Mobile Apps: Too Many Eggs in Too Many Baskets?

As just reported here at INN, financial services firms are voting for Apple's iPad and iPhone platforms over other mobile platforms, including Android and Windows.

At the same time, another analyst report says Google’s Android has become the leading platform. In the article, INN Editor-in-Chief Pat Speer spoke to a number of insurance IT executives about their mobile deployments, and with so many choices now fighting for dominance, the insurers are taking a wait-and-see approach.

While mobile apps are extremely innovative, cheap and easy to use, the bottom line is putting all one's eggs in one vendor's basket is a risky bet.

Insurance companies only have so many IT budget dollars and only so many staff members to build and maintain applications—and all are already stretched to the limit. Insurance IT executives I have spoken to point out that they are hesitant to committing resources to a single platform.

The current situation with mobile apps harkens back to another time, when operating systems were competing for desktop PCs. The OSes each had their own application ecosystems, and enterprises and application vendors alike had to make hard choices about support. Eventually, the Web browser essentially made applications accessible to all clients.

Mobile browsers are readily available, and can be supported on any mobile device. This may be the way to go for insurance IT departments with overstretched IT resources.

Joe McKendrick is an author, consultant, blogger and frequent INN contributor specializing in information technology.

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