Enterprise mobility in Malaysia still lagging: IDC Malaysia

By Digital News Asia May 15, 2015

Slight improvement, but still stuck in ‘Opportunistic’ phase
Mobility now a necessity, businesses should adopt ‘mobile-first’ outlook

Enterprise mobility in Malaysia still lagging: IDC Malaysia

MALAYSIAN enterprises are still in the early days of mobility adoption, and businesses have started to move towards developing strategic roadmaps for mobile deployment and the use of internal mobile applications.

There was a slight progression compared with last year, with more enterprises implementing mobility solutions and focusing on improving internal processes, according to a survey revealed by International Data Corporation (IDC) at the recent IDC Asia/Pacific Enterprise Mobility Conference 2015.

“Smartphone penetration rate in Malaysia has reached a certain stage where accessibility and enhanced mobility allow for more effective business processes,” said Alfie Amir, research manager for telecommunications in IDC Malaysia.

“Enterprises today are prepared to advance to the next stage, have better strategic approaches of mobility deployment, and recognise the importance of internal mobile applications.

“It is safe to say mobility solutions are critical for Malaysian businesses,” he added.

According to IDC’s Enterprise Mobility MaturityScape, enterprise mobility adoption in Malaysia showed signs of progress, but remained firmly in the early ‘Opportunistic’ phase, where the focus is still primarily on rolling out and supporting devices.

The biggest movers were Hong Kong and to a lesser extent, China.

The results indicate that enterprises have started focusing on more advanced operation processes and many have launched horizontal business applications. Enterprises have also started looking more seriously at security threats and investment in IT implementation.

“Businesses today need to ensure they have a sound mobility strategy in order to stay relevant in today’s mobile environment,” said Daniel Pang, senior research manager, Asean Client Devices, IDC Malaysia.

“Many businesses still design their strategies and customer interactions for PCs first, but they really need to be going with a mobile-first approach because this year we will see 650 million mobile-only Internet users in Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APeJ),” he added.

Driven by the huge quantities of smartphones and tablets that are shipping to APeJ and the increasing amount of time an average person spends on their smartphone, enterprise mobility spend in the region is expected to exceed US$22 billion, IDC Malaysia said.