Does Windows Stand a Chance With Enterprise Mobile Apps?

The buzz that’s built around enterprise mobility has reached nearly deafening levels with seemingly everybody and their brother working on solutions to mobilize enterprise applications. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of the attention has been focused on bringing business apps to iOS and Android, given their dominant roles on smartphones and tablets.

In the process, many organizations have glossed over Windows, assuming that there wasn’t really any interest or value in creating mobile apps for the platform. The assumption seems to be primarily based on the tiny market share that Windows has garnered in the smartphone and tablet markets. While that’s an understandable and legitimate concern, it turns out it doesn’t really reflect what many companies are doing about custom mobile applications.

According to a survey my firm, TECHnalysis Research, fielded earlier this year with over 300 US-based IT professionals split evenly across small, medium and large businesses, custom Windows applications are actually being built by a very respectable 41% of companies surveyed. As the chart below shows, the number reaches 58% for large enterprise with 1,000 or more employees.

Tablet App Development Platforms

©2014, TECHnalysis Research

While those figures may seem puzzling to some, I believe there are some very logical reasons why they are where they are. First, most organizations that have in-house programming teams have a strong bias towards Windows because that’s what they know. Custom Windows desktop applications have been the lifeblood of many companies for over two decades, so it should be no surprise to anyone that the majority of a company’s in-house programming teams are going to know Windows and want to leverage that expertise.

In a related way, most of the custom applications that a company already has in use are likely to be Windows-based. Given that many mobile applications are being written to build onto the existing custom applications and data files that an organization has, the choice of Windows for mobile applications makes sense.

In addition, Microsoft has been offering a broad range of programming tools for custom enterprise applications for a very long time. The company is widely known for the general quality and scope of their tools, so again, it makes sense to use the tools companies have available. While custom programming tools for the other mobile platforms are certainly growing at a rapid pace, it will be a while before they have the same range of choices designed specifically for in-house business application programmers that Microsoft does.

Finally, another point to consider is that given the growth of touch-based Windows notebooks and Microsoft’s move to a common set of APIs across various flavors of Windows, companies can build applications that will run both on Windows-based tablets, as well as touch-based Windows PCs or 2-in-1 devices. While Windows 8 and 2-in-1 deployments in enterprise have been modest to date, many organizations like to plan and build for the future. With the promising prospects for the new Windows 10 and the ongoing evolution of the notebook that 2-in-1s represent, again, you can make a solid argument for why the interest in building enterprise mobile applications for Windows is already as high as it is, and likely to go higher.

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Bob O'Donnell

Bob O’Donnell is the president and chief analyst of TECHnalysis Research, LLC a technology consulting and market research firm that provides strategic consulting and market research services to the technology industry and professional financial community. You can follow him on Twitter @bobodtech.

6 thoughts on “Does Windows Stand a Chance With Enterprise Mobile Apps?”

  1. There might be a few additional points in favor of Windows:
    – Windows tablets very lack of consumer appeal makes it less likely the devices will be used for non-work purposes and risk being contaminated with malware in the process.
    – admin tools are probably already in place. It’s much easier to take care of additional Windows devices via the ecisting Windwos Management tools, than to setup and maintain something for a completely foreign ecosystem, however integrated with MS’s tools.
    – OEMs are providing a wide range of hardware, from essentially disposable ($100) to military-grade ($1,000 and up) and custom-built.
    – MS are adept at “talking entreprise”, ie having something of a roadmap, and maintaining backwards compatibility.

    1. Regarding your last point, IBM is world-renown for “talking enterprise”. The name itself is synonymous with enterprise and unimpeachable analytics, so the fact that they’ve teamed up with Apple can’t be overlooked when discussing where Microsoft fits in a future where Apple and IBM are working together.

      While Apple claims serving 98% of Fortune 1000 companies it’s clear there’s still room to grow and IBM will help them solidify their already incredibly strong presence in the enterprise.

  2. If i was Microsoft i will be more worry about Chrome OS than mobile at this point

    If you think getting Mobile is challenging for Microsoft wait until those Chromebook Platform, Google for Work is become widely popular in the enterprise sector to see what it will do Microsoft when developer realize that with Chrome OS they can create powerful App that work on all screen size with very little cost compare to windows

    Microsoft need to be careful when thinking about Mobile because a lot have change since then. nowadays is not about basic OS function rather cloud base platform on top of any OS.

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