166 million trade clienteles, will Samsung rock the enterprise boat?

ABI Research estimates that at the end of Fiscal 2013 Samsung had 166 million mobile business customers defined as employed individuals using their smartphone for business and personal reasons. Conversely, most of these customers are the more fickle BYOD users. Samsung desires to capture more cut off the corporate liable smartphone market, and wants more enterprise apps developed for its platform. In a fresh report, ABI Research quantifies Samsung’s success with estimates of subscriber activations through 2019 on two of its enterprise platforms, viz: SAFE and KNOX. The report also studies Tizen’s role as an enterprise platform, and the role that virtualisation will play. The report concludes with an assessment of Samsung’s impact on other market participants counting Apple, BlackBerry, Nokia/Microsoft, Android smartphone OEMs, and mobile operators.

 “Samsung continues to make strides in the enterprise and remains confident in their strategy to support enterprise mobility efforts,” observes Jason McNicol, senior analyst. Rhetoricising further that – “If you look at other device OEMs with an enterprise mobility focus, they tend to have a single solution available. Samsung on the other hand has SAFE, KNOX, virtualisation, and possibly Tizen as enterprise solutions. No other OEM is taking such an aggressive stance towards enterprise mobility.”

Samsung’s move en route for the enterprise began in 2009 and has slowly built up momentum ever since. Key initiatives along the way have led to twenty-three smartphones and tablets being released and deemed enterprise ready as a result of a diversified partner network that focuses precisely on enterprise needs.

Earlier this year, Samsung also rolled out its latest program targeted at wooing enterprise customers – Samsung Enterprise Services. It will provide consulting services for companies that need help rolling out big mobile projects, chiefly custom projects. Samsung is partnering with a company called DMI to help provide these consulting services, which even embraces delivering services like creating custom apps and custom hardware to making sure that devices are secure.

Nevertheless, all doesn’t look rosy for the vistas tread by Samsung. There have been a few questions raised about how great KNOX is. Reports circulated last month that security researchers found a way to hack KNOX, though Samsung downplayed the findings as being not much of a threat.

McNicol adds, “This past year showed Samsung is not invincible as evidenced by launch delays and security issues in KNOX, its flagship enterprise mobility platform. Samsung has the capabilities and resources to overcome these hurdles, but is the market willing to wait? Fortunately for Samsung, the enterprise mobility market has lots of room to grow.”