The Next Wave

Increased productivity by means of anytime, anywhere access to corporate
information, increased quality of information, and enhanced customer orientation
have been the key drivers of mobility solutions in the past; mobility and
virtualization being the two trends altering the way people access information.

Telecom companies, are now offering VAS to create alternative sources of
revenue and to interact with their customers, with personalized solutions to
suit their needs and requirements. This has brought together wireless operators,
handset manufacturers, content developers, and application service providers
such as SFA, music and film companies, cartoon artists, game makers, and
musicians for ring tones, gaming, mobile imagery, WAP, wall papers, logos, SMS-based
contests, and streaming audio and video etc.

The enterprise mobility has changed the way employees work, more importantly,
for the employees who are always on the move. Today, enterprises have realized
the potential productivity improvement through wireless technologies and have
started to incorporate mobility in their IT strategy. To remain competitive,
enterprises today have started to deploy mobile applications that suit their
requirements.

Mobile email and data access applications via GPRS connectivity or mobile
connect data cards are the most popular applications in the enterprises
currently. Looking at the level of potential, telecom companies are coming forth
with premium mobile application offerings to the enterprise, including
m-commerce applications that allow users to link their credit card, debit card
or bank accounts to their mobile connection, push-to-talk services on the
Blackberry and other handheld devices, assuring high availability and
uninterrupted access to information, enterprise applications, and location-based
map services.

Mobile banking application is another secure scalable application that will
manage the unified transmission of customer data across multiple channels from
SMS to IVR.

The overall enterprise mobile market in 2006-07 was estimated to be Rs 4,845
crore with mobile VAS applications contributing about 7% of the enterprise
revenue. However, the mobile VAS market is growing, in terms of revenue, voice
still dominates the mobile services market to a great extent. This growth is
being propelled by mixed mobile convergence, where mobile phones are becoming
primary means of communication, especially for branches situated in rural areas.
The enterprise mobility market is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of 14.5% by
2012-13.

High utilization of mobility services has been noticed in the BFSI and IT/ITeS
segments with increasing number of branches in tier-2 and tier-3 cities, mobile
serves can be seen as an alternate and efficient form of communication.

On an average, currently, the top 5% of the employees in an organization
possess company-owned connections, while partially-owned connections are around
7-10%. This ratio is bound to change by 2012 for both large as well as medium
enterprises with the number of company-owned connections nearing 10% and
partially owned connections increasing by a further 5-10%.

With mobile enterprise applications becoming a key growth area, there are
certain challenges with respect to integration of these services on to the
existing platforms and rolling out new applications. Further, the launch of 3G
is expected to enhance the applications. It will help create more applications
and add more features to the existing application, making the experience much
richer. But there are a number of challenges to go through before 3G becomes a
reality in India and value added services leverage on it.

Parminder Kaur Saini

The writer is senior research analyst, ICT Practice, Frost & Sullivan, South
Asia & Middle East

maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in