Analyst Angle: Mobile consumer content and applications finding play in the enterprise

Editor’s Note:This article is an excerpt from RCR Wireless News’ March Special Edition, “The Perfect Storm – A Focus on Mobile Messaging, Marketing, Content and Apps.” The 80-page special edition will be available next week at RCRWireless.com.
I was walking through the offices of a Boston Web services firm recently. Filled with 22- to 28-year-old employees using mobile devices this 21st century office made me feel a little 20th century. Often we talk about the excitement of consumer mobile content – games, video, gambling, MMS, social networking, music – but so often forget that the consumers who use such content and applications during their free time are also finding ways to use similar or the same content for legitimate work-related activities.
Mobility is distinctively personal. People have strong personal preferences for device brands, features and operating systems. (Un)fortunately this is not the case with other IT infrastructure. I’ve rarely found employees with as strong preferences for wireless routers or network attached storage gear.
Knowing that mobility is personal, it’s not surprising that employees find some very novel uses for the applications and related content on their mobile devices.
Who is likely to use mobile consumer applications in the workplace?
Based on recent Analysys Mason surveys in Europe and end-user technology product testing in the United States, we’ve discovered three characteristics of employees making them more likely to use content and applications on a mobile device.
Youth – There must have been a reason Ponce de Leon went searching for the fountain of youth in the early 16th century. We know it wasn’t because the youth are more likely to use mobile applications, though this is reality. Eighteen to 34-year-olds are a prime target for mobile applications, whether consumer or business centric. Consider them earlier adopters of content rather than their 35+ year old peers.
Existing mobile e-mail and MMS users – Those using mobile e-mail are five to six times more likely to use mobile applications acquired through application stores. And those using MMS are two to three times more likely to use mobile applications acquired through application stores.
Touch-screen device users – There’s something behind that touch screen driving users to mobile application stores. While the iPhone has certainly inspired new levels of application downloads, even in Europe where the iPhone is relatively new, touch-screen device owners are more likely to use mobile application stores.
Young, e-mail/MMS-centric touch screen device wielding mobile users are the earliest and strongest adopters of mobile applications through application stores. Vendors like Apple, Nokia, Blackberry, Google, Samsung, LG, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Palm sponsor most of these stores. But little by little, service providers including China Telecom, Telefonica, Vodafone, and Orange have treaded into the application store waters. One might argue that service providers are willing to invest more in their application stores than vendors since applications provide marginal, core network revenue for service providers from SMS and data services.
It’s only natural that this same early-adopter crowd would be creative and experimental enough to create some novel uses for mobile applications and content on mobile devices.
Consumer applications used by our enterprise technology test panel
Analysys Mason has a test panel of enterprises and small enterprises. These businesses take new technology – IT, mobile devices, mobile services, applications – and test the solutions for us. We then share those test results in articles like these and with our vendor and service provider clients.
Most recently we’ve been testing smart phones like the HTC G1, Nokia enterprise devices like the E75, the HTC Droid, the Apple iPhone and the Samsung Rugby, a ruggedized non-smart phone device. Turns out that employees, left to their own devices, come up with all sorts of uses for these devices relying on consumer (and some business) content.
Physician’s office saves $12.95 per month – One small business found the Internet Radio application on the Nokia E75 and started using it instead of pay-satellite radio for piped-in music to his waiting room. He found the application extremely easy to use and he could stream the content over his WLAN instead of over the carrier’s network. In addition, he was of Indian descent and enjoying piping traditional music from Delhi into his office after hours.
Shoe salesperson gets 3-5 new opportunities a month – Another employee – a footwear salesperson – wanted a novel way to notify customers about monthly sales on ladies shoes. He used MMS and SMS text messages to send out monthly promotions to his customers who opted-in. He found that MMS and SMS were two of the only remaining media that got customers’ attention – snail-mail, e-mail, telephone calls, and radio advertisements were less effective for him.
IT service organization saves customers $150 per visit – Another business runs an IT services organization fixing broken PCs, installing and maintaining PBXs, server support and the like. When given a set of mobile devices capable of video-based communications, the technicians started using video calls to get additional tech support while in the field. If they needed additional help while at a customer site, they would initiate a video-based call and have someone more skilled in the field office help trouble-shoot. This allowed the technicians to resolve problems without necessitating another truck-roll and supervisor visit.
App stores drive future use of business applications
Most of the application and content innovation is coming from the vendor community and related development communities. Major device OEMs and OS platform owners have launched their app stores in an attempt to capitalise on the increasing consumer demand for mobile content and applications. Apple is clearly leading the market place with the accumulative application downloads surpassing 3 billion by January 2010. And while we question the profitability of application stores as stand-alone entities, we believe the marginal sales of hardware (in the case of Apple) or services (in the case of telecom operators) make application stores good businesses.
The case of Orange
Recently Orange announced a business-centric applications store called “Orange App Shop,” an action we applaud. Empowering an employee’s mobile lifestyle should be the goal of all mobile operators. Aimed at both large and small enterprises, Orange’s App Shop seeks to provide a series of relevant productivity applications for businesses.
Orange plans to leverage its secured networking and IT support heritage with a series of solutions for field workers’ and sales forces’ front-office needs. Orange also expects to offer some vertical-specific applications to enable business process workflows, inventory management and customer management. These applications would have a standard database integration as well as back-end synchronization. With large enterprises, the complete solutions include applications plus integration and implementation support. With smaller enterprises, the solutions will be off-the-shelf and will eventually be bundled with other mobile data solutions. Orange will publish and promote a catalogue of certified Orange applications for its large and small business customers.
Orange also recognizes the importance of device management and is working to create platforms to support businesses across its global footprint with consist managed mobility solutions. As smart phones continue to proliferate and IT organizations are expected to support multiple devices and operating systems, the global mobile operators hav
e a great opportunity to offer solutions facilitating
device management, provisioning, security, telecom expense management and applications management. Cross-device, multi-OS support for businesses will continue to get more tricky for IT department: this is a obvious problem that service providers can solve.
While we haven’t found U.S.-based service providers suggesting novel ways for employees to use their consumer applications, we know there’s a market out there. It’s in the best interest of wireless service providers to tout the benefits of these consumer applications to businesses. But oftentimes the business value of solutions gets lost in the consumer hype swirling around the wireless industry.
We encourage service providers to use these types of real-world examples to differentiate their mobile solutions – device plus services plus applications – to small and large businesses. We’ve provided three such examples in this short article and there are many more. It is easy to quantify the business impact – whether cost savings or revenue enhancement — of consumer content and applications used in the work context. And positive business impacts for customers translate into revenue for mobile service providers.
Steven Hilton is principle analyst at Analysys Mason.
Interested in more content from the March 2010 Special Edition? Click here