Gartner Magic Quadrant: Mobile Application Development (MAD) Platforms

IT research firm Gartner, Inc. (IT) has released the results for its Magic Quadrant for Mobile Application Development (MADP) Platforms, following on last week’s release of its Magic Quadrant report for managed mobility services (MMS). You may be surprised to find out where Apple (AAPL), Blackberry (BBRY), Microsoft (MSFT). and Google (GOOG) were placed on this most recent report.

Gartner said this particular market has major differences from the larger application development (AD) market because of the unique challenges presented to vendors developing apps for enterprises, including:

The IT research firm said MADP vendors have five different business strategies: pure-play MADP vendors, enterprise software vendors, mobile applications vendors, OS platform and device vendors, and open-source projects.

Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for MADP Platforms

Gartner said it evaluates each vendor on significant market impact, a global presence, intellectual property, enterprise use, general-purpose MADP, openness and web technologies.

Leaders

Gartner said vendors in this quadrant must be profitable, present lower risk and produce consistently high project results as the market begins to consolidate and competition grows.

SAP AG (SAP), jQuery Mobile, IBM (IBM), Adobe (ADBE), Kony, and Antenna were placed into this quadrant.

Challengers

To place into the Challengers quadrant, vendors “must have high numbers of enterprise clients; a large, growing base of seats in deployment; and the ability to meet the needs of all departments in global rollouts.”

MicroStrategy.com and Salesforce.com (CRM) met Gartner’s requirements for the Challengers quadrant.

Niche Players

The IT research firm said vendors in this quadrant are “not as strong in one or more of the following criteria: product breadth/completeness or focus, geography, or number of customers.”

Apple, DSI, Google, Dojo, Netbiscuits, Blackberry, Microsoft, Motorola Solutions (MSI), Verivo Software, and ClickSoftware were placed into the Niche Players quadrant

Visionaries

“Visionaries in this market have a compelling vision of their products’ and the market’s future, as well as the technical direction to take them there. However, they have not backed up that vision in one or more of the following areas: history of execution, revenue, size of client base or strong financial results,” Gartner said.

Gartner placed Appcelerator, Sencha, and Xamarin into this quadrant.

“Selecting MADPs has become an urgent issue for many CIOs,” the report said. “Less than seven years after the introduction of Apple’s iPhone, the worldwide installed base of smartphones and tablets will surpass that of PCs in 2013.”

Gartner published its Magic Quadrant report for mobile device management (MDM) in May to help enterprise buyers navigate the MDM market, including some familiar vendors, such as AirWatch, MobileIron, BoxTone, and Tangoe.