With so many mobile devices proliferating in the enterprise, organizations that want to create applications to boost their workers' productivity can find the task challenging. Curating cross-platform mobile development for any number of systems is no treat for a company's cadre of developers.
That's why the market is growing development tools that can create apps capable of running across mobile platforms. Demand for those tools is expected to jump in the coming years. Forrester estimates that more than 60 percent of enterprises are already engaged in cross-platform development, and IDC forecasts that the market for cross-platform development tools will increase at a compound annual growth rate of more than 38 percent, reaching $4.8 billion by 2017. Meanwhile, Gartner expects more than 20 million enterprise apps to be developed by 2018.