February 2009 Archives

Over the last week, the blogosphere (sic...) has been ablaze with stories pointing out that the buoyant mobile broadband market may be hitting a plateau.

Basically two reports by analysts Omnitele and Strand Consult  have pointed out the fact that the current excellent deals offered by the various telecoms suppliers are really too good to be true. Well from a suppliers point anyway. Even though the likes of T-Mobile are reporting excellent mobile broadband sales figures, it's actually costing the operators a lot of money to offer mobile broadband at such rates.

And inevitably it may just not be cost effective or feasible for the cash strapped telcos to offer such attractive packages for much longer.

In fact there's one sector that seems to be doing rather okay despite everything else: that's right mobile computing.

The latest ode to joy comes in a report by TechMarketView, that predicts the UK software and IT services market to shrink in real terms for three consecutive years with only modest recovery by 2011. And the good news is.....?

This would be the first decline since 2003 and is probably enough to make marcoms managers hit the valium. Yet going into more detail, what's clear is that the pain will not likely be equally spread.

And whilst speaking of the mobile broadband coverage and Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2009, there's an issue that is dear to the heart of anyone who's' tried to access their mobile services from a foreign country.

That's right, roaming.

It's never failed to amaze just how many road warriors suddenly run out of juice the moment they land at an airport because they failed to realise that, just like their mobile phone, their mobile broadband service is only configured for the country in which they live.

Now just like with your phone, it's not that hard to set up but it has to bed said that some mobile broadband packages, mainly at the entry-level end, won't offer roaming.

All a bit of a pain at the time but really how much international roaming do most people do? And how much would you pay for an acceptable connection?

Hand in hand with advances in laptop development, one of the things that has driven the continued pace of the mobile computing revolution has been the availability of high bandwidth mobile broadband.

And it has to be said that the mobile telecoms operators in the UK have actually responded well to user demands-in fact the growth in mobile broadband has stated to inspire non-telcos to look at getting piece of the action.

But even if users have a growing number of suppliers to choose from, actually just how well are mobile computing professionals in the UK served by mobile broadband services right now?

Well it had to happen some time soon. It was rather inevitable that the PC industry would cotton on to the fact that telcos were using their products in order to get first mover advantage in the mobile broadband space.

Well one PC vendor who looks like it wants to a bit more of a master of its own destiny is HP who has signed a deal with Orange whereby the two firms will co-distribute and market a range of notebooks and other mobile computing devices each of which will be packaged with mobile and/or fixed broadband access.

The penny -or rather more- has finally dropped.

It's always interesting to see that when there some major event that disrupts the normal ebb and flow of business, such as the snow that hit the UK between 2 and 5 February 2009, there is usually some august body that estimates just how many billions the event has cost the country.

Well there's one group of people that are certainly not counting the cost. On the contrary they are rubbing their hands with joy and counting extra cash.

They are the mobile broadband suppliers.

What was bad news for the UK transport infrastructure (or the shameful finding out of a pared to the bone train and road network) was manna for those who supply the IT and communications technology that supports mobile business and makes firms more flexible and adaptable and better places to rid out the recession.

One especially happy camper was Orange who recorded a huge increase in the volume of mobile data usage, as people turned to their mobile phones and mobile broadband dongles to keep on working from home.

Hours after the first snowflakes hit the ground in the early hours of Monday 2 February; the mobile business technology supplier recorded a 30% increase in mobile data usage throughout the day as thousands of people turned to their mobile phones and dongles to keep on working. Over the course of the working week to 5 February, the extra use of mobile data continued at 20% above average.

Commented Paul Tollet, Vice President Business at Orange UK said, "Our business customers have really felt the benefit of mobile and remote technologies during the last week, as they've enabled many employees to continue working, away from the office. With the right solutions, for example broadband services, mobile email, mobile tools or coverage solutions... in place, mobile and flexible working can effectively give businesses an extension of their office space, enabling day to day operations to continue, whatever the weather."

And that indeed is the whole point. What the whiteout proved is that given the appropriate mobile business technology--including of course the platform on which to plug in mobile broadband technology--businesses don't need to have all of their workers in the office all at the same time. They can be nearer to clients and customers and so improve business productivity.

Going to work is more of a function rather than going to a place.

As we noted previously, netbooks and other ultra portable devices, such as mobile Internet devices (MIDs), are gaining a lot of traction as firms look to mobilise their operations as a repsonse to  increased  financial pressures.

Reinforcing the point that ultra portables are gaining popularity if not yet credibility from businesses, a survey by ABI Research of more than 1000 mobile computing users aimed at identifying attitudes to netbooks and Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) has revealed that netbooks are regarded as secondary mobile computing platforms  and MIDs as essentially mobile phone replacements.

Just 11% of mobile computing users in the US would use a netbook as their primary computer, whilst 79% view such devices as a secondary device to be used in addition to a laptop or desktop computer. For MIDs, almost half of the survey regarded them as mobile phone replacements even though 34% said they would continue to use a mobile handset even if they had a MID.

Yet the research also found compelling evidence that people will value a separate device with a bigger screen that can access web and office applications and that can carried almost any where easily.

So firms need to ask, just what exactly do you want their mobile workers to be able to do? Word and Excel are the baselines and perhaps some database/CRM/sales applications. Won't a netbook be able to support these adequately and more over flexible?

And do firms really need to equip workers with expensive laptops boasting large power draining screens that are designed to run multimedia applications that they never need for business purposes?