Tag Archives: Go to Market

How Do You Bridge a Gap Between Supply and Demand? Six Suggestions

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Situation: The rapid evolution of mobile devices combined with AI creates new opportunities to build mobile enterprise application businesses. However, for businesses there is no clear path to mobilizing business applications. How do you bridge a gap between supply and demand in mobile enterprise apps?

Advice:

  • There are three legs to the stool of a successful SMB business model: developer platform, go to market strategy, and licensing and maintenance sales strategy. There is a consolidation play available for a small company that can generate traction in all three.
  • Microsoft originally got traction for Windows by being maniacal about building great developer relationships. Over time they leveraged this and consistently got better and better. There are several platforms available that show promise, including Appinventiv, Innowise, and Intuz. Older platforms that continue to show promise are IBM and Accenture.
  • Next is go to market strategies. Yahoo launched a search engine for mobile apps in Yahoo Mobile. This is important to the creation of a viable market place for apps regardless of platform. If a viable platform developer can do a deal to generate a market for business apps this will go a long way to developing a successful go to market strategy.
  • The third leg, development of a long-term licensing and maintenance sales strategy, will most likely occur through acquisition of a company with the first two pieces. The lead would be an initial developer platform but could spin off to others. Apple has been leveraging this play with its iCloud strategy; the ongoing challenge for Apple will be making it enterprise-friendly.
  • RIM and Microsoft both have a long history serving business customers, huge customer bases and  the marketing capabilities to support mobile business applications. A wild card may be HP – currently one of the largest hardware purveyor in the enterprise and consumer space.
  • It is fascinating to watch how this market develops.

Thanks to Jim Hogan, CEO, SView LLC for his contribution to this article.

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