Mobile Inside

There's a big debate going on in the handheld industry right now. Will people carry around a handheld and a separate cell phone, perhaps with a Bluetooth connection between them? Or will people prefer to carry around a single handheld device with integrated voice + data? It's not a simple matter, and the answer to this question will affect billions of dollars in hardware, software, and services.

We're just now beginning to see such integrated voice + data devices come to market. But, during the next year, there will be an explosion of new devices that can be used as a cell phone and as a wireless PDA. Good examples to date are the T-Mobile PocketPC Phone Edition and the soon-to-be-released "Stinger" phone by Sendo to be distributed by Cingular.

MobileTrax predicts that within the next five years, enterprise IT will migrate to deploying only integrated voice + data handhelds, including those with the Pocket PC operating system, for all professional staff who work outside the office on a regular basis.

MobileTrax conducted a survey of 200 leading IT decision makers in May. Some of the results are shown in the accompanying charts. Of the respondents to this survey, 40% were from companies with 20,000 or more employees and 75% from companies with 1,000 or more employees. Similarly, 28% of the respondents worked for companies that had sales exceeding $10 billion and 76% worked for companies with sales exceeding $100 million. And finally, 76.6% of the respondents said they worked in IT or MIS and over 50% were at the Director or VP level in their organization.

The first chart (Fig. 1) shows the response to the question about what kind of device enterprise IT prefers to acquire and deploy. Fully 38.6% (the sum of 22.8% for total integration plus 15.8% for integration via an expansion slot) preferred a single device with integrated voice + data even though there were few examples of products on the market. When you add those who chose the Smartphone category, which was just announced in the spring, the total rises to 43.3%. Looking at the results another way, only 24% preferred separate devices for wireless data and phone.

What are they going to do with these new integrated wireless devices? Fully 83.6% said that wireless PIM (email, calendar, contacts and tasks) was the application they expected to use primarily (Fig.2). While the percentage using enterprise wireless apps was low, we anticipate that this will grow over time as enterprise IT gets more experience with the new paradigm.

We believe that the primary reason that enterprise IT would prefer to acquire and deploy integrated voice + data devices is to contain costs for hardware, training, and technical support. Why would IT want to make the training and support more difficult than necessary? The first chart also implies that enterprise IT realizes that it will have to support a number of different platforms, including RIM, Pocket PC, and Palm, since different groups within the enterprise will have different requirements and preferences. The reality of the world of wireless handhelds is multi-platform. Therefore, we suspect that since enterprise IT is not likely to be able to adopt a single platform, it will opt to reduce the number of different devices it will have to support.

Seventy-four percent of the respondents said that the enterprise is buying handhelds. This is up substantially from prior surveys. Handhelds were originally purchased by individuals who then used them for business applications. Now, most organizations are buying and supporting handhelds. This demonstrates that IT considers the handheld an asset and is treating it like other information technology it is buying and supporting.

In future columns, we will review different integrated voice + data Pocket PC products coming to market and talk more about the resources available to support wireless handhelds in the enterprise.

Fig. 1. Most preferred form factor