ORLANDO, Fla.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Kony Solutions, Inc., the leading mobile and multichannel application platform provider, today announced the results of its annual survey of global enterprises. The survey revealed that delivering a high-quality user experience and improving mobile app performance are top business priorities, and that mobile apps are increasingly viewed as a business differentiation tool to increase customer engagement, reinforce brand value, and provide better customer service. More than 200 survey respondents also reported their top technical concerns are support for open standards and multi-platform mobile app support–especially for hybrid apps, which are expected to be the biggest gainers in the next 12 months over native or HTML5 apps.

Released in conjunction with MGI Research, the 2012 “State of Mobile Apps” survey also explored 2012 mobile budget priorities. Forty-eight percent of respondents noted they plan to increase budgets for multi-platform development tools over the next 12 months.

“From increased attention to the user experience and planning bigger investments in multi-channel offerings, this report demonstrates that more organizations are adopting a ‘mobile first’ mindset. It also confirms something our customers have long known – mobile is a key driver of business success, and an essential channel for increasing customer loyalty and improving customer service,” said Harold Goldberg, Kony’s CMO. “While it’s crucial to stay at the forefront of trends such as BYOD and HTML5, it is clear that a multi-channel, hybrid approach is what enterprises are looking for to stay ahead in today’s mobile environment, ensuring that they can future-proof their mobile strategy and position their organizations for continued growth.”

The survey also found that many companies are still challenged by mobile apps, with about 6% reporting a “huge failure” in their mobile app development and more than 21% reporting either below average or disappointing ROI from mobile apps.

Beyond the top findings about improving the user experience, open standards and multi-platform support, additional findings include:

Business Drivers: Mobile applications are increasingly viewed as a business differentiation tool – both for consumers and employees.

• Survey respondents indicated that enhancing customer engagement (87%) and increasing competitive advantage (79%) are key business drivers.
• The survey revealed that customer service apps (55%) are the top applications in development this year.
• More than half of respondents (53%) said they are currently planning development of between one and five B2E applications.
• In fact, respondents said providing applications for today’s mobile workforce were a top priority, and a majority reported plans to implement mobile strategies for sales, collaboration and field services.

Technical Preferences: Companies are still looking for the “secret sauce” to mobile, and are taking a practical approach to new technologies and standards.

• With many companies still in the early phases of adoption, enhanced application performance (72%) and multi-platform mobile application support from a single code base (67%) weighed as top requirements. These were rated over managing BYOD (46%) and greater use of HTML5 (26%).
• As previously noted, survey respondents are also putting a larger focus on hybrid applications in the coming year. While 59% of respondents noted that they are using hybrid applications, companies expect that number to rise to 71% over the next 12 months.

“These results are consistent with the fast-moving adoption of mobile apps. Through this survey, we see that organizations that are focused holistically on the entire mobile application ecosystem — from planning through design and development, to deployment and management — are getting outstanding results and ROI from their mobile app investments” said Igor Stenmark, Managing Director of MGI Research. “With such a heavy emphasis placed on application performance and user experience, more organizations are realizing that a simplistic focus on just time-to-market is no longer the best approach and that a disciplined implementation of a proper mobile application framework enables companies to best meet their mobile business objectives.”

To download the full survey results, please visit http://kony.com/resources/white-papers.