The latest development from Microsoft includes surface, Windows 8, Mobile endeavors and strategies, the cloud (Azure), the acquisition of Nokia.
Are they considering
business services (enterprise offerings), as in providing wireless information
services for the workplace? If not then… should they?
Microsoft continues on fighting for a “piece of the pie”
for the consumer mobile market (tablets and phones), which currently is led by Apple
iOS and Google Android devices, operating systems and app stores. It
appears that new phone buyers are willing to give windows a try (at least
outside of US and Canada, where the Nokia brand is not strong enough). But
still I wonder if instead of going head to head with the 2 giants of the consumer
mobile devices niche, Microsoft should consider an alternative strategy.
Apple did this by making everyone fall in love again with the brand with their
iPOD. That led to the iPhone and the rest is history.
The case that we want to
focus here is that providing mobile solutions for the corporate market can be
one of those alternatives for Microsoft. Most of the companies, at least in the
Americas and Europe, are using PCs and windows operating system. A big
population use Microsoft Office, then
why not create the necessity for using their tablets and phones as well.
Blackberry is currently struggling. For many years they were
the leaders of wireless services (push emails, mobile phone, text messaging,
internet faxing, Web browsing from your mobile phone, and other data related
services). In addition, they were able to supply a solution for the niche, security (encryption built-in since day
1, the use of Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) among other corporate-features), and that worked very well for them.
This made them popular within institutions (to mention an example: government),
because, as we all can imagine when you are dealing with sensitive information
traveling to your phone or through your corporate emails, just for naming a
scenario, we can understand the value and the importance of having our data as secure as possible. Blackberry
devices became not only a part of our personal life, but part of our
work/business one as well.
A few questions keep
coming back to my mind: Will BB manage to maintain it? If they don’t then which
company/provider will become the "go-to" vendor for this niche? Or
will this niche go away as technology keeps changing?
Blackberry is going
through a deal with FairFax Financial Holding Ltd. Making it a private company.
If the deal moves forward but the wireless hand-held devices and services
continues to lose ground facing the risk to become extinct (like others in the
past, e.g. Palm) then who would be the one to rise to the challenge and the
expectations?
Maybe this is a possible
strategy for Microsoft to consider and finally position them as another
viable and strong mobile option. I believe they (Microsoft) own strong tools (cloud, office, office365, outlook,
server products, partners and infrastructure) that make them a viable option.
Microsoft
needs to face the reality:
1. They did come out
late in the game.
2. They haven’t been
great in sales either.
So they need to make
everyone feel they are an innovating company, but most of all they need to find
a way to get to “everyone’s head and stay there” in a positive way.
I want to close this
article by briefly referring to the other side of the coin around this
subject. There is a trend in the
business market of “bring-your-own-device” policies where corporations ask
employees to use their own mobile phones for work email and provide partial
reimbursement to the employee, with the potential
of converting the business and government market much more like the consumer
market.
Because of the security factor, I
have my doubts this will happen completely. If any it will be a mix. Although
the market behavior can always change and prove me wrong…
In any case if that
trend becomes a reality then again the company with the most robust platform
with a good service will be the one to lead that niche and gain more market
share. If Microsoft intention is to
dominate the mobile business then they should consider an alternative like this
one before one of his competitors grabs it first.
Note: The article is based partially in public news.This Post is a collaborative work written by a group of individuals and provided to share on this blog. The owner(s) of this blog is not compensated to provide opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics. The views and opinions expressed on this post are purely from the author(s) and shared in this blog for sharing/discussion/knowledge purposes.
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