Infotech Lead Asia: As 3G and 4G networks expand worldwide, and more employees adopt smartphones and tablets, many enterprise suppliers are eyeing the mobile video collaboration services market.
Many consider this market to be video conferencing on the mobile device; however the most immediate ROI is gained when mobile video collaboration is used to support business processes; particularly service operations.
This market is still in its infancy, but suppliers such as Librestream, Polycom, and even operators can help spur adoption now by providing pricing and packaging that addresses the large differences in need and potential usage across their employee base.
For business operations support, there are over 500 million employees worldwide that could benefit from mobile video collaboration services. However, by 2017 less than 2 percent of these employees will generate service revenues, totaling about $500 million worldwide.
Low frequency of use creates much of the disparity between addressable market and adoption. While mobile video collaboration access would be valuable for many employees, actual use represents a small portion of their time.
Other barriers include limited thought by businesses in how to integrate video into business processes. Many businesses also don’t have the IT infrastructure and services to store, manage, and efficiently access captured video. Privacy and legal issues for use in industries such as healthcare are also inhibitors, as well as digital cameras whose still images are considered good enough.
Dan Shey, enterprise practice director, ABI Research
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