By year's end, almost half of U.S. businesses will offer a mobile app, according to a survey by Robert Half Technology. If your business plans to be one of them, you might want to start lining up some developers now.

Just 43 percent of the CIOs surveyed by Robert Half said that their companies neither have a mobile app now nor intend to launch one over the next year. They are outnumbered by those that already have a mobile app (27 percent) combined with those who expect to launch one during the coming 12 months (22 percent).

The growing popularity of mobile apps for business doesn't mean the technology is necessarily making things easier for IT departments, however. The two biggest challenges for development teams are working together with other departments and locating sufficiently skilled developers. Keeping apps up to date and getting approvals from the app market are also proving to be a challenge.

The demand for mobile app developers has grown recently, and their starting salaries are slated to rise 9.1 percent next year, according to Robert Half research. This represents one of the greatest projected salary increases in the field.

"Building mobile applications requires intense collaboration between numerous groups within the organization, including marketing, IT, operations and sales," said John Reed, executive director of Robert Half Technology. "It's important for mobile application developers to have strong soft skills, in addition to the ability to write code and test and debug software applications. Because the demand for professionals with a track record of building successful mobile apps currently outpaces the supply, companies are willing to pay a premium for professionals with these skills."