Mobile Business App Market to Hit $63 Billion by 2020

A recent study says the market for mobile enterprise business applications will increase by $22.5 billion over the next five years.

The market will reach $40.5 billion this year and $63 billion by 2020, according to research released by Strategy Analytics.

The study’s author, Gina Luk, says the mobile workforce continues to increase and demand new mobile-oriented strategies. Many of the organizations surveyed had already started using at least one mobile application.

“There is tremendous pressure on businesses to make workers more productive,” she said in a news release. “Throughout 2015 companies rolled out new mobile, social, cloud and big-data analytics-based business applications to help deal with changing customer, employee, and partner expectations.”

Those apps range from text messaging to conferencing to payroll to customer relationship management. Business-process applications were the second most used, according to the study. The dominant app type among mobile workers was SMS, which decreased in revenue along with MMS this year. The study said over-the-top (OTT) instant messaging services are taking a chunk out of SMS and MMS.

Additionally, corporate IT departments have shifted their job from “control to enablement.” And the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) culture is gaining traction.

“Consumer demand for ubiquitous communications and OTT IM are higher than ever and are also having an impact with BYOD growth,” the study said.

Channel Partners recently highlighted some of the most popular business apps, including those for CRM, collaboration, conferencing and finance.