AT&T has ramped up its mobile application services to now offer programmers a chance to create applications on a variety of mobile platforms and storage options, all inside of its own network-based cloud service.

Available across 220 country territories, the new services include options to integrate a customer's mobile apps (which may often currently reside on the edge of the business) with existing office systems. AT&T will also provide access to its own development teams in order to help customers plan and build mobile apps. Finally, there is (somewhat logically) the option to take advantage of application management options inside AT&T's cloud.

Along with the new services comes mobile development software from Pyxis Mobile. This set of tools and associated services is designed to help users build, deploy, and iteratively update applications for all major mobile devices including the iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, Android, and Android tablets.



According to AT&T's website, "Our configuration-based architecture takes one build and delivers it to all [those] mobile devices as native, fully integrated applications so you can use all the features that are part of the phone or tablet — like the camera and GPS. Lastly, our proprietary technology enables you to iteratively update your applications with new content and functionality and push those changes out to mobile devices immediately — with no code recompilation or redeployment necessary."

AT&T's latest application development support services are in line with the wider trend seen in the U.S. where are all major telco carriers offer some sort of service in this vein. Predictions from analyst house IDC related to the so-termed Mobile Enterprise Application Platform (MEAP) market forecast that the MEAP sector will reach $930 million in 2014 — an impressive leap if we consider that the market started from roughly zero as little as two to three years ago.