PLM, Manufacturers and Mobile Apps Hysteria

I can see around more and more people are playing with mobile devices. Last 3-4 months contained many announcements coming from hardware and software manufacturers related to “mobile business”. Android Honeycumb, iPad 2, Google App store, Microsoft / Nokia deal, etc. I started to ask myself – what is behind all this? The following Forrester blog post caught my attention – Mobile App Internet and 2011 Mobile App Hysteria. John McCarthy was writing 3 months ago about some information coming from Forrester Mobile Internet report. Here my favorite passage:

The explosion of app innovation that started on the iPhone and then spread to Android devices and tablets will continue to drive tech industry innovation and have far-reaching pricing and go-to-market implications for software and services providers. A second round of innovation will leverage the intersection of cloud-based services; Smart Computing; and newly app- and Internet-enabled devices like cars, appliances, and entertainment systems. The development of this mobile “app Internet” with hybrid local and cloud-supported applications will not only foster huge levels of innovation but also open up new services opportunities around the creation and management of these B2C, B2B, and B2E apps. The mobile app Internet will also change the way software is priced and designed.

You can purchase Forrester report navigating to the following link. In his blog, John put some numbers from that report. I found the following ones the most interesting:

Even at $2.43/app, the app market will emerge as a $38B market by 2015… Helping enterprises ride out the perfect storm of innovation is a $17B services opportunity…

CAD and PLM companies are not staying aside of mobile applications’ game. I wrote about it in some of my previous posts: PLM and post-PC Era, 3D/PLM: Future or Baloney?, Mobile, Photo, Video and Manufacturing Collaboration, and some others. We also have seen some bold mobile announcement come from companies like Siemens PLM – TeamCenter Mobility Apps.

The Power of Mobile Disruption

Back in 2005-7, BlackBerry was my favorite device. It was super fast, easy and powerful. Few years ago I had a conversation with one of the manufacturing companies about the iPhone and mobile. The person I talked was a huge BlackBerry fun. Our point of disagreement was actually the absence of a keyboard. From his standpoint “iPhone fancy apps had no connection to manufacturing companies”. Fast forward nowadays… I know he is running iPhone 4 and has lots of Apps on it.

In my view, mobile platforms create a huge disruption in everything IT does in manufacturing company. People are stopping tolerating existing enterprise suites and limitations. Engineers want the ability to answer on inquires coming from manufacturing also when they are out of their desks, managers want to have live updates ECO bottlenecks. There are many other examples.

What is my conclusion? I think people started to digest initial mobile device hysteria and transform it to something productive. In my view, it will require lots of changes in existing infrastructure and PLM product suites. Some of them won’t survive and some of them will be transformed. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg
Freebie

Photo: (Cristiano Betta/Flickr)