Skills gap still the biggest challenge in mobile app delivery

Mobile device apps

Finding skilled mobile developers is one of the top challenges when it comes to the timely delivery of new apps.

This is among the findings of the 2014 Mobile Trends report from enterprise mobile platform provider Appcelerator. The company along with IDC surveyed over 8,000 mobile developers and 121 IT decision makers to get their take on trends that affect the way businesses use mobile in the workplace.

The skills gap was rated by 33.3 percent of developers and 41.3 percent of decision makers as the number one difficulty. The skills problem isn't simply about coding languages but also the way processes must be adapted and apps designed to connect to back office data. Agreeing on features and design priorities is seen as a problem by 17.6 percent of developers and 9.9 percent of decision makers.

There's also division of opinion over who owns the mobile agenda. 66.9 percent of IT decision makers feel that IT is the primary driver in setting the organization’s mobile agenda, however, 49.7 percent of developers say the business side is in control.

This same split is evident on HTML5 too. Among decision makers 70.6 percent report a positive experience of implementing HTML5 but that figure falls to 37.2 percent amongst developers.

The report indicates that release velocity is increasing too along with the number of platforms that need to be supported. 83.9 percent of developers report that their businesses are supporting two or more mobile operating systems, and 55 percent say they release monthly or more often.

What both sides agree on is the importance of accessibility to mobile platforms, with 90 percent of developers and 87 percent of IT decision makers saying it was likely or very likely that connecting mobile apps to both public and enterprise data sources will become the norm.

The full report is available in a snazzy page-flipping format on the Appcelerator website.

Image Credit: logolord / Shutterstock

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