Continuing the programme of highly successful events held at Bedford College, there will be another joint British Computer Society (BCS) and Bedford College free evening lecture on Wednesday 15 May 2013.

“Business Applications of Mobile Apps” is the topic of talks by Dr Harin Sellahewa, Senior Lecturer and Director of Postgraduate Programmes, Department of Applied Computing at the University of Buckingham, and Mike Corbridge, MA, founder of The Social Media Black Belt (http://thesocialmediablackbelt.com/) and (http://mobileapps4bizness.com/)

• It has been projected that mobile devices will overtake desktops by 2015.
• Mobile is the fastest growing industry… EVER.
• The mobile app industry is expected to grow 1000% to 58 billion by 2015.

Mobile has taken the world by storm largely because of the applications that users are able to download and use on their smartphones. These provide instant information and provide customers with a direct way to contact a business from their smartphones.

Your business needs to compete for customers with many other businesses on a daily basis. Mobile Apps allow you to reach your customers directly and gain a competitive advantage. Now small business can develop mobile apps that are affordable and designed to give customers a rewarding experience, deliver higher level services to current customers, keep customers engaged with the brand while they are on the move - as well as attract even more new customers.

Mobile phones have become an integral part of our daily lives. It is estimated that there are over 6 billion mobile phones in use today. The technology – celebrating its 40th anniversary this year – has evolved from the employment of uni-functional mobile communication devices to fully-featured, context-aware smartphones now even being used in space exploration.

Combined with the latest communication technology and protocols, smartphones are capable of delivering a rich user experience and a variety of services to the user. Much of the current success of smartphones is attributed to their ability to download third party apps onto the phone – a successful model introduced by Apple for iPhones. By the end of 2012 over 25 billion Apple and Google Android apps had been downloaded.

The ability to run third party as well as web-based apps on smartphones presents small businesses unique opportunities. This talk will focus on how smartphones’ capabilities and apps could be harnessed to enhance the activities of small businesses.

The talk will provide an overview of existing business apps, ideas for new apps and how you could go about developing an app to support your business.