Windows Phone 8 is certain to catch on, and brings stability to the market, SAP's SVP of mobile solution management, Nick Brown, has told Computing.
Speaking after yesterday's announcement of the firm's new M2M solution, Mobile Documents, which it developed in collaboration with Ericsson, Brown discussed his experiences with various platform implementations.
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"We're starting on Windows 8 now," said Brown. "We did a lot of work around the tablets, so it was a great natural fit. I think Windows 8 is going to be very strategic and important for us. I think they're going to get some market share.
"[Microsoft's Windows 8 ecosystem] brings a stability to the market," Brown continued.
"While Android is hard for the enterprise because of all the different devices and their implementations and security concerns, at least with Microsoft and Apple you get this homogeneous environments and security systems."
But Brown was still cautious about Microsoft's approach to mobile, and to its Windows 8 cross-platform ecosystem in general.
"If Microsoft gets it right, it's an easy extension from PC to phone," said Brown. "But where they can get it wrong is if they put too much into it. I expect a simple and elegant experience on [mobile], but Windows 8 is a little more caught in the middle."
Brown was more upbeat about BlackBerry 10, which he called "a much easier environment to develop applications for" than previous BlackBerry builds.
"In previous versions there were lots of issues," said Brown. "In the past, BlackBerry was the most difficult environment to develop applications for, from our perspective. But BlackBerry has made tremendous improvements there."
Brown said there "is hope" for BlackBerry.
"It'll be interesting to see how it goes. They have a lot of footprint in on-device solutions. And their device is very nice - very well put together. It's a good environment - particularly good for a hybrid container approach or an HTML 5 approach - it's fantastic for that."
