Taking mobile apps to the cloud will boost the market

Mobile applications will use cloud computing to increase their availability across various platforms, according to research released this week.

Mark Beccue, senior analyst with ABI research, claimed that by developing applications within a cloud and allowing people to access remote servers, the market will increase.

Beccue said in the report: "Apple's iPhone has sparked a new consumer interest in mobile applications. The number of mobile app stores and application offerings are growing rapidly. Yet limited processing power, battery life and data storage even in smartphones will limit mobile application growth in the mass market."

Developers often come up against the issue of multiple operating systems, meaning they either have to develop the app for one particular system or create several different versions of the same app.

Also, the handsets need to have decent processing power and memory within them to handle the downloaded applications.

By moving both developing and usage processes into the cloud, the power of the handset becomes unimportant and developers can make one version of an application for all, he claimed.

Beccue said: "If a mobile phone has an internet client that's thin enough, you can move all the processing and storage out to the cloud. The internet basically solves the limitations you have from the form factor."

"Cloud computing will bring unprecedented sophistication to mobile applications. Consumers just want the apps, they don't really care if its web based or not, and this will open up that access."