While the number of enterprise-relevant apps available through the main app stores has increased from 100,000 to 200,000 in the past 12 months, only 14 percent of these address “core enterprise needs,” according to analysis from research2guidance.

According to the company, enterprise apps can be found across a number of categories, including business, communications/social networking, finance, news & magazines, productivity and tools/utilities.

It said that, despite the sharp increase in availability of “off-the-shelf” apps for businesses, “companies looking to source enterprise-relevant apps from public app stores will find the task of identifying high value apps extremely time consuming due to the broad range of functionality the aforementioned categories encompass.”

research2guidance said that enterprise apps available in public stores fit into four categories: core enterprise apps (“characterised by a complete lack of functionality for private customers…generally relates to core enterprise software functionality”); business tools (“characterised by productivity-enhancing features…could be of use to both enterprise and private users”); business contingent, such as reference apps; and “irrelevant/misplaced”.

Ralf-Gordon Jahns, research director at research2guidance, said: “What we see today is just the tip of the iceberg. There will be lot more innovations within the next 2-3 years.”