NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs, firms with less than 999 employees) continue to strive to regain their place in a troubled economy. Recent AMI research indicates that SMBs who have embraced mobility generated 40% higher revenue growth over the last 12 months compared to those who did not. As the mobile workforce trend continues, mobile devices, including tablet PCs, will play an integral part in supporting these employees.
Until recently, smartphones and notebooks have been the primary tools to process information wirelessly. Tablets are quickly stepping in as a complementary and capable device. But worldwide SMB tablet penetration remains low, about 3%, and still has a long way to go before becoming a mainstream IT asset.
“SMB tablet adoption has been highly fragmented across industries,” says Michael McDonald, Sr. Associate of Worldwide SMB Sizing for AMI-Partners. "We see the strongest interest in professional services, healthcare, hospitality, and the media businesses. The early adopters realize the intrinsic value in having a highly mobile device that enables users to immediately access data, process information, and respond accordingly. Firms that have embraced tablets are also increasingly moving additional resources to the Cloud, increasing the utility of the tablet.”
A recent AMI study has shown that firms with tablets use SaaS applications 20% more compared to those without. As a content consumption device the use of productivity suites and document collaboration tools is especially high in tablet firms. Hosted document collaboration usage amongst tablet users is more than double that of non-tablet SMBs, while hosted productivity suite use is nearly 50% higher. This steady move and reliance on Cloud infrastructure and applications have put pressure on IT networking resources, namely bandwidth. The increased load on networks has led, in part, to tablet firms increasing their bandwidth speeds, which are now over 10% higher than firms without tablets.
“SMB adoption is expected to accelerate as broadband speeds increase and heightened competition drives prices down. We expect average prices to drop nearly 50% by 2013,” says McDonald. “The tablet PC has almost limitless potential in the SMB space where the device can entrench itself as a valuable resource essential to the on-the-go businessman. The ability of manufacturers, software providers and service providers to adapt to the changing demands of business users will be critical to future success.”
Related Studies
AMI’s 2010-2011 Worldwide SMB Cloud Service study examines the SMB Cloud opportunity in 23 countries, including preferences for Cloud-based application bundles, price sensitivity and purchase channel preferences. These studies provide comprehensive research tracking mobile platforms and how various applications and services integrate across an IT organization. These studies also provide coverage of SMB adoption of managed services, and supporting infrastructure, including platforms and devices. These studies will provide a roadmap for successful Cloud go-to-market strategies and tactics.
For more information about this research, AMI-Partners, or our global SMB research, please call 212-944-5100, e-mail ask_ami@amipartners.com, or visit www.ami-partners.com.
About Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc.
AMI-Partners specializes in IT, Internet, telecommunications and business services strategy, venture capital, and actionable market intelligence — with a strong focus on global small and medium businesses (SMBs), and extending into large enterprises and home-based businesses. The AMI-Partners mission is to empower clients for success with the highest quality data, business strategy perspectives and “go-to-market” solutions. Led by Andy Bose, the firm has built a world-class management team with deep experience cutting across IT, telecommunications and business services sectors in established and emerging markets.
AMI-Partners has helped shape the go-to-market SMB strategies of more than 150 leading IT, Internet, telecommunications and business services companies. The firm is well known for its IT and Internet adoption-based segmentation of the SMB markets; its annual retainership services based on global SMB tracking surveys in more than 25 countries; and its proprietary database of SMBs and SMB channel partners in the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific. The firm invests significantly in collecting survey-based information from several thousand SMBs annually, and is considered the premier source for global SMB trends and analysis.