Market leaders in mobility services have maintained their strong position over the last year, but a range of new challengers have increased their focus on mobility services, and are closing the gap. But with no mobile network assets, the challengers continue to face difficulties in positioning their mobility services, as customers still tend to look at mobile operators as the natural providers of these services.
The findings are in Ovum’s Ovum Decision Matrix: Telco Mobility Services for MNCs in Asia-Pacific. The report evaluates providers of enterprise mobility services to multinational corporations (MNCs) in the Asia-Pacific region, and helps businesses to select a provider based on services capability, reputation among customers, vision, long-term commitment, and experience in the marketplace.
Ovum asked 170 MNCs in Asia-Pacific about the importance of various aspects of mobility and their sentiments about providers. These priorities and evaluations were taken into consideration in the assessment of providers.
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Ovum’s Claudio Castelli says: "With significant variations across providers' portfolios, varied geographical availability, and customers taking a diverse approach to mobility, it is unsurprising that the competitive landscape of mobility services for MNCs in Asia-Pacific is extremely fragmented.
MNCs continue to recognise providers with strong presence in major markets, or with significant global presence, as their main international service providers for mobility services, but those with both characteristics have the broadest combination of strengths and score highest."
Ovum rates nine providers of mobility services in this report. These telcos are among the leading providers of mobility services to MNCs in Asia-Pacific today based on the scope of this study, which includes international roaming, remote access, mobile security services, FMC/mobile UC, managed mobility, mobilizing data applications, and emerging M2M services.
The assessment was based on three components: current capability, strategy, and market impact. The capability assessment evaluates telcos' current ability to provide mobility services for MNCs in the region. The strategy assessment evaluates telcos' abilities to act as long-term partners for their customers, including how well they respond to market trends and support the future plans of current and potential customers. And the market impact assessment uses data collected through primary and secondary research to determine telcos' experience in the marketplace for mobility services.
Vodafone Global Enterprise is the market leader. It offers a comprehensive portfolio of mobility services, which are delivered consistently both in and out of the region. It expanded its professional services and consulting capability to offer more customised services, and established a dedicated practice for TEM, UC, managed mobility, and mobile IT, and has increased its mobile footprint in the region through its recent partnership with the Conexus Mobile Alliance.
Vodafone Global Enterprise is followed closely by SingTel, which has slightly narrowed the gap since our 2011 study. It continues to leverage its significant mobile assets in the region (where it leads the Bridge Alliance), and its managed mobility services, introduced last year, are now maturing.
Ovum’s research also reveals that few enterprises have a single approach to mobility across the entire organization, and that most will continue to have multiple approaches to procuring mobility services for some time. While the bulk of the operational aspects of mobility may still be national, a growing number of MNCs in Asia-Pacific are relying on global providers to manage their services, taking a single global contract for their mobility services.
“Interestingly, when looking to consolidate their services, enterprises are taking the opportunity to do so on a global rather than a regional scale. With the growing demand for global contracts and the decreasing relevance of national footprint, the global challengers have increased their advantage over the regional challengers.
The latter have not yet managed to transform their domestic mobility offerings into a solid international proposition,” says Castelli.
