7. Mobile TV
While currently broadcast mobile TV is in its infancy and industry watchers are wondering whether, when and if it'll ever enter mainstream use, some future gazers are already considering if there might be any applications for business.
One suggestion is businesses might be able to use it as a sales channel -- corporates would be able to broadcast their own marketing material to the public. The other point of interest for CIOs is slightly more plebeian -- if all corporate phone users in the future are carrying devices that are capable of showing must-watch shows, will there be an impact on worker productivity?
And, for that matter, on cost. What corporate mobile buyer will want to spend budget on unnecessary functionality? It's this thinking that has largely seen cameras absent from most enterprise-focused smart phones until recent times and will be likely to see the same logic applied to mobile television.
Jim Morrish, from mobile market watchers Analysys, told silicon.com: "I can see the functionality for handling an equivalent of video-podcasts being implemented as standard very soon. However, actual broadcast mobile TV may not be implemented as standard until some way down the line. Initially it is likely that "business phones" will remain business focused ... however, as -- or if -- the technology evolves to the point where mobile TV functionality is implemented on standard mobile telephony chipsets, then economies of scale will result in business devices using the new integrated chipsets, and so having a mobile TV functionality."
The technological impact of mobile TV is likely to be minimal therefore for most organisations -- although questions of productivity and appropriate use of data bundles may yet cause CIOs to take a second look at their usage policies for corporate kit.
RATING: 1/5 -- of outside interest to the suits.
8. Mobile device management
Mobile device management (MDM) is the emerging trend CIOs are likely to be most familiar with and most interested in. MDM enables sensitive information on mobiles and smart phones to be backed up or deleted in case of theft or loss of the device. As mobility starts to become as pervasive as desktop computing in many organisations, equal care must be given to the information stored on portable devices as to patching security holes or managing user-access rights.
According to analyst house Ovum, the market is set to be worth US$435m in 2009. Ovum analyst Jeremy Green told silicon.com that at present there remains a schism between the view of operators and the view of enterprises as to what MDM entails -- for the former, it's about enabling users to get easier access to more data applications. For the latter, it's about lock and wipe -- keeping the user from doing things they shouldn't with their devices and minimising the risk when they do.
He said: "It's not that the operator and the enterprise are pulling in opposite directions but they have been pulling in different directions."
Nevertheless, as corporate mobility becomes more widespread and devices harbour more and more critical applications -- salesforce, field force, mobile CRM -- MDM will fast become indispensable.
For CIOs who have a BlackBerry Enterprise Server, some MDM is included. For those with a more diverse mobile environment, an external supplier could be an option.
Green noted: "With mobile device management, the operator can seem like the logical place to start but doesn't have to be." He added CIOs must first assess how much of the management they are willing to outsource. "It can seem like a bottomless pit," he concluded.
RATING: 5/5 -- should be on everyone's radar.
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