The Age of Smartphone Applications Testing Beckons Testing Specialists

iPad / Smartphone/handheld based business applications will create a testing opportunity comparable to today’s desktop application testing. 

Morgan Stanley predicts that the shipment of Smartphone will beat the PC Shipments within the next two years. Yes, this does imply very rapid evolution of internet access but more than anything else, for Software Testing Services (STS) providers this means that iPad / Smartphone/handheld based business applications will create a testing opportunity comparable to today’s desktop application testing. 

With always-on access and super-fast ‘boot time’, near zero latency access to nearly all information and day-long-plus battery life in elegant portable devices, at affordable prices – little wonder, industry pundits think that Gartner on this count made an understatement when it said ‘by year-end 2012, over 75% of enterprise mobile users will have some form of a Smartphone’

Developing mobile applications used to be an arcane activity pursued by highly specialized developers, but no more. The surge in popularity of Android devices, BlackBerries,, iPhones and iPads has application development professionals gearing up to incorporate mobile development into mainstream development processes. In the present scenario, many application architects and developers of Smartphone applications don’t know enough about developing applications that are fit from a hardware, end-user, operating system and synchronization perspective, while being 100% secure. It is a given that vulnerabilities exist (as it did /does with desktop applications) and so does opportunity for testing specialist, be it compatibility, functionality, usability, performance testing, etc, to name a few.

Worse, many of Smartphone application developers have a naive notion of how fit their applications are that lulls them into thinking they have all the bases covered. The reason attributed to this ‘lull’ is also that the mobility ecosystem is evolving at such a pace that it seems like a blur and many of the leading developers are playing the catching up game, with aggressive go-to-market deadlines. This means vulnerabilities get discovered late in the software development life cycle — or, as Forrester says - the vulnerabilities become a feature story on the front page of The Wall Street Journal!