The Mobile War

Recent Palm Pre launch has created quite a stir. I was once a Palm fan. At that time you could only synchronise your emails by putting the Palm onto the cradle and connecting it to your notebook (oh my, I still remember that I used a Tohsiba Protege then). Then as smartphones took the scene by storm, Palm faded. Sad, but the reality was that the once-upon-a-time innovative company could not stay ahead of the curve. Symbian-based Mobile phones (mainly Nokia), Windows Mobile phones, Blackberry took the lion share of the smartphone devices market until...we all know, Apple iPhone came along.

Apple iPhone didn't immediately target the enterprise users when it was first launched. It targeted the lifestyle users who didn't really care about having their corporate emails on iPhone. That was a smart move. The addressable market for lifestyle users was much bigger and competition was less stiff. If Apple were to target enterprise users from day one, it would be attracting too much attention from Microsoft and Blackberry. It is a much wiser market entry strategy to build up a bigger base of customers by addressing the lifestyle user and leveraging on Apple's strengths in user interface and integrated entertainiment apps and its already big base of iPod fans. With the launch of iPhone 3G, Apple upped the ante with the launch of appstore. It's nothing revolutionary. Yes, you can already buy symbian or windows mobile applications today. But have you wondered why it never really took off in a big way? It never quite reached the tipping point that iPhone created. I'm not sure if the fact that iPhone 2G was jailbroken to allow the installation of third party apps through the Installer (for those who jailbreak your iPhone, you should be quite familiar) had accelerated Apple's plans to launch the appstore but I would say that the strategy of allowing third party to develop apps is definitely one big factor to increase the stickiness. It is definitely a plus point that most of these apps are priced at very affordable prices - at price point that most consumers won't mind paying to try out. Prices can be low because of the the large base of iPhone users worldwide. The phone has evolved to become a very personalised piece of device that is more than just making phone calls or texting someone. With mobile broadband through WiFi or HSPA, I can now run web-based applications with just thin clients on my phone. I can access my computer easily to retrieve files when I'm away from my computer.

So, the trend for mobile is clearly on the apps side. Nokia has its Ovi. Blackberry has its Application Storefront. Google has its Android Appstore. Now Palm is launching an appstore for its Palm Pre. The fight will be on the installed base. The more apps a user installs on his phone, the less likely he's going to switch out to another phone device, especially if there are one or two killer apps that the user must have. The market is now beginning to heat up. Today, most apps are non-enteprise. I can see that as companies become more receptive to cloud computing and web-based applications, mobile enterprise apps will be the next wave. As aptly put across by Gartner, "SaaS adoption is being driven by businesses' pursuit of cost savings and quicker implementations, as well as wider availability of high-speed Internet connections....initial concerns regarding the SaaS applications' security and reliability have faded somewhat as the model has matured"

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