Battling tough barriers to adoption - including concerns over security, connectivity, and robustness of the app ecosystem – consumer-grade devices and mobile applications are seeing increased toleration and adoption in military. As a major part of the army’s new Connecting Soldiers to Digital Apps (CSDA) initiative, the army has launched a prototype-phase mobile app marketplace. While the market is not yet fully developed, currently includes only 12 apps, and is limited (for a short time) to the iOS platform, “this prototype is a first step in establishing and exercising new submission and approval processes that will eventually enable Army members, organizations, and third-party developers to release applications for Army-wide distribution.”
As shown above, commercial-grade devices will see strong growth, even against rugged counterparts, in the military market. This will open up a new and considerable market for app developers…we look forward to the flood of new and innovative apps we will see developers create to target this space. Although these new and innovative consumer technologies will no doubt propel the army into an even more tech-filled, advanced future, we will have to see how the industry copes with the rapid rate of change and innovation inherent to consumer technologies.