IDC said new opportunities are emerging for enterprise mobility vendors in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) as more companies are embracing mobility as a tool for increasing productivity and gaining a competitive edge.
The research company noted that the total mobile workforce in the region is growing, companies are developing policies to govern mobility and implementing mobility management solutions, and that interest in mobile applications is accelerating.
Following a survey of vendors, IDC found that Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Romania in particular represent imminent opportunities within the region. The survey indicated that Romania has the most companies with a mobility strategy (36 per cent), while other countries are catching up.
Madalin Lazarescu, research manager at IDC, said mobility is a "key pillar" for companies, along with big data analytics, social media and cloud.
"Many companies may succeed or fail based on the effectiveness of their mobility strategy," Lazarescu said.
As in other regions, the move towards mobility in the workplace is driven by the growing penetration of smart devices, especially smartphones and tablets. In the second quarter of 2015, IDC found that smartphones represented more than 75 per cent of all mobile phones shipped in the CEE region.
The implementation of mobile strategies within different industries is far from an easy matter, however. IDC stressed that vendors must therefore understand industry-specific requirements and the drivers behind mobility initiatives.
For instance, in some industries, using smartphones and tablets to access company systems may be considered the core of enterprise mobility, while in others, enterprise mobility means using ruggedised mobile devices capable of withstanding harsh environmental conditions.
According to IDC data, increasing sales revenue is an important mobility driver among retail and wholesale and media companies in CEE, but this factor is considerably less important for utilities and public-sector organisations. Similarly, while reducing the cost of doing business is important for entities in finance (17 per cent) and retail and wholesale (14 per cent), it has negligible importance for those in the telecoms or media sectors.
Overall, IDC said advances in mobility will continue to change the way companies do business in the years to come.
"It will become more important for decision makers across industries to keep pace with the rapid changes of mobile technologies and their impact on IT departments and systems, as understanding mobility trends and developing an agile mobility strategy will prove a key differentiator in a highly competitive landscape, as well as an enabler of future success," the company said.
For more:
- see this IDC release
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