Crossing the Great Mobile Divide

Although there's much interest in all things mobile, there's little consensus when it comes to determining who is in charge of these initiatives. A survey of 8,010 mobile developers and 121 IT decision-makers conducted by IDC on behalf of Appcelerator, a provider of mobile app development tools, found that not only is there a lot of contention over whether internal IT organizations or line of business sets the mobile agenda, but also to what degree the mobile tools acquired by the internal IT organization actually get used. For solution providers in the channel, that dichotomy creates many inherent challenges, starting with who actually owns the mobile computing budget inside any organization. After that, it's hard to discern what tools an organization is planning to acquire from the ones its developers might actually decide to use. About the only places where there is clear consensus is that the pace of mobile app development is rising, there is a shortage of mobile app developers, and that internal IT is generally in charge when it comes time to contract for external mobile app development services.