The mobile device and operating system war will continue to rage on in 2013, say analysts at Gartner. It’s a bit obvious (no?), given the recent flurry of product and OS announcements from Apple, Google, and Microsoft — or perhaps we’re just in for a non-disruptive year. Regardless, the ongoing battle for smartphone and media tablet operating-system dominance topped the research firm’s list of the Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2013. 
 
The list, unveiled Monday in Orlando at Gartner’s yearly symposium, leaned heavily toward mobility — the top trend was the evolving “mobile device battles” between rival operating systems from Google, Apple, and Microsoft, and their impact on IT. No wonder, then, that Altimeter’s Chris Silva predicted that “mobile strategists” would become a crucial player within many organizations in the near future.
 
Given the fracture in the device and OS market, tools for building mobile apps will remain splintered, too, Gartner says, although HTML5-powered Web applications may emerge as the long-term winner.
 
Among the other trends cited:

• Personal Cloud: With employees bringing their own devices into the office, they will also begin bringing their own cloud, too, through services like Dropbox, Box.com, and Amazon. 
• Enterprise App Stores: Instead of forcing employees to use dissipate app vendors to outfit their mobile devices, Gartner predicts that by 2014 many companies will instead set up private app stores of their own — meaning that “the role of IT shifts from that of a centralized planner to a market manager providing governance and brokerage services to users and potentially an ecosystem to support app-trepreneurs,” according to the report.
• Hybrid IT and Cloud Computing: The IT department will continue to shift to incorporate “internal cloud services brokerage” roles, especially as third-party cloud services become a bigger part of most organizations’ operations.

 
Read it Here: Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2013 | Gartner
 
More: The Emergence of the Mobile Strategist.
 
Image via ProjectZ.