Thursday, September 22, 2011

Mobile Operating System Battlefield Remains Unsettled as Australians Mobilise Their Enterprise

Market researcher and consultancy has recently conducted its annual business end-user survey, which polled over 900 Australian decision makers, making it the largest of its kind in the country. Survey results on mobile and wireless, presented in the Telsyte Australian Business Mobile Usage and Directions: 2007 End-User Survey report, have led us to conclude that while companies have advanced in enterprise mobility adoption, technology fragmentation, lack of standardisation and end-user confusion remain key market features.

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With Australia becoming a GSM-only market and emerging WiMAX-based solutions still in nascent stages, technology fragmentation has perhaps become most noticeable in the mobile device and operating system area.

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Telsyte finds that a small number of device vendors dominate the business mobile handset market in Australia, with survey results showing Nokia as the most popular vendor by far. The Finnish company is selected by two-thirds of Australian firms as their handset supplier of choice. Motorola and Sony-Ericsson, which appear to be more popular in smaller-size organisations, trail in a distant second and third spot, and collectively these top three suppliers are the primary handset providers to 80% of all businesses.

It should be noted that most business handsets are regular mobile phones, and not smart phones with an operating system (OS). Therefore, while Nokia, Motorola and Sony-Ericsson dominate the overall business handset installed base, the competitive dynamics in the smart phone segment are completely different. That market continues to be led by RIM, manufacturer of the BlackBerry device and solution.

Segmentation analysis indicates that, as would be expected, RIM's presence is more pronounced among companies with a high degree of wireless email penetration, including larger-size firms and those in the professional services, financial services, and telecom & media verticals. RIM's presence also appears to show little variation across the customer bases of the three carriers offering the BlackBerry solutions in Australia - Telstra, Optus and Vodafone.

One of the major areas of consideration for decision makers when mobilising the enterprise is the selection of the mobile device and the OS that runs on it. Device selection, coupled with other key considerations such as network technology and solution selections, continues to pose a challenge for Australian companies. Exacerbating the issue is that the mobile device, and the OS, landscape remains highly fragmented with a number of proprietary solutions that are not compatible with one another.

The fragmentation and indecision are set to continue, as more than half of Australian companies reported no mobile OS standardisation plans as they move further to embrace mobility. The rates of indecision are as high as 60% to two-thirds among SOHO and small companies.

Emerging as the OS of choice is Microsoft Windows Mobile, which powers such devices as HP, iMate, O2 and Dopod smart phones, and most recently the Palm Treo 750. While benefiting from the Windows OS look and feel that most business users are accustomed to, Microsoft's share in the Australian mobile OS market has grown at a rate slower than the vendor would have liked. This has been due to the stronghold fiercely guarded by RIM.

Although competition is set to intensify, Telsyte believes RIM's outlook remains highly positive as 14% of respondents indicated a preference for its OS. Given that the Canadian vendor is now the primary handset supplier to 4% of Australian firms, this finding suggests a potential new market of 10% of businesses that RIM could capitalise on immediately. As with its current installed base, preference for RIM grows stronger with company size. Preferences for the Palm OS and Nokia-backed Symbian OS as the OS to standardise on are limited by comparison.

Mobile Operating System Battlefield Remains Unsettled as Australians Mobilise Their Enterprise

About the Author

Warren Chaisatien is the Managing Director of Telsyte (http://www.telsyte.com.au), an Australian-based market research and consultancy specialised in the competitive intelligence of the converged communications market. Telsyte’s expertise is centered around the three core competency areas of Carrier & Broadband, Mobile & Wireless, and Enterprise Communications. Telsyte provides industry insights through custom research and consulting as well as ongoing research, including market reports and online databases.

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