
Imagine being the business owner in dire need of a specific, no-brainer, killer app and no way to implement. Or imagine being AT&T with hundreds of such customers clamoring for solutions with money ready to spend. Therin was a huge gap. This deal should of been planned at launch of the first iPhone.
AT&T buying the smart phone app developer Plusmo is a brilliant hedge it greatly needs in the app world. While not completely at the mercy of outside developers to create content for smart phones, they’ve been stymied with strong reliance on them for content, and hampered in quality control of applications at every touchpoint.
AT&T has infamous open challenges with timeliness of approval processes. While this might not change immediately, or could get worse, if AT&T chooses the market strategy of creating content for biz customers, clearly representations could/should be created for streamlining the process with special offers.
The synergies gained are tremendous, even if only in gaining key learnings from having access to an in house service. They have some fabulous relationships with a multitude of customers who clamor for solutions. An offering should ensue for them through Biz channels to provide a smart phone app. Currently those customers, when delving into creating an app for their own external or internal processes, must vet those through clumsy and unreliable processes to identify bona fide developers knowledgeable of the buggy nuances of developers whose reputations haven’t had time to mature. While there are some bona fide developers out there, this biz can be akin to roofers coming into your neighborhood after the storm.
Now AT&T gains insider knowledge of the process and can create valuable products and services for themselves and enterprise customers with blue chip appearance and probably high prices and high margins. They should be able to represent a certain streamlining of processes, especially the approval process. While they may have developed a few internal apps already, historically this kind of new architecture sees most economic efficiencies developed by a nimble company in a lab outside of the politically confused labyrinth of the AT&T behemoth.
www.att.com
www.plusmo.com