Do more with less? seems to be the mantra of Indian enterprises as they are taking the humble mobile phone beyond basic communications. Some of the biggest companies in the Indian market including GMR, Max New York Life, Usha, Asian Paints, Britannia, etc, are shifting away from the desktop and laptop computer and embracing mobile devices like smartphones and tablets?primarily to save costs and mass mobile their workforce. Smartphones from Nokia, Research In Motion (RIM), Samsung, LG Electronics and HTC are enabling the workforce to use services such as email, instant messaging (IM) and intranet access, literally on the go. Recent months have seen the market explode with a number of powerful alternatives to the traditional PC, and they are well-suited for an already mobile and always-connected Indian workforce.
The R50,000-crore India mobile handsets market is expected to grow 25% by volume in 2011 to 210 million units over 2010 sales of 167 million, says CyberMedia Research (CMR). Indian consumers and enterprises are expected to buy 12 million smartphones this year. The proportion of smartphones as a percentage of total mobile handset shipments in the India market is expected to grow from 3.6% in 2010 to 5.7% in CY 2011.
Naveen Mishra, lead analyst, India telecoms practice, Cyber Media Research, says, ?Enterprises are waking up to a new order where workforces are getting increasingly mobile and there is a definite need to ensure their productivity, even when they operate from remote locations. These business scenarios mandate higher adoption of core functionalities like secure email access, access to intranet and mobilised applications like field and sales force automation.?
Another assessment, made by Canalys Consulting, reckons that the overall smartphone market in India in CY 2010 stood at 63,22970 units. Of this, the enterprise market constituted 10,89904 handsets. The data further reveal that 5,44,688 Nokia smartphones were adopted by enterprises in FY 10 across categories?micro, small, medium and large, compared with 3,38,230 RIM devices. Nokia smartphones constituted 50% of the overall enterprise uptake in FY 2010.
The concept of doing business today has evolved from being limited to the boundaries of an office campus to being mobile and yet doing business most effectively, says Varghese Thomas, director (corporate communications?India & Saarc), RIM India. ?Smartphones are the key to such business operations as it brings your world on to your fingertips. For RIM, the enterprise category for smartphone devices is growing faster than the market growth rate in India.?
Historically, airtime operators have been more proactive while targeting enterprises?the concept of a closed user group grew from that. Sanjeev Mahajan, CEO of mobile retail chain Spice Hotspot, says, ?Among the handset vendors, it was RIM which brought the enterprise segment under focus in India. Other players are trying to follow suit. As smartphones evolve, enterprises are recognising these as tools to enhance employee productivity and we could see a trend wherein the handset vendors devote more bandwidth to developing this segment. The advent of the tablet category could further build this up and all handset vendors which have tablets in their product portfolio will use them to increase enterprise sales.?
The way ahead can be seen in a quick snapshot of how an infrastructure development major like GMR has improved employee productivity by using smartphones and solutions on top of that. As is common in India, most of its employees were using a mishmash of handsets and software, including Nokia, BlackBerry and HTC that they had purchased themselves for both professional and personal use. GPRS data cards had been the prevalent method for remotely connecting to the corporate network, but this was inconvenient and time-consuming as users had to constantly turn on their laptops and establish network connectivity before they could check for any new emails. Critically, other people just weren?t using mobile email at all because it was perceived to be too expensive.
Cut to now. GMR has rolled out Mail for Exchange for Nokia smartphones to all of its employees. The solution is cost-effective: No third-party server is required, it utilises existing infrastructure and software licences and Nokia offers a wide range of smartphones across a number of price points. With Mail for Exchange, emails are pushed to the user?s Nokia smartphone, so even if employees are away from their desk or without their laptop, they still receive the latest updates. GMR experienced a drop of 15% in its mobility costs within the first six months of implementing the solution. The solution also helped to increase overall employee productivity, thereby helping in timely project completion.
If it was Canada?s RIM that brought the enterprise segment under focus with their ?safe, secure, corporate e-mail? strategy, other players such as the Finnish handset maker Nokia and South Korean consumer electronics giant Samsung seem to be bettering the trend. ?We are seeing two clear trends emerging,? says Suresh Vedula, director of enterprise sales at Nokia India. First, initially restricted to only email access, business mobility is now seeing a host of other sales force automation enterprise applications being extended on the mobile platform. Second, consumerisation of IT is taking place at a rapid pace. More organisations are allowing employees to use their own smartphones to access business data. This is a significant driver of business mobile email. ?As a result, we are seeing CIOs demand more and more features from business-ready handsets such as secure email with easy set-up, corporate IM, good browser, device management and security, mobile virtual private networking (VPN), multitasking and compatibility with leading PBX solutions, among others.?
Nokia claims to have the largest portfolio of business mobility ready devices. Nokia?s direct access messaging solution?Mail for Exchange, Lotus Notes Traveler and Nokia Messaging?connect smartphone users to their work environment and accounts (email, IM, intranet, data-sharing sites).
The key reasons behind Nokia?s growth in the enterprise segment include providing companies the flexibility to mass-mobilise their workforce (which was earlier limited to a select top few) by enabling corporate email on their existing Nokia smartphones and giving enterprises the option of choosing from a large bouquet of smartphones across price points.
Not just that, through a partnership with both Microsoft and IBM, the Nokia solution provides direct email on the smartphone. Also, there are no additional service charges; the users simply pay for data downloads and can avail data download packages as low as R49 per month from leading operators. Nokia also offers its sales force automation cloud-based service called Nokia Tej to help firms manage their complex supply chain processes.
Usha International, a Nokia customer, has benefited from improved efficiency in its sales team, increased customer satisfaction and better turnaround time. The company is expected to achieve a 100% return on investment in 12 months through enhanced workforce productivity.
Vedula believes that the advent of 3G will seriously accelerate the uptake of smartphones and services among consumers. ?The 3G and BWA services will usher in a new revolution on how mobile services are consumed by individuals and enterprises. With 3G, we will see the emergence of a greater portfolio of business applications. A lot more enterprises in the country will add a mobile dimension to their IT infrastructure and services delivery. On the devices side, building newer, more feature-rich and powerful devices like the Nokia E7 and Nokia E6 will take place,? he adds.
The Indian enterprise category is a major growth opportunity for Samsung?s handset business too, says Ranjit Yadav, country head, mobile and IT, Samsung Electronics.
?Business users are increasingly utilising not just smartphones, but also converged devices like the Galaxy Tab to stay connected and manage their work while on the go. Samsung is hoping to further capture this business segment,? he says. He adds that a number of private wealth management firms have already embraced smartphones and tablets in the country.
?In the healthcare industry too, smartphones and tablets are quickly becoming a streamlining tool.
A Mumbai-based private wealth management firm is utilising Samsung?s Galaxy Tabs for its senior managers to conduct presentations and for meetings with clients as this powerful device can be carried while on the go,? he says.
Samsung has launched a range of 15 smartphones across the Windows, its own proprietary Bada operating system and Android platforms priced between R8,800 and R32,890 per unit. Yadav says, ?In the year 2011, we are focusing on further expanding our smartphone portfolio across the Bada, Android and Windows platforms and plan to notch up a 40% market share of the smartphone segment.?
Till the end of 2010, a top-end smartphone used to be equipped with a 1GHz processor. Starting 2011, with the use of dual-core processors in smartphones, these moile devices have become more powerful compared with their predecessors. In the near future, these devices will become as powerful as present-day laptops, enabling users to browse the internet, check mail and perform multiple functions.
