How the cloud will transform mobile apps

It’s commonly accepted by now that mobile application storefronts are a new frontier of wireless. It’s a space being infiltrated by handset-makers, software companies, operations/business support systems vendors, thousands of new and experienced developers, third parties and even carriers. It also is a space that will be — and already is being — transformed by the cloud, according to ABI Research.

In a report released this week, ABI said that new software running in the cloud will drastically change the way mobile apps are developed, acquired and used, breaking the market free from the constraints of limited computing power. This new paradigm could deliver revenues of nearly $20 billion annually by the end of 2014, said Mark Beccue, senior analyst with ABI.

Web development can enable apps to run on servers instead of locally, so handset requirements for processing power and memory can be greatly reduced and developers will only need to create one version of their app. Certain apps and services, including Google Apps and Amazon.com, already use the cloud, but for the most part, while the industry is trending toward this, it’s still in the early days, Beccue said.

The “write once, read everywhere” mentality has been a goal for many companies to overcome the challenge of multiple mobile operating systems (OSs) that force developers to choose between picking their favorite OS or creating multiple versions of their app. Companies such as Qualcomm have launched open platforms for app distribution to address this issue, but it still doesn’t solve the problem of taxing processing power and memory constraints.