Predictions for the Enterprise Tablet Market - by Frost & Sullivan (part I)

In under a year, tablets have gone from newbie to necessity among technologists and mainstream buyers alike...

Apple threw down the gauntlet with the iPad, and more traditional enterprise vendors followed: Cisco (with the Cius), Avaya (Desktop Video Device), RIM (PlayBook) and various vendors supporting the Android operating system. Welcome to the age of the tablet, a mobile device that offers the power of a PC, the convenience of a smart phone, and the cool-factor of, wellâ?¦ the hottest new technology out of the box.

But will they fly in the enterprise, or are tablets built and designed for consumer use and adoption? To some extent, the question is moot: regardless of what their IT managers think, some employees will buy and use tablets on the job to whatever extent they canâ??and some of that use will actually be for work. But while Apple may be content to sell to individual consumers and take whatever enterprise business it can get in the process, Avaya and Cisco, among others, are clearly pursuing their more traditional customers: enterprise buyers who control budget and make purchasing decisions for the organization, and who determine what devices employees will use on a daily basis.

Certainly, for consumers tablets hold significant appeal. They enable rich video for watching movies, TV and other video on the go. They act as e-readers, allowing users to download books, magazines and newspapers and read them wherever they wish. They make is easy for people to manage email, surf the Internet, and otherwise consume information. No wonder sales of the iPad have already reached six million, according to some estimates, less than a year after its initial release.

But while tablets excel at letting users see, read and digest information, they are not very good for content creation. It is simply uncomfortable to type on a tablet device for any length of time, and manipulating spreadsheets or PowerPoint documents is even more difficult. That would suggest that for most knowledge workers, tablets are nowhere near as useful as a PC.

And yet, the business world is changing, and collaborationâ??not document productionâ??is often the word of the day for many knowledge workers. For these people, the need to collect, share and work on projects with colleagues and customers is paramount. And when it comes to collaboration, tablets can excel even more than burly PCs, because they are light, mobile and very high-def.

Here are some scenarios in which tablets can deliver significant value:

* Video conferencing. As more employees work remotely, they are looking for ways to connect, communicate and collaborate as if they were in the same room. Video conferencing is one good way to do that, since it lets participants see the facial expressions and body language that deliver cues to meaning and intent, which in turn makes communication clearer and enables more effective collaboration. Just as important, people are growing more comfortable with the technology every day, thanks not to enterprise-grade systems (which are used daily by only 18 percent of the 60 percent of employees who use them, according to Frost & Sullivan's latest research) but to consumer devices like smart phones and portable cameras that make recording, downloading and viewing video as easy as sending an email or placing a phone call. Still, participating in a business meeting is not the same thing as watching the latest Lady Gaga video; while most users are content to consume content on a very small screen, employees need to actually be able to pick up on the nuances offered by videoconferencing for it to be an effective collaboration toolâ??and that requires a larger footprint than smart phones deliver. That's where tablets offer value and performance phones can't matchâ??without the bulk and connectivity requirements of a full-fledged PC or desktop/executive video device.

* Web conferencing. If videoconferencing makes it easy for people to meet remotely without losing the benefits that come from being in the same room, web conferencing ups the ante by allowing users to share documents and applications, thus enabling collaboration on top of communication. Frost & Sullivan is seeing significant growth in the web conferencing market, which grew more than 10 percent in 2009, despite the recession, and for which we forecast a CAGR of more than 17 percent between 2009-2015. But Web conferencing doesn't work on the tiny screens found on smart phones and other mobile devices; for it to be effective, users must be able to clearly see the details of a PowerPoint diagram or productivity application. That requires a bigger screen, like those found in tabletsâ??which is why we think they will enable more remote working.