As 2015 kicks off, it is that time of the year when every thought leader, reporter, blogger, and chief executive begins making predictions for the year ahead. At MichiganLabs, we recognize the fruitlessness in attempting to predict the future for an every-changing and fast moving mobile environment. Instead, we would like to provide the top-3 trending thoughts that may help you to reflect on what’s ahead.

Let’s focus just on enterprise mobility to keep things simple.

1. Mobile security becomes even more significant – From JPMorgan Chase to Target to the most recent Sony hack, 2014 was the year that data security was compromised on many levels. As enterprise organizations continue to focus on cybersecurity, look for an increase in investments for security technologies. For mobile, this may include mobile malware detection, mobile data privacy, and possibly mobile app auditing. According to Gartner, 75% of mobile apps will fail basic security tests in 2015. And Symantec recently estimated the average cost of a mobile security incident to be a staggering $429,000. Given these high-stakes, enterprise organizations may consider implementing further encryption and basic two-factor authentication technologies.

2. Business-2-enterprise (B2E) apps will grow by 150% – last year, IT departments begin to build out mobile teams in order to support the increase in mobile application development and provisioning. More and more, enterprise mobile apps are being seen as a necessary tool for employees, vendors, and clients. This represents a shift in seeing apps only as a way to engage with consumers and having more specific enterprise purposes. EMC recently released an app for sales teams to provide interactive presentations to prospective customers. Check it out here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/emc-interactive/id709532711?mt=8 or below is a screenshot.



3. Evolution from mobile analytics to true data science – recent years have produced several tools for traditional reporting capabilities for mobile. These tools typically include the basic analysis of operational data and user behaviors. While these solutions were helpful, they didn’t provide enterprise organizations with the deepest level of understanding on how customers behave throughout the lifecycle of an app experience. In 2015, look for behavior prediction tools and auditing services for improving the user experience. These solutions will likely be extensions from existing mobile analytic provider stacks or brand new platforms with the goal of bringing data science more heavily into the mobile app space.