One of the things technology observers find so amazing is howquickly ideas can spread into implementation. But even as seasoneda spectator as Novarica's Matt Josefowicz is impressed with howquickly insurers are adopting mobile technology.

Novarica conducted a study on mobility in 2010 and usage waslimited mainly to senior executives and claims adjusters who woulduse their smartphones for email and calendar notices, according toJosefowicz, partner and managing director of Novarica.

This week, the consultancy issued two new reports—one on currenttrends and expectations for mobile beyond personal lines and theother on bring-your-own-device (BYOD) usage for U.S. insurers.

"In 2010 there was a little flicker—less than 10 percent—ofpeople doing things with tablets," says Josefowicz. "A couple ofearly adopters had them, but they had not blown up yet. Over thelast two-and-a-half-years, tablets have become ubiquitous. Theadoption rate for tablets across all industries is phenomenal."

Less than three years after that initial report, tablet salesare cutting deeply into the laptop market. One reason for thismovement, believes Josefowicz, is the popularity of the keyboardcase.

"The keyboard case makes it a good 80 percent solution for a lotof business users," he says. "An 80 percent solution that is light,starts up right away, and is a good personal tool is better for alot of people than the 100 percent solution of the laptop."

As mobile use expands into the life and annuity market, as wellas multiline, commercial lines and specialty lines insurers, ITdepartments are forced to deal with a lack of experience within theshop when it comes to implementation of a mobile strategy.

"Most insurance IT organizations have a relatively low turnoverrate and people have been there a long time," says Josefowicz."There hasn't been any pressure to develop those [mobile] skills.Also, there is a lot of competition in the economy for these skillsbecause so many are building out mobile capabilities."

That has changed, though. Companies areturning to consultancies, IT service and platform providers, andspecialized builders to solve the implementation challenge, pointsout Josefowicz.

"There are a few prepackaged mobile products and a bunch of theplatform vendors are adding mobile capabilities, generally with aneye toward tablets," he says. "Thanks to the Apple/Google duopolythere is a tablet/smartphone convergence. If you build somethingthat works on Android and iOS, you have covered a good bulk of themarketplace."

Josefowicz warns insurers not to rely totally on the two majorplatforms, though, and to keep an eye on the open platform ofHTML5.

"Right now it's a bit like the mid-90s in mobile-land," he says."The closed platforms have a dominant market share today and it isimportant to support them. It's also important to keep an eye onthe open platform. If history is a guide that will start to evolveaggressively in the next few years, but in the short termsupporting Android and iOS is important."

The influx of BYOD has come from employee demands, explainsJosefowicz. He explains some companies have conducted quantitativeanalysis around the advantages of cost savings from not having tosupport devices and pay for the master contracts.

"The theory is everyone has a smartphone for their personal lifeanyway," he says. "It's more a matter of how people expect to work.People don't want to carry two devices anymore. They want access totheir business information on that personal device. It's stillmostly email/calendaring stuff, but we are seeing additionalcapabilities being enabled on the devices."

The next area of importance, particularly for mid-tier carriers,is mobile device management (MDM). Josefowicz maintains mid-tiercompanies are more conservative about who they open BYOD to, whichmeans a governance needs to become a part of the strategy.

"We believe it is important to look at the MDM platforms interms of security issues and the remote-wipe capabilities," hesays. "The number of iPads that are left in airplane seat-backsevery year is staggering. The good news is those types of platformsmake it easy to remote wipe data. Also, not as much data istypically stored on a tablet or on a smartphone. Now that we haveubiquitous connectivity, having that thin device would provide somecomfort to corporate IT because less of their data is floatingoutside the corporate firewall."