Overview of Smartphone Manufacturers and Increasing Users

Mobile as predicted and contemplated by varied segments of pundits across industries has been one of the emerging winners in 2013. The global adoption of smartphones has up trended by many leaps with a huge number of local manufacturers catering the smartphones at a cheaper price.  

The consumer adoption of smartphones as predicted by the analysts across the globe has increased by many leaps. The very proof of it is that the number of smartphone users round the globe has increased to a staggering 2 billion by the end of 2013.

The developing countries and in particular those in Asia are still bigger markets for smartphones with a huge number of local manufacturers entering the market with cost effective devices. The developed countries are also witnessing an increase in the number of Smartphone users due to the two primary phenomena: Mobile Computing and Bring-your-own-device.

The APAC region in particular has a huge number of budding manufacturers who are diluting the share of the global giants. The biggest advantage these manufacturers have is due to the localization of manufacturing within the target markets, the prices are highly affordable to the low income class people who would otherwise have been content with non-smartphones. In spite of companies like Samsung, Nokia and LG having their product portfolio expanded to cater to various segments with products ranging from cheapest price to the premium segments, there is a psychological factor playing on the target segment. Due to the constraints in their affordability, and the shortening life cycles of the smartphones, local manufacturers are having an upper hand in the low-end smartphone market.

List of major local manufacturers capturing significant share in the smartphone market in Asian countries:

Further to the above list there are more than 100 manufacturers of smartphones round the globe, who are actually biting a significant share of market away from the giants.

Mobility in Enterprises

Due to such a huge and rapidly increasing adoption of smartphones and other smart devices in the consumer market, the companies particularly those in the B-to-C segment have a quintessential need to incorporate mobility in all of their technology initiatives. In consumer facing businesses a finely enabled business process on a mobile device is bound to reap benefits. This mobile transformation where businesses can interact with consumers on an entirely different and most efficient of the current lot will certainly improve business productivity significantly.

The enterprises across industries barring the industrial equipment manufacturers will certainly have a huge scope of improving significantly, in respective parameters, by adopting mobility. As concluded by McKinsey in a very recent study on mobility initiatives, more than 50% of the technology providers, have for the same reason, announced their initiatives in the mobility space. Of this a major focus has been laid on technology that will connect ‘field based’ work force to the office resources such that the information exchange and data flow is scrupulous like never before. Among others, the gravitational shift towards m-commerce enablement and customer engagement and retention has been high.  

Mobile Enabling Business Strategy

As always believed by many, mobile is more than just the latest step function in technology innovation. It is a fast-moving engine that is fundamentally reshaping operating models, business models, and marketplaces. Now, the reshaping of operating models had begun already as the fundamentals of market places had changed. It is now time for the business models to be reshaped to be responsive enough to these evolving demands. With this increasing usage of the smartphones, a new culture of banking on mobile technology is increasing in the hindsight. However, the organizations have yet to connect the dots between the mobile strategy and the business strategy to devise a Mobile Enabled Business Strategy. The organizations thus have to be market ready by executing their mobility initiatives at the earliest. 

Overview

Bring-your-own-device phenomenon, believed to be the future of corporate computing, is seen as one of the most radical shifts in the enterprise computing. With the introduction of more and more efficient mobile devices that are replacing PC computing and the shift in operational paradigms, the emphasis has already shifted to ease of computing from place of computing. More and more techies are adopting this due to the flexibility it offers resulting in attractively increased efficiencies. The employees are happy and so are the employers with the productivity benchmarks stretching to greater levels. But that is one side of the coin. With this kind of disruptive setup a lot of things are being exposed. For example, enterprise data security is jeopardized big time. The authenticity of operations may also be compromised and the cons list may be alarming due to the possible adverse effects.

Adoption

Technology can virtualize a wide spectrum of activities in different functions within the organization. Hence BYOD can apply to people from various functions within the organization in both technology and non-technology firms. In order to reduce the operating costs and the infrastructure costs, some companies are encouraging the employees to bring their own devices to the work place. This is a certain indication that this trend will catch up to a higher percentage in the near future.

There is a certain significant reduction in the investment on IT but the IT policies and the software being used have to be revised to facilitate the employees to use their own devices as the device profile ranges from cheapest of the mobile devices to the premium class ones.

A few things to consider while allowing BYOD

Who qualify?

The employers need to figure out and segment who qualify for adopting the BYOD. Since people from various functions may perform tasks on their own devices, the organizations pertaining to various business lines first need to identify the segments of employees that can be allowed to adopt BYOD.

Ø  Segment of employees that need to be allowed

Ø  Segment of employees where there is no necessity to adopt BYOD

Ø  Segment of employees where organizations cannot allow BYOD

There are many global organizations particularly in the financial and technology sectors that do not even allow the smartphones into the workplace and quite understandably for obvious reasons. Such organizations first need to exercise on how BYOD can help improve efficiencies of the employees and if so, who all should be allowed to adopt the phenomenon. The same can be exercised by other organizations as well since the chance of intrusion into company’s data is very high, the people and the devices need to be clearly sorted out.

Security

As flexible as it is BYOD also exposes resulting vulnerability in the processes. The employees may tend to violate the rules, regulations, trust of employers, intellectual property and critical business obligations to name few. Also the permissions to be set have to be concrete. What is allowed when the employee is within the corporate network and also when one is outside the network? Since the data on the devices is both personal and organizational, if left unmanaged, BYOD can lead to loss of control, impact the network availability, and cause data loss. The organizations need the right network access strategies and policies in place to secure your environment. The bigger problem would arise with stolen or lost devices.

Conclusion

The right strategy devised to implement BYOD will certainly empower people to improve the productivity and collaboration. From the organizations perspective, IT needs, will be redefined to provide a single comprehensive security solution that addresses the privacy and risk management mandates. This adept mobility initiative gradually but surely migrates the enterprise computing to mobile computing.