Grant: Industrial Research Chairs for Colleges Grants

In New Brunswick, as in the rest of Canada, there is great opportunity in mobile computing. Venture capitalist Mary Meeker, in her annual report on Internet trends in May 2012 stated Internet growth remains robust and mobile adoption is still in its early stages. The world's 1.1 billion mobile 3G subscribers are only 18 per cent of the potential market, but it is growing rapidly at a rate of 37 per cent year over year. This growth presents tremendous opportunities for innovation and economic development for the foreseeable future. New Brunswick has built a significant information and communications technology sector (relative to its size), dominated by highly innovative and independently-owned companies that have become industry leaders in their respective domains, such as Radian6, Spielo International, Mariner Partners and J. D. Irving Limited. The New Brunswick Community College (NBCC) will support this growth in mobile computing with its Mobile First initiative, including the creation of an Industrial Research Chair in Mobile First Technology. Within this emerging mobile computing sector lies two challenges that need to be resolved. First, innovators need help negotiating the 'walled gardens' of the major mobile computing platforms (e.g., Blackberry 10, iOS, Android, and Windows Phone 8), which require companies to negotiate multiple software and security standards to bring solutions to market. Second, is the challenge to create an effective ecosystem of innovation that is supportive of the broad range of potential innovators of mobile technologies, from New Brunswick's traditional small start-ups to established corporations, all of which want to reach the largest audience possible by deploying apps across these different platforms. NBCC's chair nominee, Dr. William McIver, is a computer scientist and most recently was the senior research officer of the National Research Chair's emerging technologies division. As the head of the Mobile First