent survey finds lack of leadership and strategy toward mobile app development.

Everyone wants to build and deploy mobile apps to serve their enterprises and their customers, but more maturity needs to be injected into the process.

Photo: Joe McKendrick

So says recent survey of 804 executives released by Appcelerator, a mobile app platform provider. The survey, which included the views of IT directors, CEOs, and development managers,  finds 85% report there is not single "mobile leader" within their enterprises.

If there are no mobile leaders, there probably isn't much of a corporate mobile strategy, either. In fact, the survey also finds most companies haven't quite got their mobile strategies together, if at all. Only 15% of respondents consider themselves to be "mobile-first" companies, and 25% consider themselves to be ahead of the competition.

The IT world also appears to be taking a step backwards into the bad old days of supporting countless operating systems. Now, IT managers are faced with supporting, on average, three or more mobile OSes.

A top priority on many agendas, however, is opening up mobile-specific APIs that will help boost integration between back-end enterprise systems and front-end apps. Forty percent are planning or working on APIs, while 29% are moving forward with enterprise app stores.

Joe McKendrick is an author, consultant and speaker specializing in trends and developments shaping the technology industry.