"App"ack on the Enterprise....

I agree with Gartner that the ultimate differentiator in tablet space is the rich eco system that can provide a steady stream of applications to enrich various facets of consumers life and the price will drive the "other" tablet market. The only limitation I see here is that price is usually not a differentiator in a perceived luxury market (tablet is a luxury for now) and the usual cost benefit analysis from the consumers perspective gets skewed in favor of the market leader for number of subjective and some objective reasons. Till the point that every person feels they cannot live without a tablet (at least in the wealthiest of nations, while the developing and under developed are skipping through the whole PC phase anyways, and the price is a huge factor in driving sales) one cannot compete on price alone. The cheaper devices have to come up with better or at the minimum same set of capabilities, in order to challenge the market leader.

In this post I want to highlight the enterprise effect of mobile applications. The heavy hitter business process type of enterprise apps such as ERP, ECM, CRM by the likes of SAP, Oracle, HP, IBM, salesforce, are already available on mobiles through web or in native form. These apps on the newer form factors are by no means trivial in their impact on enterprise mobility, on the contrary. But the real potential of the mobile apps lies at micro level of departments and individuals. The detail of personalization that mobile devices, tablets, smartphones enable, will come to organizations on enterprise controlled consumer devices. The power of an application to listen to an opinion and let user voice their own in real time can have the same viral effect on the enterprise communication as it has on the social fabric. Rumors can be culled and spread, ideas gathered at fraction of cost and at far greater speeds than any other channel.

The hurdles, to all this spur of the moment boundary less contribution to corporate indulgence by all ranks, are the initial cost of creating,then maintaining, and finally making sure that the app doesn't come with hidden agendas or malware. It is not just about having a VPN conrol the intranet; the new uber mobile users, bring with them an independent mindset in the enterprise realm. Most of such enterprise "consumers" take the tweeting liberty they enjoy in their personal lives very serious. Porting those mobile personal experiences and advantages to the enterprise in confinement may collide with the essence of openness, but there is promise in context and location awareness.

All said, the world of app is coming to enterprises, small and big, in a gigantic wave. But on the way to ubiquitous access to the collective minds, enterprises will have to sort out the apps they want to put on their "enterprise stores", especially if the apps will be crowd sourced, albeit with in the enterprise. Once the IT has a streamlined the app creation process and hammered the security threats, almost every department will have something to offer. This has the potential to revolutionize connectivity and information sharing, irrespective, if the intent is enterprise propaganda, consensus building or idea generation. The new generation of workforce will come equipped with the skills to transform enterprises with their mobile devices in terms of content creation, dissemination and collecting opinions.

For an interesting read checkout Nielson's Youth mobile usage stats....
which can be found here....
http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/reports-downloads/2010/mobile-youth-around-the-world.html
(You will need to provide information to download)

The "iCrave a tablet" market

Will the iPad be the iPod of tablets in terms of sweeping the market. This question has taken me again and again to different stores, from BestBuy to Verizon to online and I have to admit that the momentum of iPad and iPad2 can be paralleled with a wrecking ball demolishing the existing eco systems. But the good thing is its catalyst effect for not only reviving failing industries and spawning new ones through extended use cases, but also a rekindling (no pun intended) of its own breed. The device that can provide platform to a vast number of services truly deserves praise.

But the question remains are we looking at the formation of a 80/20 market. If we use the current market/consumer data and base a forecast on it, we are sure to find a YES at the end of five years. But in a nascent market can we take the risk of betting on the leader after a first few laps when seemingly many furlongs are still to go. Well, if the other horses are barely huffing and puffing out of the gates, the audience is sure to bet on the leader. The verdict for consumer market is almost out when it comes to the tablet market, unless some of the other players are able to divert a fraction of the app/device/eco system driven consumer and developer momentum towards them. One way to do it will be to flood the market with cheaper and some what equivalent devices, give developers free ride to tools and app stores, and put get university programs going for their platforms. This involves considerable risk and only few companies in the world have the channels to scale, management and resources to even think about such an undertaking.

Each time I have visited the above stores for checking the tablet pulse, I felt the other tablets as orphans compared to iPad and its sibling. There is usually a crowd around the "pads" while the rest of the constellation felt sort of by itself, 0r shall we say in its own space (with me). On the other hand the PC notebooks seem to be doing fine and tons of people still buying them, why? The win/tel combo is cheap with the necessary applications. Yes..the forecasts for notebooks and PCs is also in the "recession" phase, but overall the market is big so it will continue on, the future of netbooks, I am not so sure. The mediocre capability priced to sell works well in PCs case, but in terms of tablets, right now we have the best(debatable..but) priced to sell, with all the applications, and support. This will be hard to beat unless you have a channel, to sell a really niche application, on a cheaper device.

The good thing about technology is that it is a moving target, the bad thing you can't sell it without a crafted use case. Monetization is the only game worth playing in the business technology realm and it needs more than one piece of equipment when it comes to enterprise space. That's where we might find a bit more competition to the mass inertia; in the nooks and crannies of specific applications where generalizations are not as effective - small but creative changes to a device can have considerable impact on productivity.