Mobile Cloud Computing: The next big Mobile Innovation

Apple’s iPhone has sparked a new consumer interest in mobile applications. The number of mobile app stores and application offerings are growing rapidly.However, limited processing power, battery life, and data storage will limit mobile application growth in the mass market, even among smartphones. This is one of the key findings of a study by ABIresearch. These would thus be limiting factors to user experience on a mobile phone. http://www.abiresearch.com/research/1003385

Device fragmentation and memory currently limit the level of sophistication developers can deliver through mobile apps. By contrast, running mobile applications in the cloud will free up mobile processors while also enabling developers to create just one version of their application.That is where applications that connect to cloud resources are much more likely to be successful than those that run only on the mobile device.

Mobile application developers today face the challenge of multiple mobile operating systems.Either they must write for just one OS, or create many versions of the same application. More sophisticated apps require significant processing power and memory in the handset. Using Web development, applications can run on servers instead of locally, so handset requirements can be greatly reduced and developers can create just one version of an application. This trend is in its infancy today, but ABI Research believes that eventually it will become the prevailing model for mobile applications.

Cloud computing will bring unprecedented sophistication to mobile applications.To mention just a few examples, business users will benefit from collaboration and data sharing apps. Personal users will gain from remote access apps allowing them to monitor home security systems, PCs or DVRs, and from social networking mashups that let them share photos and video or incorporate their phone address books and calendars.

Thus, Mobile cloud sync is emerging as a major new category of wireless services. Apple, Google, Nokia, Microsoft, Palm, and others recently introduced mobile cloud sync services and all mobile operators and ISPs are racing to keep up. While current solutions are fairly basic, open source is enabling more flexibility and innovation among these folks because it is so easy to adapt.

ABI Research has predicted that the ‘cloud computing’ model will soon catch up and by the end of 2014 it will be delivering annual revenues to the tune of $20 billion.

However, intermittent network availability could pose a big challenge for the adoption of the ‘cloud computing’ model. A cloud-based application stops working if you lose your connection. New programming languages such as HTML 5 could come to the rescue as they can enable data caching on the handset, allowing work to continue until cellular signal is restored.
Ref: http://ipcommunications.tmcnet.com/topics/ip-communications/articles/59519-abi-research-mobile-cloud-computing-next-big-thing.htm;
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