Friday 27 March 2009

Enterprise mobile devices to rise by 56% between 2008 and 2014, claims research

Mobile Europe has just posted this on their web site, I thought you would find the article interesting;

Enterprise mobile devices to rise by 56% between 2008 and 2014, claims research

Boosted by increased usage of mobile broadband

A new report from Juniper Research is said to confirm that the ‘Unwired Enterprise' is becoming a reality with more businesses allowing employees to ‘go mobile'. Many enterprises are seeing the benefits of cost reductions and increased profitability won via efficiency and productivity improvements.The report found that revenues from mobile enterprise users will grow to $284 billion by 2014.

The mobile enterprise report found however that despite compelling arguments for mobilising business processes, numerous hurdles still remain in persuading significant numbers of businesses to become ‘unwired'. Specific barriers to adoption include: limited functionality resulting from the small size and form of devices, problems in adapting applications for mobiles while not compromising on usability, and the thorny issue of ensuring device security.
Indeed, report author Andrew Kitson believes that device management and security are critical issues that businesses need to address when going mobile: "Enterprises need to be assured of total control over the devices their employees use. To do this, they need to limit the types and numbers of devices connecting to their networks, deactivate or restrict devices that are lost or stolen, minimising functionality and access, and employing user authentication, content encryption, and other security solutions as appropriate. There are upfront cost issues involved, but the greater cost lies in compromising on security features."

Other findings include:

Enterprise-grade applications and services require advanced devices and rely on high-capacity networks: the proportion of devices connected to 3.5G/3.9G networks will rise from 13% in 2008 to almost 80% in 2014

Usage of wireless dongles is losing ground to usage of plug-in datacards and devices with embedded wireless modems and will peak in 2010/2011

Tuesday 3 March 2009

Mobile Data Association announces its annual analysts day


The Mobile Data Association’s annual industry analyst day aims to provide a view of what to expect in the mobile landscape in the next 12 months
Registration is now open for the Mobile Data Association’s (MDA) annual industry analyst event. The session is open to all and will feature insights into the key market trends from leading mobile industry analysts and experts.

Hear views from:

Deloitte - Paul Lee
CCS Insight - Paolo Pescatore
Informa – Shailendra Padney
Quocirca - Rob Bamforth
MDA – Steve Reynolds
Visiongain - tbc

If mobile is on your roadmap or if mobile is your business; this event is an excellent opportunity to hear the views and insights of the people who predict the future trends in mobile communications. Bringing together expertise from across the mobile spectrum, the event provides unique access to people and mobile knowledge at a fraction of the cost of many other industry events.

Logistics
Date: Wednesday 25th March
Time: Lunch will be provided from 12 noon, sessions commence at 13:00 (Finish approx 16:30)
Venue: City University, Northampton Square, London, EC1V 0HB

Costs
MDA members – FREE
Non-members £75

Registration: http://www.themda.org/mda-shop/mda-events.php

Analysts will be presenting their predictions and research on topics such as mobile application trends and innovations, revenue models in growing market segments, mobile multimedia and messaging strategies, mobile payments, mobile data solutions for business, 3G, WIFI, etc.

As you might expect, this year there will be a focus on the impact the global financial crisis is having on the mobile industry. Paul Lee from Deloitte will be presenting “Is anyone too big for the bin?” a controversial view of the future of the TMT world.

Event agenda (subject to change)

Paul Lee, Deloitte - Is anyone too big for the bin?
Paul presents his research into the TMT sector and examines how the global financial crisis will impact the mobile landscape.
Rob Bamforth, Quocirca
The corporate uptake of mobile broadband; a review of the drivers and challenges faced by businesses that mobilise their workforce.

Paolo Pescatore, CCS Insight
Paolo discusses the mobile entertainment landscape.

Visiongain
The future of mobile content and applications.

Shailendra Padney, Informa
Making mobile payments and mobile banking a reality.

Panel session
The analyst’s discuss what impact mobile technology will have of the London 2012 Olympics.

Monday 2 March 2009

The MDA latest MMS and SMS figures



The Mobile Data Association recently announced their quarterly report highlighting that both text messaging and picture messaging is still growing despite the fact that the UK is in the grips of a recession.

The highlights of the report are as follows:

The numbers are positive for the industry, revealing:

In the UK we sent a total of 78.9 billion text messages in 2008 - 216 million per day - an increase of 38% over the previous year

We are seeing similarly impressive growth of MMS, or video and picture messaging, a newer technology which is gathering pace as the number of camera phones increase and the technology improves.

In 2008 we sent 553 million MMS messages in the UK year on year this is up 23%

On Christmas day 2008 over 3000 pictures or videos were sent from mobile phones every minute this was a massive usage spike and proved the theory that picture messaging is normally triggered by an event.

So what’s driving these trends?

One of the key trends identified is the way people use SMS and MMS for different purposes. Early in the development of picture messaging technologies it was thought that MMS would eventually replace SMS due to its richer content. However this has not been the case and in reality two technologies continuing to grow and co-exist. This is because Text messaging is being used very much for conversational activity, how are you today, meet you in the pub, running late etc Whereas MMS is very much more event driven, in other words people need a reason to do so, such as taking and sending picture messages at birthdays, at Christmas or on holiday for example.

The mobile operators in the UK have been very fast to respond to mobile users in the UK by offering really competitive and creative tariffs, whether you text, talk or surf the Internet, As a result of this they have made users feel confident that that are not going to get hit with a large bill at the end of each month.

There has also been a significant uptake in the number of businesses using text messaging to communicate with their customers from dentists with appointment reminders to repair company’s informing their customers on the arrival time of the service engineer.


What will we see in the short to medium term future for mobile technologies?

New applications act only to further enhance the way we use our mobile. It is far from just a phone. From Twitter, to Skype to video and mobile content the experience for consumers just keeps getting richer and more appealing. In the medium term future we can expect to use our mobile phone from buying a train ticket to paying for a coffee using new mobile payment technologies. This added convenience brought to us by our mobile phone will be the next big innovation encouraging us to use our mobile phones more and more.