Walmart and the Financial Times both opted in recent weeks to bring mobile application development expertise in-house by swallowing up development firms. While most organizations probably don't have the option of purchasing development firms outright, there are a variety of other ways to ensure sufficient mobile app talent to meet one's mobile platform strategy, writes Chris Murphy at InformationWeek.

Walmart has purchased a number of mobile and social media companies lately, the most recent acquisition being the mobile development firm Small Society. The Financial Times just bought web application development firm Assanka, which it had worked with to roll out a paid news app last summer, Murphy notes. According to an internal memo from the paper's CEO, the acquisition is intended to help the Financial Times remain competitive in digital journalism.

Companies that aren't buying up mobile app firms are often turning to a combination of external talent and beefed-up in-house expertise, Murphy reports. Vail Resorts, for example, isn't letting go of the outside team that helped it create some very popular mobile and web apps last year, but it is cultivating more skills in-house at the same time. At AccuWeather, internal and external mobile app developers split the work more or less down the middle.

At Starbucks, outside experts handle much of the mobile development, but a separate division, named Digital Ventures, establishes the mobile platform roadmap. The Starbucks IT group collaborates with Digital Ventures to determine which apps will be built in-house and which will be sent out.

For more:
- see Chris Murphy's article at InformationWeek

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