With an increasing number of people using work-related solutions on the go and declining prices of smartphones and tablet PCs, enterprise mobility market in the country is expected to touch about $1 billion by 2015.
"Over the last three years, enterprise mobility in India has seen an exponential growth and this trend is likely to continue for the next five years. While the market [excluding devices] in India currently stands at $244 million, we expect it to grow to $964.4 million by H1 2015," Zinnov Management Consulting Director (Global Consulting) Praveen Bhadada said.
A combination of factors such as penetration of better devices and increased acceptance of majority of mobile platforms are key reasons driving the growth of enterprise mobility in India, he added.
Companies are using mobile versions of solutions for functions like enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, sales force automation, unified communication and billing apart from email and social networking for their employees on field.
Industries leading the way in applying mobility services include banking, manufacturing, retail, hospitality and healthcare.
Upcoming adopters include sectors like automotive, logistics and consumer goods companies, which are increasingly using mobile supply chain systems to streamline inventory management, replenish stock, track demand, and manage shelf space and storage in an optimal manner.
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As per the study, key reasons for mobility were push from management, collaboration among employees, getting more work time out of employees, pull from end users (customers or employees) and reducing communication costs.
Business drivers for enterprise mobility were better customer service, productivity advantage, employee satisfaction and competitive advantage in that order.
"India already has 840 million mobile phone subscribers, with 15% smartphone penetration, and the tablet PC market in India sells about 1 lakh tablets per annum. All these point to a good devices penetration that is further fuelling the growth of enterprise mobility," Bhadada said.
Smartphones and tablets PCs today are available in the sub-Rs 10,000 range, which has helped increasing the penetration of such devices.
"Companies today are optimising their mobility investments with innovative approaches such as pay per use models which will bring down operating costs," Bhadada said adding that there are challenges as well.
The average salary per employee in India is relatively very less and it is difficult for enterprises to give devices more than the salary of the individuals, thereby restraining it to only senior level, the study said.
Some other challenges are lack of standard supply chain in most industries, vernacular content, absence of key large payers focus making it difficult for core business to move to mobile applications, lack of business centric mobile applications and appropriate back-end integration of applications.