The battle for the supremacy in the smartphone and tablet
domains has heated up following Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility, the
launch of new lines of mass-market smart phones by Nokia and Samsung, and the
decision by HP to dismiss its WebOS hardware product lines including the
TouchPad tablets.
Motorola’s acquisition will allow Google to enrich the
Android ecosystem. It will also enhance competition in mobile application
development and distribution, including those mobiles adopted by small and medium
businesses.
AMI’s latest SMB market study reveals high levels of
adoption of Mobile cloud-based applications through smart phones and tablets by
Western European SMBs. In particular SMBs are expressing a strong interest in
mobile cloud services that go beyond productivity applications to more business
management-focused applications, such as customer relationship management and
business intelligence delivered to mobile devices,” said Lorenza Brescia, EMEA
cloud services director at AMI Partners.
Increased purchase probability for business applications
on mobile devices presents a potential market opportunity of $13 billion
amongst the 11 million SMBs in Europe’s largest markets (France, Germany,
Italy, Spain, U.K.).
The offer of the right bundled services for mobile
devices on top of basic voice and data offerings will be key for service
providers to maintain and gain market share in the SMB market. The results of
the study will give powerful insights for mobile service providers starting to
shape their mobile cloud services strategy.
A key to supremacy for the big technology companies will
be the ability to create new business models for mobile customer engagement linked
with applications that integrate all areas of business management (from sales
and marketing to customer care).
As Motorola phones will likely run native Google
applications, other Android partners won’t have the same obligation and will
thus be free to develop attractive alternatives. Microsoft can still position
itself as the only OS that’s entirely hardware-independent.
Google’s acquisition of Motorola could have the effect of
turning more handset manufacturers to Windows Phone to diversify their
portfolios away from the now less neutral Android.
The capability to integrate powerful business
applications on smart phones and tablets will facilitate and accelerate their
adoption in business environments. AMI’s study confirms the strong interest of
Western European SMB Businesses who are expected to spend $3,010 million in
2011 on smart phone devices, growing to $4,927 million by 2015.
By Telecomlead.com Team
editor@telecomlead.com
