Canadian businesses will continue to embrace tablet use at the workplace throughout 2011, according to a study released this month by IDC Canada, but the researchers still say the devices are primarily consumer products.
While it’s clear that tablets still dominate as a consumer device, using them for business is a growing trend, according to Krista Napier, a senior analyst with IDC Canada who lead the forecast report.
The report, “Buyer Behaviour Part 1: How Canadian Businesses Buy Media Tablets” is the result of surveys done on a quarterly basis, interviews and ongoing conversations with IT industry executives, vendors and retailers. So far, tablets have been popular in the “C-suite,” Napier said, or among executives. This makes sense, since tablets are often used for reviewing purposes, not necessarily major content creation, she pointed out.
According to Napier, about eight per cent of the Canadian tablet market will be business shipments by the end of this year. However, many of the tablets introduced for work purposes are purchased and brought in by employees themselves, she said.
“A lot of the experimentation is happening with devices that were bought through the company and through BYOD (bring your own device),” she said, as 21 per cent of the businesses included in the report said employees were the way tablets were being introduced into the company.
“Apple is the market leader,” she said. Other companies like Acer, Asus and Samsung are moving into the space as well, she said. “It’s getting busier,” she said.
“I think Cius is an anomaly,” she said of Cisco Systems Inc.’s new business tablet offering, since it is built for enterprise customers only and is designed to build upon the company’s existing technologies, such as teleconferencing tools. “(Cius) makes sense if you’re an existing Cisco customer,” she said, and other vendors likely won’t move toward making similar enterprise-only tablets yet.
What makes these devices truly valuable for business are the apps, she said. “Apps are where a lot of businesses are struggling right now,” she said. Developing apps for certain verticals and uses will make tablets more effective as workplace devices.
HP has the perfect platform for building business apps, according to Jennifer Safruk, vice-president of webOS sales for HP Canada. “We believe we’re actually in the best position for enterprises to develop their own apps,” Safruk said. “Essentially, if you can develop an app for the Web, you can develop for webOS.”
“From our standpoint, this comes as absolutely no surprise,” Safruk said of the survey predictions. The recently-released HP TouchPad has been built as a platform that appeals to consumers and businesses, she said. It has applications like Skype and a front-facing camera, for example, but can support up to 16 Microsoft Exchange accounts for business uses.
“HP is probably the best in the industry in working with partners,” she said. “Our channel partners are key to our success.” While the company has addressed consumer needs and acknowledges the BYOD trend, she said, but its channel partners’ focus on seeking out enterprises. “They’re currently targeting the businesses themselves,” and for HP’s resellers, it would be a significant shift to target the end users instead.
Acer used the strategy of releasing an Android and Windows-based version of its Iconia tablets. “One of the main draws for business and institutional customers with the W500 is the familiar Windows 7 operating system — it enables them to seamlessly bring tablets into their existing IT environment,” Acer spokesperson Lisa Emard wrote in a statement to CDN. “To date, the Acer Iconia Tab W500 has been popular with education and professional customers,” she added, while the A500 (Android-based) has been more consumer-friendly.
“I think we’ll see some vendors refining business positioning,” Napier said. “They want to be attractive for the business buyers as well, it’s just a smaller market,” she added. “Every vendor’s going to approach it differently.”
How channel partners work with the BYOD trend
CDW Canada conducted a survey of 184 customers at one of its events in May 2011 to find out about tablet adoption among businesses. According to the results, 58 per cent of customers planned to purchase a tablet for personal use within the coming year, while 49 per cent said they plan to buy tablets for company employees.
CDW’s tablet portfolio includes the iPad and the PlayBook, the Asus Eee Pad, Motorola’s XOOM and as of this month, HP’s TouchPad. The top choice for tablets among the customers polled was Apple’s iPad 2, according to Daniel Reio, director of marketing at CDW Canada.
Research in Motion Inc.’s BlackBerry PlayBook was the next choice, which Reio attributes partly to the hype surrounding the device’s release near the time of the survey and partly because of RIM’s enterprise focus. The PlayBook is also a natural extension for businesses that already use BlackBerry smartphones in their environments, Reio said.
Whether there is interest in the BYOD trend within a company or not, CDW can help set up programs where employees have more choice, but the solution provider can benefit as well, Reio said. “We can absolutely put in place employee purchase programs,” he said. “We can help manage that for them.”
In that scenario, CDW would provide the customer with a brief document to share with employees that outlines how the employees can buy using pre-negotiated pricing that the customer has worked out with CDW. This way, employees can take advantage of negotiated pricing their employer has put in place, even for technology they are choosing and buying themselves.
“The other angle is if they’re looking for specific applications that do a specific task,” Reio said. “Then we would work with them to pick the right device,” he said, by seeing which tablet has the right apps or potential apps for the customer’s company goals.
Consumer appeal is a big part of the tablet trend according to both IDC and CDW, and channel partners need to appeal to consumerization as well, Reio said. “That’s what the BlackBerry PlayBooks and the HP TouchPads are facing right now,” Reio said-being perceived as “just as cool or cooler” than an iPad or other hot tablet. “That’s why you’re seeing more advertising on their parts,” he said, including television ads.
“The end user experience really is a function of the device itself,” he said. “We can use what the manufacturers are portraying as the end user experience.”
