By Freya Purnell
Asia Pacific companies currently don’t have the understanding, expertise and foresight to unlock the value of enterprise mobility, even though it is one of the region’s fastest growing markets, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC).
The Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) addressable market for enterprise mobility – which includes applications, devices, security, middleware and professional services – is tipped to grow from US$1.4 billion in 2013 to $2.3 billion by 2017, reflecting the appetite within organisations to mobilise people and business processes.
However, many opportunities may slip by, due to the relatively unsophisticated approach to enterprise mobility in many of the countries in the region.
IDC has developed a Mobility Maturity Model, based on a survey of 1603 companies across 11 countries. The survey assessed the maturity of each company’s mobility offering, taking into consideration strategy, device and application deployments, infrastructure and platform investments, and dedicated physical and financial resources.
Fifty-seven per cent of companies surveyed were positioned in the first stage, Ad Hoc, but 21 per cent did not even score high enough to be classified in this stage. Eleven per cent were positioned in the Opportunistic phase, and a further 11 per cent were in the more mature phases of Repeatable, Managed and Optimised.
When the companies were grouped by country of operation (see below), only Australia, New Zealand and Singapore could be classified as Repeatable – defined by IDC as the stage when mobility moves from reactive to proactive strategy.
Ian Song, research manager with IDC AP’s mobility team said the reason companies get stuck in the early phases of mobility are not always because of technical limitations, but tends to be a function of reactionary attempts to address mobility, rather than a focus on long-term strategy.
There are also industry verticals in every country that are more mature in terms of mobility adoption than others.
“Financial services, for example, driven by the need for security and customer service, are more mature regardless of which country they’re based in,” Song said.
The model shows there are also significant untapped opportunities for enterprise mobility solutions vendors.
Charles Reed Anderson, head of telecoms and mobility for IDC Asia/Pacific said, “Most vendors target their offerings at customers in the more mature stages of Repeatable and beyond, where only 11 per cent of the regional customers reside.
“Surprisingly few vendors actively target the mass of companies in the early stages, even though those customers provide the best opportunity for a long-term customer relationship as they progress down the path to mobility.”
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