Mobile Enterprise: Tablets, smartphones will see biz touch $ 1bn: Zinnov

29th September 2011
Mobile Enterprise: Tablets, smartphones will  see biz touch $ 1bn: Zinnov
The only way is up! Enterprise Mobility on a roll in India

India’s rapidly growing enterprise mobility market which encompasses hardware, network & data, applications and associated services currently stands at USD 244 million, has been growing exponentially over the last three years and is expected to touch one billion dollars by 2015. This is the key finding of a recent study by globalization advisory firm, Zinnov Management Consulting. The study entitled ‘The Enterprise Mobility Study - Indian Market Analysis’, says India already has an 840 million mobile phone subscriber base with 15% smart phone penetration, and the tablet PC market in India sells about 100,000 tablets per annum. All these point to a good devices penetration that is further fuelling the growth of enterprise mobility. Other factors are: maturity of industry verticals towards adoption, declining costs, increased start-up activity, and ecosystem play in market development. Industries leading the way in applying mobility services include banking, manufacturing, retail, hospitality and healthcare while upcoming adopters like automotive, logistics and consumer goods companies are increasingly using mobile supply chain systems to streamline inventory management, replenish stock, track demand, and manage shelf space and storage in an optimal manner. As more and more employees are getting exposed to next generation technologies and devices, the enterprises too are beginning to follow suit.
Comments Praveen Bhadada, Director – Global Consulting, Zinnov Management Consulting, “As enterprise mobility moves from being a concept to reality, a variety of innovative use cases are simultaneously emerging. It is also encouraging to see how the start-up ecosystem is evolving. Many tech companies such as RIM, Qualcomm, etc. are looking to provide seed funding and venture capital to start-ups working in the mobility space in India. Enterprise mobility in India certainly has a billion dollar potential in the next 5 years. We will see over 40% YOY growth for the segment over the next 5 years”.
As platform adoptability improves along with network penetration and connectivity, more business functions like ERP, CRM, SCM, sales force automation, unified communication and billing too are coming under the enterprise mobility ambit. This is coupled with maturing organizations that are trying to mobilize departments like HR, retail, customer service, finance and field service.
In a note of caution, the Zinnov study says that while the market is looking up, there are some key challenges that the industry needs to overcome to ensure that the enterprise mobility growth story is intact. Today, the average salary per employee in India is relatively very less and it is difficult for enterprises to give devices more than the salary of the individuals. Hence adoption is restrained to only senior level. Also, as Indian customers are found to be very demanding, the expectation is to get everything delivered on the phone. Some other challenges are lack of standard supply chain in most industries, vernacular content, absence of key large payers focus making it difficult for core business to move to mobile applications, lack of business centric mobile applications and appropriate back-end integration of applications
However, sustained initiatives and innovation by all the stakeholders in the ecosystem including hardware vendors, independent service providers, value added re-sellers, system integrators, wireless carriers and middleware players can ensure that the above challenges are easily met. They are only going to gain from the fact that network and connectivity will significantly improve in India over the next 5 years, concludes Zinnov.

Other points made in the study:
- Of the 750 digital start-ups in India, around 23.6% are in the mobility space indicating a healthy entrepreneurial trend in this segment.
- India is expected to have over 100 million active mobile internet users in the next 5 years.
- Almost all OEMs are coming up with innovative tablet offerings to tap the fast growing market e.g. Apple, Blackberry, Samsung, Motorola, Acer, HCL, Beetel, G’Five , Huawei etc.

DEVICE Penetration ( according to Zinnov): There are about 840 Million active mobiles operational in India. 12.2 Million user base of 3G has been garnered. There is an installed base of 25 Million computers. Smart Phone market share is about 15%. On an average of about 15 Million mobile subscribers are added every month in India. The tablet PC market in India sells about 100,000 tablets per annum. The PC penetration in urban household has reached 38%. The laptop market is growing at a CAGR of 50%. (IndiaTechOnline note: Our analysis puts the installed PC base, higher at around 60 m. The monthly addition of mobile phones has slowed in the first six months of this year to less than 8 m.)
NETWORK AND CONNECTIVITY IN INDIA (2010 TO 2015): Indian mobile data traffic to grow 4x faster than Indian fixed IP traffic from 2010 to 2015. 28% of India’s total IP traffic to be through mobile in 2015, up from 2.2% today. Average mobile connection speed expected to reach 1 Mbps by 2015. Over a billion connected devices by 2015. Multifold increase in broadband speed ( source Cisco)

For more information contact: http://zinnov.com/white_paper_register.php?req=wp&art_id=150  September 29 2011