TechWeek Europe Readers Don’t Like Mobile Apps

Despite the surge of mobile devices used for business, and previous evidence that TechWeekEurope readers like them, it seems you are very cautious about mobile applications.

Nearly 60 percent of TechWeekEurope readers don’t use mobile apps at all for business, according to a poll on TechWeekEurope, while those of you that do use them shy away from off-the-shelf apps, preferring to build your own.

60 percent don’t want mobile business apps

The survey asked “Does your organisation use its own mobile apps?”, and was designed to see whether TechWeekEurope readers develop their own business software for mobile devices.

Twenty-one percent of you do have mobile software developed in-house for your organisation, which is  comfortably ahead of the nine percent who use third parties, and the ten percent who are happy with off-the-shelf apps.

However all those figures combined are less than the 60 percent of people who say they will not use mobile apps for business.

This might seem counter-intuitive, and we would have to guess that readers don’t classify email or browsing as apps. A pedant might also point out that the navigation software or weather forecast that you use on your phone – or the Twitter or Facebook client – are also apps.

However, what we take from this is a reluctance to let corporate data be handled by apps on a mobile device. This would be bad news for companies like Oracle, which is pushing mobile apps hard. However, it does agree with evidence from Deloitte that mobile business apps are still immature and fail frequently.

The result came from more than 500 responses.

Tell us about yourself

Our new poll is designed to find out who you are, by asking what area of business IT is your main responsibility. As always, we look forward to hearing from you.