Global CIO: IBM And Hewlett-Packard Battle Over Booming Mobile MarketGlobal CIO: IBM And Hewlett-Packard Battle Over Booming Mobile Market

This is the second year in a row that IBM has offered an iPhone app for the U.S. Open. About 286,000 people downloaded the software last year. This time around, it also runs on Apple Inc.'s iPad and other smart phones such as the Droid. IBM had 150,000 downloads by the first day of play.

At Wimbledon, for the second year in a row IBM's showcasing some augmented-reality apps designed to help stimulate business customers into thinking about how they might be able to deploy location-based information and marketing offering video streams, audio, graphics, and other relevant info—all through the same handheld devices we still refer to quite anachronistically as "phones."

Here's a bit of analysis and Android-centric speculation on IBM's motives for its augmented-reality "Seer" apps at Wimbledon from a recent piece on GoMoNews.com:

"Besides offering live geo-tagged information on taxi queue lengths [and] food and drink stands, the app should help users catch more of the court action, even if they are on the other side of the grounds. Hence the claim that they can 'see through walls.'

"The Seer applications for Android and iPhone handsets are currently available to download directly from either the iTunes App Store or the Android Market.

"Significantly, GoMo News was interested to note that IBM intends to provide its VIP guests with a number of handsets running the Seer Android application. Because Android is better than iPhone, perhaps?"

Interesting question, but rather than playing favorites long-term, IBM seems to want to make nice with everybody in the mobile-device world. In a very good piece on IBM's mobile strategy, industry analyst Roger Kay of Endpoint Technologies Associates makes the case that IBM wants to make its mobile-infrastructure software as open as possible:

Turns out IBM's software group writes a lot of code specifically for the iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry--oh, and Android and even Windows Mobile. These people are testing their own products on approved platforms. I have a chance to sit at a lunch table with Steve Mills, the head of the software group. I ask him, "So, what cooperation do you get from Apple?" "None," he replies, adding, "but APIs are APIs," which is software talk for "we write code to the same public hooks as everyone else." Mills makes it eminently clear that the company will never go into the mobile device business. IBM is completely committed to creating on- and off-ramps for other firms' phones, tablets and PCs.

Kay's analysis in forbes.com also looks into the role that IBM's pending acquisition of Sterling Commerce will have on the company's deep and wide mobile strategy:

"The essential theme of the day is that work is becoming more mobile, and technology suppliers must adjust to that reality," writes Kay. "IBM's software is being rewritten to deal with the mobile world. For example, the company is in the process of acquiring Sterling Commerce, which allows businesses to connect to each other's back-end data for things like billing, inventory and trucking capacity. Sterling will reside in the software group under WebSphere, IBM's on-demand business software.

"With Sterling and WebSphere together, IBM can offer a soup-to-nuts e-commerce platform. Both groups have modified their products to allow data to be viewed and modified through mobile devices. For now, Sterling supports the iPhone and iPad through a set of applications delivered through the Apple App Store, and WebSphere offers iPhone, iPad and BlackBerry support through a mobile browser. After the acquisition, IBM will iron out a consistent platform strategy."

So while we won't be seeing any TrueBluePhones or LittleBluePads, CIOs will be sure to see IBM offering a sweeping vision for how all those snazzy devices are no more valuable than a garage-door opener without the extensive software applications and infrastructure and security that are turning the global-mobile vision into reality.

Better yet, those CIOs will also be seeing lots of ideas from HP as well and the competitive dynamic between IBM and HP will surely accelerate the arrival of the global-mobile world of business technology.

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