The use of both business-to-consumer branded mobile apps and business-to-enterprise productivity and line-of-business programs will see a compound annual growth rate of 90 percent during the next few years, according to a study from ABI Research.

By 2016, the company said, the total number of users for such apps will top the 830-million mark, driven primarily by the growing sophistication and cost-effectiveness in both development and deployment.

According to ABI, the increasing ease with which companies can create an app for mobile device management or line-of-business use is one of the central factors pushing the adoption rate higher, as is the positive effect cloud computing has had on the initial price point for distributed systems.

The researchers also added that businesses are putting the huge data stores they have amassed to good use in the implementation of mobile devices.

Experts say the advances made recently in smartphone platform development could enable companies to make their own app stores, from which workers can download and install productivity, security and mobile device management tools, greatly simplifying deployment.