Mobile Enterprise Applications - a market waiting to happen?

For mobile operators, the enterprise market is often somewhat secondary in importance to the mass consumer market. However all operators are under pressure to increase their average revenue per user (ARPU) and many are looking to markets such as enterprise applications to increase data revenue. However, although business data revenues will climb steadily throughout the forecast period, they will not make an impact on overall ARPU. Because of a number of factors, such as constant and predictable pricing lower roaming tariffs, ARPU is expected to climb overall.

Pricing matters

Although the overall opportunity for mobile operators in relation to their consumer businesses is small, Frost & Sullivan believes that in 2008 enterprise application data will account for over 300.000 megabytes of traffic per quarter. It is also considered that data is a much lower margin product for mobile operators than voice, the market becomes even more attractive.

When looked at in proportion with measurements such as GDP and population, the Scandinavian countries are currently proving to be early market leaders. However as the market becomes more mature, growth in these countries will slow as their size means saturation levels are reached earlier and the market becomes a replacement-led. This will not happen for some years yet, the market being only now in its early infancy.

In terms of actors, the market consists of a wide range of pure play and start up vendors as well as established enterprise application software vendors. There are some very promising start-ups including Smartner, a Finnish mobile software vendor and Extended Systems from the US. These vendors’ unique selling points are based on the fact that they are focused purely on mobile technologies and have developed their systems specifically for the market.