Gadget love drives engineering hires
Jinfo Blog

26th October 2010

By Nancy Davis Kho

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If it were a Facebook status, it would certainly read 'In a Relationship'. In a report released last week by the Pew Internet & American Life Project called 'Americans and Their Gadgets', survey respondents agreed that mobile phones are their Number One choice. (http://digbig.com/5bcrhx) According to a survey of 3,001 American adults ages 18 and older, 85% of them own a cell phone; for the 18-29 year olds, the percentage jumps to 96%. Those are your workforce newbies, if you haven't noticed already, and with a mobile phone welded to their palm, they are necessarily going to influence the way that business information is consumed. The study found that nearly three-quarters of Americans own a desktop or laptop computer, about half own some sort of MP3 player, and 42% own a home gaming device. eBook adoption is still in early days compared to the other devices, with only 4% ownership. But as Pew found, 'these devices are proving popular with traditional early adopter groups such as the affluent and highly educated--ownership rates for tablets and e-book readers among college graduates and those earning $75,000 or more per year are roughly double the national average'. As mobile devices becomes smarter - with Window Phone 7 operating system finally hitting the market, in a rush to catch up with Google Android and Apple iPhone functionality - it's probably no wonder that a study by online job board Dice Holdings Inc. found that almost 57% of employers and outside recruiters tasked with hiring for mobile-related jobs plan to increase their number of hires in the next 12 months. According to an article in Bloomberg Businessweek by Douglas MacMillan, 'more than half the respondents described the supply of quality mobile software designers and engineers as "scarce".' (http://digbig.com/5bcrhy). One of the reasons cited in the story for the increased competitiveness of the hiring market is the demand for talent in countries like India and China. So, at least in the US market, the demand for mobility is there but the engineering and development capacity is lagging behind. Sounds like times are ripe for M&A in the enterprise mobile computing market - like the announcement yesterday that Zenprise, Inc., which provides enterprise mobile management and mobile device management software, had acquired Sparus Software, a French company specializing in managing, securing and remotely deploying line of business applications for mobile devices (http://digbig.com/5bcrjb). Surely a sign of things to come.

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