Enterprise Mobility & Connected Devices Blog

Event Recap – AirWatch Connect

In an effort to foster widespread adoption of their respective architectures and IP, leading embedded processor technology providers have been steadily building IoT-focused development platforms for their engineering ecosystems. ARM, Intel, and Imagination Technologies market comprehensive platforms focused on facilitating interoperability, software development, and security. Each organization is expanding on their development support and embedded hardware and software offerings in an effort to promote the reach of their respective core architectures. Despite some overlap, these leading embedded processor core architecture providers have actually embarked on fairly different paths for the IoT. Read more

With the broader tablet market in the midst of an identity crisis one segment receiving increased attention are enterprise end users. VDC’s recently published 2015 Enterprise and Government Tablet analysis confirms this opportunity, forecasting annual growth of enterprise tablets – which represent approximately 15% of the overall tablet market – at 12.1% annually through 2019. A flurry of new products targeting the enterprise user from mega-brands Apple and Microsoft and specialty rugged mobile vendors Zebra and Xplore are directing the spotlight on this segment. Read more

VDC Research’s recently published Q2 2015 Rugged Mobile Market Analysis provides further evidence that the rugged mobile market is anything but predictable. Performance varied considerably by both mobile form factors and regional market with continued turbulence expected through the end of 2015. Read more

Last week, BlackBerry made headlines with the announcement of its intent to acquire Good Technology for $425M in cash. The move follows a string of mobile-first EMM acquisitions that began with Citrix acquiring Zenprise in late 2012, followed by IBM’s acquisition of Fiberlink in November 2013, and VMware acquiring AirWatch a mere two months later. BlackBerry’s move will undoubtedly help the beleaguered company continue its transition from hardware tosoftware, help them reach their stated SW revenue targets and address some of BlackBerry’s more glaring EMM portfolio gaps. Read more

Smaller form factor devices—namely rugged handheld computers and smartphones—remain among the most common device types that support line-of-business (LOB) workers across nearly all industry verticals. VDC estimates that manufacturers will deploy a total of 3.4 million rugged handheld computers and 32 million smartphones in 2015. While there is some overlap between use cases for rugged handheld devices and for smartphones, the latter are morealigned with highly business- and mission-critical applications, which place a premium on reliability and have unique data capture requirements. However, the rugged smartphone has emerged as a new form factor in recent years.  Read more

Over the course of the past decade, Apple has come to epitomize the consumer side of technology, from the iconic iPhone to the Mac, which has made significant progress against the once-ubiquitous PC. In the enterprise, however, Microsoft’s legacy as the de facto OS for business remains a significant barrier that Apple continues to chip away at by virtue of its massive consumer appeal. Under CEO Tim Cook’s stewardship, there has been a notable shift to prioritizing the OS enterprise – take, for example, the partnership with onetime rival IBM in July of last year. Read more

Yesterday, the heads of Samsung took to the stage at Lincoln Center in New York to announce its latest devices – the S6 edge+ and the Note 5, as well as the release of its new payment system, Samsung Pay.  With the advent of the iPhone 6 Plus, Samsung has had to work harder to differentiate its product beyond being the default Android counterpart to Apple. The Note 5 manages to accomplish this handily with the newest iteration of the S-Pen, which provides substantive enterprise functionality. Read more

Zebra announced its Q2 2015 results today. Although the top line results mostly were in line or slightly beat expectations, the same cannot be said of EPS which significantly missed expectations. The gross margin hit was explained by various non-recurring events such as the cost of re-branding. However, looking a little closer, the numbers are also suggestive of a change to business mix with a larger share of revenues being derived from Tier 1 deals which inherently carry lower margins when compared to the run-rate or channel business. Put another way, the run rate business is showing signs of weakness. A lot of time during the Q&A on the earnings call today was dedicated towards the state of Zebra’s mobility opportunity and their customer’s migration from legacy Windows platforms (Windows Mobile/Windows CE) to Android, iOS and potentially/eventually Windows 10. Read more

Split-billing, the process by which mobile phone charges are divided based on certain criteria and paid separately by the employee and employer, is a capability that is increasingly attractive due to consumerization trends. Companies providing mobile solutions to employees face a growing challenge in identifying and separating corporate and personal use; this is especially difficult in a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) or corporate-owned, privately enabled (COPE) environment. The issue remains divisive, with some employers expecting employees to pay for all mobile use—both corporate and personal—while others have implemented stipends, corporate phone plans, or reimbursements for corporate use. Read more

All eyes are on Microsoft with tomorrow’s much-anticipated and written-about release of Windows 10. This next generation of Windows could prove a key turning point for the rugged market – and the rugged handheld market in particular, which has seen fluctuating demand in recent years due in large part to OS uncertainty following the lack of success with Windows 8.1. The launch of Windows Embedded 8.1 Handheld as a successor to the popular but aging Windows CE and 6.x began inauspiciously with delays and lack of device support from market leaders, with the result that the only devices available supporting the OS were from vendors limited market share. Read more