Dive Brief:

• The convergence of devices, bots and IoT means IT leaders will need to simultaneously excel at mainstream mobility and prepare for the post-app era, according to Gartner.
• The research firm estimates that 2.38 billion devices will be shipped in 2017 and 342 million wearables will be sold. By 2018, Gartner predicts 25% of new mobile apps will talk to IoT devices.
• "The arrival of wearables and bring your own 'thing' in the workplace will introduce new interaction techniques and new platforms, diluting the need for specific mobile app experiences," said David Willis, vice president and analyst at Gartner.

Dive Insight:

Apps are short lived, so companies will need to find new ways to interact with "things."

"The future of mobile will provide ubiquitous services delivered anywhere, by any person or thing, to any person or thing," said Wills, speaking at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2016 in South Africa. "As new technologies grow in importance as a way to control and interact with things, app interfaces will fade."

Some have pointed to bots as the answer to communicating with customer, or even a companies' employees. The technology is still its infancy, but organizations are exploring new pathways. That technological change could, in part, drive the use of new infrastructure to support devices. 

Emerging technologies — such as artificial intelligence, natural-language processing and bots integrated into messaging apps — are creating new ways for users to interact with with companies. This means, according to Wills, there will be more data and code in the cloud and less on the device.