As firms move off PCs and to mobile devices like smartphones, the market for phone apps is growing. These are not fun little games to wile the time away, these are line of business apps that small businesses, which are embracing smartphones as fast as the enterprise, are embracing.
AT&T, the second-largest mobile provider in the nation, has come out with a batch of tools such as forms, dictation, CRM and billing for smartphones. Enterprise Mobile Today has more information.
Mobile IT managers of small businesses needing guidance in finding the best mobile applications for their companies have a new tool at their disposal: a mobile app portal from AT&T designed specifically for that purpose.
The nation’s No. 2 wireless carrier today unveiled an upgraded version of its Small Business Mobile Application Recommender Tool (SMART) that offers improved payment processing and that recommends mobile downloads based on a company’s needs or specific industry.
Additionally, AT&T today released four new mobile applications that focus on streamlining business tasks in the field and that can be purchased directly from the revamped SMART portal.
News of AT&T’s small business mobile app portal comes at a time when more SMBs (less than 100 employees) are spending more on mobile apps — increasing from $241.8 million in 2008 to a projected $616.5 million market by 2012 — a compound annual growth rate of more than 20 percent, according to market research firm Compass Intelligence.