Of course IBM’s mobile strategy will come in several shades of grey and the press release talks about offering customers a portfolio of products for security, device management as well as analytics and application development. We noted a distinct lack of farting apps.
Using what IBM calls MobileFirst, "businesses can now streamline everything from the management of employee's mobile devices, to the creation of a new mobile commerce app", the company said. So far only the esoteric German business software maker SAP was closest to IBM in offering a comparable comprehensive mobile strategy, at least as far as businesses are concerned.
IBM has made 10 acquisitions since 2006 to boost its mobile offering, most recently TeaLeaf and Worklight.