Asia Pacific to become mobile world leader
Apr 20, 2005: The Asia Pacific region is being touted as the area that is destined for the largest growth of mobile subscriptions making it also a world leader in wireless technology in the future.
According to Gartner, this is because handsets will have to be made more cheaply in this region, which means a large number of low cost handsets will have to be made to meet the demand.
Gartner believes that this will spark off a hotbed of mobile technology and application innovation, since they will try to squeeze in as much as possible into cheaper phones.
In addition, the research and analysis company issued its strongest warnings to mobile operators to date. In the world's developed and mature markets, it said that falling costs and saturated markets will drive multiple handset ownership, which will increase diversity and support challenges for the enterprise.
And although mobile operators will continue to evolve their offerings through convergence and bundling services to fight off new competitors, they will eventually be relegated to connectivity provides and bit popes.
Gartner believes that operators that provide only one service, such as DSL, will be under threat from companies that offer bundling and convergence.
Nick Jones, the research VP and Gartner Fellow, warned CIOs: "The emergence of operator convergence and bundling strategies will undoubtedly offer opportunities for enterprises to save money.
"However, CIOs should not be fooled into being locked into one operator or indeed being tempted into subscribing to bundled services thy do not need, just because the price seems attractive."
Jones added that one of the greatest challenges CIOs will face is the proliferation of wireless devices and he believes that several hundred separate models will co-exist in the European marketplace.
"This will pose unprecedented support and management problems. They will also find themselves in the middle of a battleground as technology providers such as Microsoft, RIM and Symbian compete to become the 'enterprise standard'."
Gartner estimates that there will be three billion mobile subscribers in the world by 2010. It also predicts that by 2009, 20 percent of enterprise buyers will source fixed mobile convergence instead of buying communications services separately.
Related Article: