Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Canalysis reports an impressive growth of the worldwide smart phone market, the market grew an impressive 95% over the same quarter a year ago to 80.9 million shipped units. Although Nokia retains the leadership position with a 33% share of the market, Apple achieved a 17% share worldwide. According to Canalysis vendors will face rising price pressure in 2011 as the growth increasingly comes from the mid-range of the market.

While the smart phone market growth has so far mainly been driven by the high-end segment, the market is now reaching a tipping point where the mid-level makes up a growing proportion of that growth. Smart phones are becoming the standard!

In the past weeks two TEM acquisitions took place. Vodafone announced the acquisition of two telecom expense management companies: TnT Expense Management and Quickcomm. Later that week TMT Ventures announced the acquisition of Ezwim.  

The specifics of the Vodafone deal were not announced. Combined, Gartner estimates that the two acquired TEM companies generate under US$25M in revenue. Based on the estimated 2009 revenue of the acquired companies, their trended growth over the past 36 months as well as considering comparable TEM acquisitions; Gartner estimates that the two companies were likely acquired by Vodafone for less than US$40 million. TnT has appx 85, and Quickcomm 35 staff.

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Findings of a survey released by FCC indicate that 30 million Americans have experienced the shock of unexpected increases in their monthly phone bill. “Bill shock” is defined as an unexpected increase in a monthly bill not caused by a change in a service plan.

Shocking results!

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Anyone old enough can remember the frustration, money and time lost, and eventual evolution of Enterprise Software implementations like SAP, Siebel, etc. Why did they fail? Software was not mature enough for one, but fundamentally companies trying to implement it mistakenly thought it was a software implementation managed by IT.

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Operators have spend millions in promoting smartphones and services in the past years and customers have finally started to adopt smartphones in big numbers.

Fantastic news for operators?

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Telecom costs continue to increase and the number of corporate mobile phones increased in 2008 by 13%. These are some of the findings from the Ezwim Telecom Monitor 2008 (Ezwim hyperlink), a statistical analysis among Ezwim’s Telecom Management user base that offers an accurate picture of how the corporate mobile is being used by employees.

Key facts:

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Just before Christmas the news was released that Israeli TEM player MTS acquired the Telecom Expense Management Operations of US based AnchorPoint. This is yet another TEM acquisition/merger ……in 2008 Tangoe acquired Information Strategies Group (ISG) and HCL Technologies acquiring Control Point Solutions. 

Market consolidation in the TEM space is taking place and will accelerate. Why? Here are some reasons:

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Telecom Expense Management is becoming more and more important for Multi National Corporations (MNC) attempting to keep costs under control. A key trend is that companies take a global approach towards Telecom Management by centralizing telecom with the objective to reduce costs and streamline business processes.

Many TEM vendors have a national service and approach and must seek strategic partnerships (or build themselves) to be compliant to the enterprise trend moving away from national to global services. An example of this trend is the announcement of the global partnership between Ezwim and Movero Technology to deliver a joint lifecycle management service globally. The joint service is based on the full integration of the respective Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platforms.

The integrated offering will be available in Q1 2009. The benefit to enterprises: a total lifecycle management approach for policy development, procurement, administration of services and expense management across multiple carriers, allowing for more effective cost control, service and support.

Many organizations are in the midst of their annual budgeting and planning cycles for 2009, cost reduction programs have become the key priority in order the weather the current economic crisis. Telecom is a top 3 expense category with MNC’s spending 1.500 – 4.000 $ per employee per year.

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To help enterprises survive the current economic meltdown. Gartner offers help by means of 25 tactical tips for the CIO to cut IT costs. In the cost category Networks & Telecom Gartner recommends Telecom Expense Management Services to cut costs by 10%-35%.

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