In a recent study by the International Data Corporation that involves 350 US residents regarding their view about vendors effectively offering services in mobile application development (AD) and mobile testing services (for applications and devices), AT&T stood out from the crowd, followed by Verizon and IBM in third.  The IDC study showed that the brand name greatly influenced how the participants chose.

Aside from the brand name, the study was also able to come up with key findings that could greatly help in app development and app testing.

Key findings for app development:

• Need for experienced mobile user interface (UI/UX) skills is high
• Innovation and speed to market are critical
• Reusable frameworks expected to lower development costs
• Monetization of the mobile channel to grow in enterprise priority

Key findings for app testing:

• Demand for testers with strong communication skills
• Flexibility in packaging enterprise mobile testing services
• Industrialized text execution services critical

“Success as a provider of discrete or bundled mobile application development and/or testing services will require players to highlight a combination of their technical and business competencies and experience in highly iterative mobile prototyping and validation, as well as availability of end-to-end mobile life-cycle services,” said Rona Shuchat, director, Application Development, Testing and Management Services.

“Enterprise customers are challenged by the rapid pace of and investment required in mobile technology platforms, and many plan to leverage a range of professional project or fully outsourced mobile application services.”

IBM is already busy with their mobile efforts.  A couple of weeks back, Big Blue announced the  IBM Endpoint Manager for Mobile Devices which is a software platform that companies can use to secure and manage employees smartphones, tablets and laptops. They also announced their intent to acquire Worklight to add up to their mobile efforts. The acquisition will include Worklight Studio, an Eclipse-based IDE (integrated development environment) and Worklight Server.  The terms of the deal were not disclosed though it is expected that it will wrap up sometime this quarter.

The Worklight platform is useful for developing mobile applications for both consumers and enterprises, as well as targeted toward various industry verticals.  The platform includes SDKs for iOS, Android, Blackberry and Windows mobile devices, and according to Worklight, it “enables rich, cross-platform apps without requiring code translation, proprietary interpreters or unpopular programming languages.”

Since companies are now seeing the dollar signs in mobile app development, more and more companies are entering the enterprise side of the mobile app development sector.

Earlier this week we saw new analytics tools for Android app development and testing from Apkudo, and last January, Pyxies Mobile received $17 million in new funding and decided it was time for a change and rebranded itself to Verivo Software.  The company’s metamorphosis doesn’t end with the rebranding as they now offer a more complete mobility solution designed to meet the needs of multiple industries in order to stay ahead ot the competition.

According to their site, “With Verivo’s enterprise mobility software, you can now own your mobility initiatives, without having to rely on outside resources to develop and run your mobile apps.”

Appcelerator, the leading mobile platform company, recently hired former Gartner analyst Michael King as the company’s principal mobile strategist.  King will help Appcelerator’s enterprise customers define and implement their mobile strategies as well as guide the company’s internal product strategy, making sure that Appcelerator’s Titanium platform and integrated services meet the highest standards for building intuitive, cloud-connected content-rich applications for mobile, tablet and desktop platforms.  And to complete the bulk of his work, King will also provide strategic sales support, partner enablement, as well as market research/analysis and product evangelism.

And Facebook, which recently went public, is trialing bookmarks for third-party applications in their mobile news feed to increase user engagement and attract developers to their Facebook Platform mobile initiative.  The Facebook Platform mobile allows app developers to integrate Facebook into their already existing apps to attract more users.