Most professionals (lawyers and accountants) conduct at least some of their fee-producing knowledge work on mobile devices, specifically, smartphones and tablets. Tablet and smartphone apps are a great way to connect to clients and reach out to prospective clients. By way of example, check out some of the mobile apps of Deloitte, PwC, and McKinsey on Google Play, and iPad apps from EY, Baker & McKenzie, and Allen & Overy. Firms can post news, advice and insight to their clients’ mobile devices. Likewise, some professional services firms are creating internal app stores to distribute apps that boost internal productivity. Several interesting questions arise, however, about which mobile operating system to support.
A firm operating globally needs professional employees and clients active in dozens of countries. A global versus local perspective yields different insights about which mobile OS to support. Evidence indicates that 81% of the global smartphone marketshare belongs to Android and that Android’s share of the tablet market is increasing at iOS’ expense. Sales of iPads in China are decreasing relative to those of Android-based tablets. iPads continue to command a lot of marketshare in the United States and Europe. Within any country, the dynamics can differ from the global. Windows phones appear to be the second most popular smartphone in India.
Professional services firms operating globally must develop for a plurality of mobile operating systems to reach their employees, clients and potential clients. Due to local variations in language and mobile OS preference, it probably makes sense for much of the development for client-facing applications to occur locally with internal enterprise apps developed at least partially by some sort of centralized mobile development team to ensure adherence to local and cross-border security and client-confidentiality standards.
The use of HTML5 offers the promise of reducing development costs with the benefit of being able to develop once but deploy on multiple mobile operating systems. But there are risks in relying too much on HTML5. A presentation by BI Intelligence indicates inconsistent mobile browser support for the full range of HTML5 features. Clients who value robust offline access will be disappointed with pure HTML5 apps. Native apps, by contrast, support a robust offline experience – such as C-level executive clients in an airplane – with no Wifi connection – reading important insights on a native iPad app. Evidence indicates that native apps deliver better security, UX and overall performance than pure HTML5 apps. In very short summary, it appears that a segmentation strategy is needed.
Which mobile OS to support and whether to develop a native, hybrid or Web app, or develop in HTML5 depends on the segment: the target user’s needs, security and confidentiality concerns, the value of the target user to the professional services firm, the need/desire to avoid working through a 3rd-party online store, and speed-to-market needs.
It is a complex but exciting mobile world. What are your experiences in mobile app development?