EMC predicts bright future for Android and Apple business apps

LISBON: Smartphone applications will become the main way in which business users interact with corporate data in the future, according to EMC's chief strategy officer.

Mark Lewis told V3.co.uk at the firm's Momentum conference in Lisbon that platforms such as Android and Apple's iPad and iPhone have quickly come to dominate the consumer landscape.

"Half the people at EMC own an iPad," he said. "I paid for mine myself, and have an EMC laptop I don't like much and don't even carry with me anymore."

Consumer apps currently available for these platforms offer a much more efficient way of interacting with content on sites such as Facebook than traditional browser-based navigation, and should be exploited by corporates, according to Lewis.

"These small apps are the future, but they are almost non-existent for business use today," he said.

"Look at how well they help productivity in our personal lives, and any business would be a fool not to adopt them in a similar way. We should be driving everything to the same set of modern platforms."