Mobile BI

Colin White wrote an interesting post yesterday in his blog in B-Eye-Network, entitled Mobile BI: Do the Apple iPhone and Google G1 Have a Role to Play?

He did a question: “What role, if any, will these gadgets have in the business environment for applications such as mobile BI?", related with Apple iPhone and Google G1. He asked this question to two executives from BI industry.

John Schwartz, CEO of Business Objects, noted that mobile BI was seeing growth in both the US and Europe, but the device of choice for mobile BI was still the Blackberry, because its architecture was more suited to this type of processing. Business Objects has seen little demand for iPhone support.

Donald Cambell, CTO of Cognos, said IT is is still primarily supplying Blackberry’s for business use. He said the iPhone still doesn’t have the promised capability to run processes in the background, which limits its use for BI. He noted that the new Google G1 has an excellent development platform, and if the device is successful it could have a major impact on mobile business applications.

I think the market to mobile business applications in general, and particularly Mobile BI is growing quickly, and it has space for both Apple iPhone and Google G1, but Blackberry will still dominate the mobile business applications market (and mobile BI) for a long time, because it is a good gadget and is consolidated in the business marketplace. To change this, Google G1 will need to turn into a huge success and/or Apple will need to put in iPhone the capability to run processes in the background.