South African enterprises are becoming increasingly flexible about a mobile workforce measured on productivity rather than physical presence, says Paulo Ferreira, Director: Enterprise Mobility at Samsung South Africa. This is in line with international trends for enterprises to supply shared 'hot desks' for a mobile workforce.
"In South Africa, we're seeing customers adopting this approach too. They are less concerned about people sitting at the office and more focused on what's important for business - productivity and a more empowered, fulfilled workforce with a better work-life balance," he says. "In recent years, local companies have become a lot more flexible with regards to integrated connectivity, allowing work to be done anywhere."
Ferreira attributes this alteration as part of the environmental changes driving mobility in South Africa.
"For one thing, there has been a downward spiral in terms of the cost of mobile data, and it has also become faster over the years. With the operators competing on price, as well as on innovation in the mobile connectivity space, we have 3G, 4G and even the prospect of 5G coming, which translates into access to faster and cheaper services," continues Ferreira.
Applications for mobile devices have also improved significantly, with a wealth of new enterprise apps emerging all the time. "Today, enterprise tools like mobile video conferencing have become readily available to the road warrior, thanks to faster, cheaper bandwidth and more powerful mobile devices," says Ferreira.
In addition, mobile device manufacturers are increasingly competitive. "We are innovating on new hardware features like fingerprint authentication and faster speeds on the devices in line with faster network speeds. There is a lot of hardware innovation and healthy competition happening, which is good news for the consumer and corporates because we keep pushing the envelope to give them better tools to accomplish their roles," says Ferreira. He notes that this impacts more than the premium products: "The premium product of today becomes the mainstream product of tomorrow, so there is a constant trickle down of mobile device innovation."
Ferreira notes this ongoing innovation has seen tablets going mainstream in enterprise environments and even lower level employees are being equipped with smartphones, which was not the case as recently as two years ago. The majority of smart mobile devices in use in enterprises are 'employee liable' BYOD (bring your own device), with job role and employee seniority dictating the screen size, processing power and functionality needed of the device. "Whether it's a tablet, phablet or smartphone depends on the use case," he says.
"Now users have Microsoft Office on their smartphones, which allows them to access e-mail attachments like Word, PowerPoint and Excel by using a mobile phone. The user typically won't use the phone as an input device, but it's very much a consumption device. The phablet can either be a consumption or input device, while the tablet and laptop are more input devices. A lot of advances are happening across these product types - our Galaxy Note 5, for example, has significantly enhanced input functionality with a stylus that delivers better copy, cut, edit, paste and handwriting recognition."
Ferreira adds that Samsung's $13 billion R&D (Research and Development) spend is contributing to innovations across design, processing power and speeds and even the challenge of extending battery life. "The battery challenge is one all manufacturers face and there's a lot of work to be done," he says. Samsung and MIT are working on solid electrolyte technologies with a view to revolutionising battery life as part of its innovations in the battery space. Samsung has also improved battery charging time and launched wireless charging in a bid to support the mobile workforce.
"The improved networks, lower bandwidth costs and significantly enhanced devices and apps available today mean that the mobile workforce that was just a hype only a few years ago is becoming a reality," says Ferreira.
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