IBM’s partnership with Apple shows that “these established enterprises are beginning to think, speak, and act like entrepreneurs,” said Douglas Soltys, the Senior Editor of Mobile Syrup. An entrepreneurial mindset is key to the mobile market, Soltys explained, because it will allow these to companies to combine different perspectives and — hopefully — create something spectacular.

IBM Deal with Apple

Soltys described the IBM-Apple partnership as “a blending of cultures.” Apple, he said, builds great hardware, “and that’s being dragged more and more into the enterprise, which [Apple doesn’t] understand.” IBM, on the other hand, is “very enterprise,” but only recently “getting into 21st century modality.”

This partnership is “more than just distribution,” Soltys remarked, “it’s both companies growing.” The entire IBM Interconnect conference event, he observed “has been an example of convergence — not just about mobile, not just about cloud, not just about developers, but about how it comes together.”

What App Developers Need to Do to Succeed

Despite both tech behemoth’s experience and prowess, the mobile marketplace is a tough space to succeed. Mobile customers, Soltys commented, “don’t know what they want, but they know what they hate.”

He continued to outline one of the biggest problems mobile faces: Developers “passing off the difficulty to the user, instead of solving the problem for them.” Developers, he said, wrestle with managing users’ expectations of real time, as well as presenting real time in a way “that’s not too complicated.” The trick, according to Soltys, is: “simplify, but keep it powerful.” If an app user has to go to their laptop because the app is too complicated, “they’re never using that app again.”

Performance is the bottom line, Soltys stressed. It’s a “fundamental requirement: Users won’t spend time with an app when they’re on-the-go in the field,” he said, “they just need it to work.”

It’s up to the Developer

The best thing IBM could do, Soltys theorized, is “following the example of what we’ve seen in the past few years in the Bring-Your-Own-Service space.” That is, enable the building of apps designed for small business, but with a consumer experience in mind.

Ultimately, IBM’s decision to unbundle their services and distribute them through the cloud will offer developers more choice, said Soltys. But that choice will only make a difference if developers use IBM services to “solve a problem for their user.” “If they solve user problems,” he stressed, “they’ll succeed.”

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of IBM InterConnect.

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