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UPCOMING EVENTS
2012 Mobile Cloud Forum
San Jose, California
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ABOUT MOBILE CLOUD FORUM
Date: March 5-6, 2012
Location:
San Jose, California, United
States
Open
& Ubiquitous Mobile Cloud Technology for Next Decade
According to the latest study from Juniper Research, the market for mobile cloud will grow 88% every year from 2009 to 2014. The market was just over $400 million this past year, but by 2014 it will reach $9.5 billion. Driving this growth will be the adoption of the new mobile cloud architecture, increased mobile broadband coverage and the need for always-on collaborative services for the enterprise, etc.
Mobile cloud refers to an infrastructure where both the data storage and the data processing happen outside of the mobile device from which an application is launched. To the typical consumer, a cloud-based mobile application looks and feels just like any app purchased or downloaded from a mobile application store like iTunes. However, the app is driven from the "cloud," not from the handheld device itself. There are already a few well-known mobile cloud apps out there including Google's Gmail, Google Voice for iPhone and Apple's iCloud, etc. When launched via iPhone homescreen shortcuts, these apps perform just like any other app on the iPhone, but all of their processing power comes from the cloud through open wireless architecture (OWA) transmission.
In the future, there will be even more applications like these available, but they won't necessarily be mobilized web sites like those in Google's line-up. Cloud-based mobile apps are perfectly capable of being packaged in a way that allows them to be sold alongside traditional mobile apps in mobile application stores, with no one but the developers any wiser.
Furthermore, mobile cloud can scale far beyond the capabilities of any smartphone. Instead of being limited to the data storage and processing power contained in a mobile device, mobile cloud apps have all the power of a server-based computing infrastructure (called virtual mobile server) accessible through an app's mobile interface. This not only allows owners of low-cost "feature phones" (non-smartphones) the ability to access the same mobile applications used on more advanced platforms, it also allows the apps themselves to become more powerful and capable of more.
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