TORONTO – With Canadian consumer adoption of smart phones still relatively low, meaning tremendous market opportunity right now, one device maker says he’s concerned about a shift in focus toward consumer-oriented mobile applications at the expense of the kinds of productivity apps that drive enterprise business growth.
Jeff McDowell, senior vice-president of business marketing and alliances for Waterloo, Ont.-based Research In Motion, said individual employees within organizations are increasingly influencing corporate policies regarding smart phone adoption and usage. Instead of simply accepting a new mobile device their employer wants them to use, many employees are expecting their companies to support the smart phone they’ve already purchased for themselves, McDowell said.
“This is the first time in history we’re seeing individuals define corporate policy, and it’s quite an amazing thing to watch because I’ve never seen it before,” said McDowell during a panel discussion on the future of mobile services at the Canadian Telecom Summit on Monday in Toronto.
“My fear right now is, as much as the smart phone manufacturers are taking advantage of this whole consumerization thing, at some point businesses need to get back to putting mobility strategies at the core of their organizations and not just have mobility as this little add-on that gets you messaging and collaboration,” McDowell said.
From RIM’s point of view, McDowell said the next stage of mobile application adoption within enterprises should be workflow apps that enable mobile sales force automation and field force automation, for example. McDowell said he’s worried these types of productivity applications are in danger of falling by the wayside as consumer-oriented mobile apps grab the attention of application developers.
If Microsoft has its way, distinctions between enterprise apps and consumer apps will be less obvious, as long as the underlying operating system is Windows, of course.
Alec Taylor, director of the Windows Mobile Communications business group at Microsoft Canada, explained: “Our vision is all about multiple screens, with Windows as the platform that runs these different things, whether it’s TVs, PCs or mobile devices. We want Windows to be the platform that fuels all of these different pieces of intelligent technology.”
As part of his presentation, Taylor gave a short demonstration of the upcoming Windows Phone 7 platform, expected to be available in time for the 2010 holiday season.
Brent Johnston, vice-president of marketing for Telus, said the industry is currently experiencing a tremendous, transformational change in mobile computing and with about only 20-to-25% of Canadians using smart phones today, mobile computing offers an incredible opportunity for the likes of Telus.
The challenge for carriers will be reducing mobile computing complexity and the perceived risk of adopting smart phone technologies, Johnston said.
He said consumers are confused by the proliferation of smart phone operating system platforms currently available in the market. These include Apple iPhone OS, RIM BlackBerry OS, Symbian OS, Palm WebOS, Samsung Bada OS, Google Android and Microsoft Windows Mobile OS.
“As consumers, how do you make sense of all that choice and all those decisions you need to make, given that some of these operating systems didn’t exist as little as two years ago?” Johnston pondered.
“We’re at the very early stages of the developments in this industry and that creates a lot of perceived risk for clients,” Johnston said. “And of course, there are always discussions about what I’m going to see on my bill at the end of the month for my use of all this technology.”
Johnston said carriers need to “over-invest in client education… As carriers, we are the closest to the consumer in this whole equation. I think it’s the role of the carrier to be able to weave together the elements of the network, the device and the client education, to make it a much easier experience, to remove the barriers, so people will ultimately adopt and enjoy all the benefits of mobile computing and the Internet."