Mobile Workforce Among Indian SMBs Rising Fast
KOLKATA, India --(Business Wire)-- As high as 43% of PC-owning small and medium businesses (SMBs, or companies with up to 999 employees) in India now have a "mobile workforce," or employees who need to regularly travel on business for a minimum of 4 or 5 days in a month. This is compared to 22% about two years ago, according to a recent study by Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc.
"The need to constantly be on the move has increased recently, as India's SMBs have become more aware of the importance of improving relationships with their business partners, customers and suppliers," says Manashi Dey, Analyst at AMI-Partners. "The Indian economy is rapidly changing. This will create new challenges for youth entering the workforce with newer, varied and ever-changing job options. The need for a more flexible and mobile workforce requires newer skills and greater adaptability among the youth."
Small businesses (SBs, or companies with up to 99 employees) in India comprise the bulk of the SMB universe. Medium Businesses (MBs, or companies with 100 to 999 employees), though, require employees to be more mobile than their SB counterparts since they are more advanced than SBs and have many more business partners and business transactions
As a result, mobile workforce penetration among MBs has reached 72%. "The traveling is mostly limited within the same city or state - especially for SBs," Ms. Dey says. "However, MBs regularly travel to other states - a few of them also travel overseas on business."
The most vital mobility tool for SMBs is the mobile phone - which allow employees to keep in touch with their headquarters, back-offices and also their other mobile and remotely-located employees. Cellular phone usage has reached near-saturation among India's PC-owning SMBs. Some of the commonly used mobile applications among India SMBs are instant messaging, e-mail and mobile calendar and contact information.
Notebook PCs are another important mobility tool for SMBs. Laptop penetration is increasing fast, especially among Indian MBs. Notebook PC usage is higher among MBs at 70%. Notebook PC spending is set to rise by 32% this year among SMBs.
SBs are realizing the role of notebooks as important mobility devices, and 37% indicated mobility as a key purchase-driver of notebook PCs, while another 43% said they prefer buying notebook PCs due to their in-built WiFi capabilities.
"Some of the key factors influencing notebook PC growth are the rapidly decreasing price gap between notebooks and desktops and introduction of newer and attractive features in notebooks," says Ms. Dey. "Notebook PC vendors are now bundling in wireless LAN capabilities with all newer models."
Due to the increased usage of mobility among Indian SMBs, wireless penetration is also set to go up. Currently, its usage is rather embryonic. About one-tenth of SMBs deploy WLAN. This will no doubt rise, especially among MBs, to about one-fourth this year.
Related Studies
AMI's 2007 India Small Business Overview and Comprehensive Market Opportunity Assessment and 2007 India Medium Business Overview and Comprehensive Market Opportunity Assessment studies highlight these and other major trends in the context of current/planned IT, Internet and communications usage and spending. Products and services covered include established and emerging hardware, software, applications and business process solutions. Based on AMI's annual surveys of SMBs in India, the studies track a broad spectrum of issues pertaining to budgets, purchase behaviors, decision influencers, channel preferences, outsourcing, service and support. Also covered are detailed firmographics and critically important technology attitudes and strategic planning priorities. This data points to key opportunities and messaging hot buttons for vendors and service providers seeking to match their offerings to SMB market requirements.
For more information about this study, AMI-Partners, or our global SMB research, call 212-944-5100, e-mail ask_ami@ami-partners.com, or visit the AMI Web site at http://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 business (SMB) enterprises 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 over the last ten years. 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.
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