Your employees and customers hold in their hands devices with computing power and storage that dwarf the desktops of just a decade ago. If you're not developing applications beyond e-mail and calendar synchronization for these smartphones, your company is bound to miss out.

Handheld device prices have fallen from $500 at the high end a couple of years ago to $100 for a Research In Motion BlackBerry Pearl or Samsung BlackJack II running Windows Mobile today. Meanwhile, technologies to port complex business apps to mobile devices are developing nicely, though complexity and fragmentation continue to be a problem.

Mobile platform choices aren't as clear cut as for desktop systems, and cutthroat competition rages among the leading smartphone platforms, including RIM BlackBerry, Symbian, Windows Mobile, Mac OS X, and now mobile Linux. In addition, there are higher-level application frameworks such as Java and Qualcomm Binary Runtime for Wireless (Brew). Anybody developing mobile applications must make hard choices as to which platforms and devices to target, as well as what application architecture to use.

Fragmentation contributes to the complexity, as do other issues, including variable screen sizes and user input mechanisms, the vagaries of wireless connections, limited battery power, the need for management systems to facilitate software deployments and updates, and security requirements.

Fortunately, vendors are focused on solving the complexity problem with architectures that facilitate the creation of apps that can easily access enterprise back-end systems and operate over a large number of devices. These include Web 2.0 developments and rich Internet application environments, new Java and synchronization technologies, and advances in mobile middleware platforms. Each has gotchas, but together they represent a powerful toolset for mobile application development.

And judging by our poll, IT pros are taking notice. Of the nearly 400 surveyed, 33% have isolated projects under way, 37% have business units deploying mobile apps, and 30% have company-wide deployments. That's serious adoption. RIM dominates among the devices, with 57% of organizations developing for the BlackBerry, 44% for Windows Mobile, 25% Palm OS, 5% (already) iPhone, and only 4% Symbian. And in-house mobile development expertise is strong, with 30% of respondents keeping work close to home.