In traditional PC-dominated world, the distinction of enterprise vs. consumer business was fairly clear. However mobile devices are for today’s market just as desktop PCs were for the PC Age in the past. The line between enterprise vs. consumer market has become increasingly blurry as we see the proliferation of mobile devices adopted at workplace in place of desktops and mobile devices become more of the productivity tools than just the communication and social tools.
Today’s competitions in consumer device market are extremely fierce. New devices, new features, new global players are coming out every day. Domination in any global consumer market becomes increasingly short-lived and difficult. Companies are forced to constantly seek new markets and new ideas to hold onto market shares which may promise new service revenues in the near future. One such strategy is the push to cross of the protected boundary of enterprise vs. consumer market.
Google, with free Android mobile platform and rich assortments of its different price-point models from many manufacturers, has been gaining steady shares from cost-sensitive consumers and school buyers. Today Google has a strong push in cloud-based enterprise productivity software online and on devices with “Google for Work” solutions including Gmail, Google docs, etc. Microsoft, with the year-over-year decline of global PC shipment endangering its once-a-stronghold enterprise software space, on the other hand, is trying hard to gain more shares of the consumer market with its Windows Phone and Surface tablets.
Thanks to Steve Jobs’ visionary leadership, Apple has been very successful in high-end consumer market with its popular iPhone and iPad. However Apple also started observing a slower growth with iPad and more competitions in global smartphone market for iPhone. Of course they turned their attentions to the enterprise space. Apple devices have been flowing nicely into the corporate world in recent years. iPhone has long replaced Blackberry as the mobile choice for enterprises. With the new reality that enterprise solution providers and internal IT departments nowadays must offer applications both online and on mobile, Apple devices are riding on the lucky wave of the corporate changes. iOS is usually the No.1 targeted mobile platform for these developments. For example, Salesforce.com and SAP are observing increased traffic from Apple devices for their mobile versions of the CRM/ERP applications. Apple is also consciously deepening its corporate customer pursuits by allowing its devices to easily connect to enterprise emails and shipping new security features in its newer models such as the Touch ID fingerprint readers and anti-reflective screen coating in Apple Air 2 and Mini 3. This year Apple formed a joint venture with IBM to leverage Big Blue’s enterprise service reach to push more mobile apps running on its devices in enterprise environment. It has already borne fruits after a few months with the first set of mobile apps targeting key industries such as airlines, banking, financial services, insurance, etc. With more apps to come to ease enterprise pain points, they also hope that Apple’s strength in product design and user experience will appease to more enterprise users.
It looks like the merging of the enterprise and consumer markets in the future may be inevitable. A new reality appears fast approaching that all major enterprise applications will be running in cloud and all users can connect, do the needed work and run their daily life activities via mobile devices. Ease-of-use concepts and design innovations in consumer experience will surely be carried into business world as well. Wouldn’t it be cool that in the future work and play can merge?