Annual revenues from cloud-based mobile applications will reach nearly $9.5 billion by 2014, according to industry analyst Juniper Research. The growth will be fuelled by the need for converged, collaborative services, the widespread adoption of mobile broadband services and the deployment of key technological enablers such as HTML5 and the Open Mobile Alliance’s Smart Card Web Server (SCWS).

A Juniper Research report has found that enterprise applications will account for the majority of revenues over the next five years, with businesses increasingly seeking to capitalise on the ability of Platform as a Service (PaaS) providers to offer scalable, flexible data storage solutions allied to device agnostic, synchronised office services. However, consumer-oriented apps will comprise an ever-larger proportion of total revenues, derived both from time-based subscriptions to services such as mobile online gaming and advertising from cloud-based social networks.

The mobile cloud applications & services report also warned that many enterprise customers still remained wary of entrusting their personal data to remote third-parties, and that recent high-profile data losses amongst corporate mobile users in the USA would only exacerbate these concerns.

According to report author Dr Windsor Holden, “Not only is it imperative for cloud providers to ensure that access to and storage of customer data is secure, but that the procedures that they put in place in this regard – including data backup strategies – are transparent to the customer.”

Other findings from the Juniper report include:

• While the onset of a cloud-based ecosystem may further erode the strength of the mobile operator/customer relationship, cloud offers operators the opportunity to develop new revenue streams as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and PaaS providers
• Lack of network capacity may continue to be a constraint on the growth of network-based services even after LTE and WiMAX networks are deployed

About the study

The Mobile Cloud whitepaper and further details of the study ‘Mobile Cloud Applications & Services: Monetising Enterprise & Consumer Markets 2009-2014’ can be freely downloaded from the link below.

About Juniper Research

Juniper Research assesses the current and future status of mobile cloud based on interviews, case studies and analysis from representatives of some of the leading organisations in this bleeding edge industry.

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