“Creating talent pool to develop specialised apps a big challenge”

New wave: (From left) Cognizant Technology Solutions vice-chairman N. Lakshmi Narayanan, Polaris Financial Technology founder, chairman and CEO Arun Jain and Mobile Conference chairman Anand P. Surana in Chennai on Thursday. Photo: K.V. Srinivasan / The Hinu

In future, the gold rush will be in developing applications for non-PC based devices, as smart phone devices have overtaken personal computers and laptops, said N. Lakshmi Narayanan, vice-chairman, Cognizant Technology Solutions, on Thursday.

Delivering the special address at ‘Mobile conference 2012′, organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), he said that as the future would be driven predominantly by younger people under 35 years of age, the biggest challenge for business organisation was to create the talent pool that could develop specialised and focussed applications (apps) keeping in mind the consumer preferences.

Mentioning that the new world required a new thinking as consumers opted for smart phones and not personal computers and laptops, he said the future of working, worker, workplace and communication would be driven predominantly by non-PC devices. However, enough people were not available to create the apps.

Urging youngsters to develop new apps in different languages, he said that the largest selling business apps were in markets such as Brazil, China and Japan. India offered fantastic opportunity for developing apps in different languages.

Arun Jain, founder, chairman and CEO, Polaris Financial Technology, stressed the need for companies to get into design thinking to emulate the phenomenal success of Apple through its iPods and iPads.

“Design thinking is different from designing products or management. It is about designing the entire eco-system. From that perspective, Aravind Eye Care can be thought of an apt example of design thinking that created an entire eco-system of eye care using innovative public, private and local community partnerships.”

In his welcome speech, S. Sridharan, Convenor, IT, ITeS & Electronics Panel, CII-Chennai Zone, said as compared to its predecessors, the new wave of technologies such as cloud computing, mobile applications and social media were cost effective that could enable small players to access best systems and business practices to fight against large companies.

Anand P. Surana, chairman, Mobile Conference 2012, said that in just two years mobile-ready sites had grown from 1.50 lakh to 30 lakh. About 10.9 billion applications were downloaded in 2010 and the number was estimated to reach over 76 billion in 2014. Consumers spent $6.2 billion on apps last year and studies predict that it would grow to $35 billion by 2014.

source: http://www.TheHindu.com / News> Cities> Chennai / by Special Correspondent / Chennai, February 03rd, 2012