Vendors must shift focus to succeed in mobile device market

Peter Dinham
Friday, 06 January 2012 23:59

Vendors in the global mobile device market have been warned that to be consistently successful they must shift their focus to designing mobile products or building server infrastructures ready to support mobile users, bundling products with useful, relevant software or services whenever possible, and making products adaptable to the changing and increasing demands of consumers and enterprises.

With exponential growth in the mobile device market over the last several years heralding a time of change for vendors, market analyst firm, TBR, believes PC companies that refresh their product lines to include tablets and ultrabooks will be better'positioned to increase overall revenue and mitigate the effects of reduced IT or consumer spending in mature markets.

According to TBR, faced with lingering concerns worldwide regarding the global economic environment, the vendors that utilised a two'track strategy to penetrate emerging markets or geographies and capitalise on market'wide demand for mobile devices, were most successful in mitigating poor results in weaker markets.

TBR says that revenue growth leaders Apple, Lenovo and Intel showcased effective strategies that combined mobile product technology - in tablets and laptops, especially - with high demand in growing markets, such as China and Germany.

According to TBR, Apple was a top performer in 3Q11, posting industry'leading revenue growth despite, consumers postponing iPhone purchases until the release of the iPhone 4S. Additionally, Apple trailed only HP in total 3Q11 revenue, aided by expansion into geographies with high levels of demand, particularly China.

TBR placed Panasonic placed third in terms of vendor revenue growth, while HP maintained its top ranking in x86'based server revenue, though it was the only x86'based server vendor to realise a drop in sales. Dell and IBM saw year'to'year revenue growth, primarily due to increasing demand by enterprises for cloud'ready server environments and virtualisation tools.

EMC was the leading storage vendor in terms of revenue for 3Q11, according to TBR, as the company grew revenue by utilising a combination of mid'tier and high'end offerings to meet growing demand in virtualisation, security and analytics. Meanwhile, Intel dominated the microelectronics market segment once again, even as sales of Atom'based products fell year'to'year due to ARM'based tablets proliferating in the marketplace and reducing the market share held by Windows'based PCs.

Looking ahead, TBR says that cloud'centric initiatives and partnerships will determine the success of server and storage vendors as they manoeuvre to meet increased demands from users for cloud services and data. TBR believes x86 and proprietary server makers will foster revenue growth and increase market reach by continuing to adopt a solutions'based approach that includes baseline hardware and higher'margin software components - either home'grown, acquired or relayed through a partner - purpose'built for cloud'based applications.

TBR also suggests that by targeting key business needs and focusing on storage, data management and security, and analytics, server vendors will capitalise on growing demand for providers that offer a comprehensive, end'to'end solution tailored to their business' needs.

The analyst firm also believes the continued success of Apple's iPad, the introduction of smaller tablets, such as the Amazon Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble Nook, and the emergence of ultrabooks will have a 'profound effect on the futures of microelectronics manufacturers.' It cautions that companies that adapt or augment their technology strategies to account for the increase in importance placed on instant'on capabilities of a device, having instant access to locally stored or cloud'hosted data, and improved battery life and power management will find they are well'positioned for growth.