2015 Gartner MADP Magic Quadrant: What’s Changed Since 2014?

NOTE: Click here for our analysis of the 2016 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Mobile Application Development Platforms

Gartner has just released their 2015 Magic Quadrant for Mobile Application Development Platforms and in their normal fashion have named the top solutions in the MADP space. Gartner has provided outlines of each solution including strengths and weaknesses while displaying the Leaders, Visionaries, Niche Players and Challengers. The categorization of each solution depends on their completeness of vision and ability to execute in the MADP sector. Gartner also weighs market understanding, marketing strategy, sales strategy, offering strategy, business model, vertical/industry strategy, innovation and geographic strategy.

This year the mobile app development platforms have separated themselves quite a bit, with much more space separating the solutions. While the placement hasn’t changed too much there are a few giants missing from this year’s quadrant due to a qualification change.

Leaders- IBM, Salesforce, Kony, SAP and Adobe

Challengers- Microsoft, Progress Software (Telerik), and Globo.

Visionaries- Xarmin, Pegasystems, Appian, Mendix, Appcelerator and Backbase.

Niche Players- DSI, MicroStrategy, Oracle, Embarcadero, Zebra and ClickSoftware.

Appceletator has dropped way down from the leaders category into the visionaries category, while Pegasystems has also dropped to visionary. Salesforce has moved from a challenger to a leader and MicroStrategy has dropped from a challenger to a niche player.  Telerik now under Progress Software has jumped from a visionary to a challenger. Appian, Backbase, Globo and Mendix have been added to this year’s magic Quadrant.

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The biggest change since 2014 has to be the exclusion of Apple and Google. Gartner changed its policy on MADP inclusion and only accepts cross-platform development solutions. Apple only offers development tools for iOS and Google only offers development tools for Android.  Sencha and Verivo were also dropped.

Gartner also added an Honorable mentions category for vendors who didn’t make the inclusion criteria “typically because of revenue.” These honorable mentions include Alpha Software, Any Presence, Appery.io, EachScape, FeedHenry (by Red Hat), Kinvey, Movilizer, OutSystems, Webalo and Zetes.

“The MADP market continues to mature, moving away from the tech-centric position of the past and toward a more business-aligned approach expanding support for the app development life cycle and offering more robust and scalable capabilities.” Developing apps for the enterprise is becoming more and more important, especially employee facing apps. Things like cross-platform development and built-in support for online operation are not just good to have, they’re necessary.