South Africans are prolific mobile users, with mobile penetration in South Africa at 100,48%. As mobile adoption and usage continues to grow, particularly in respect of smartphones, the number of people producing volumes of online content, browsing the Internet, doing banking, downloading online resources, and conducting business on mobile devices is rocketing.
“Smartphones and tablets are fast-becoming the devices of choice and it’s anticipated that more smartphones will be sold in 2013 than regular feature phones, which effectively translates into more people getting access to the Internet via their phones,” says Dries Morris, operations director of Securicom.
“In the last year or so, we’ve also seen a dramatic rise in enterprise applications which give a company’s employees access to corporate data from their mobile device. For businesses, having employees on-call and connected with a smart device has massive productivity-driving, cost-saving potential.
“Of course, it also brings to the fore the problem of how to manage the mobile devices at work and at play in the organisation, particularly in respect of application control and the protection of company data. This challenge is certain to be one of, if not the biggest, bugbears for companies this year and well into the future.”
The Mobility 2012 research study, conducted by World Wide Worx with the backing of First National Bank, shows that the proportion of the average user’s cell phone spend on data has increased by half in the past 18 months – from 8% of budget at the end of 2010 to 12% in mid-2012.
Browsing on the phone also increased substantially, from 33% to 41% of users, app downloads rose from 13% of users to 24%, while Facebook use rose by more than half, from 22% to 38%.
Proportionally, the biggest growth after BBM, which increased fivefold in the last 18 months, was seen in the Twitter user base, which rose from 6% to 12% of adult cell phone owners.
“South African adults are doing more on their phones that ever before. While this high level of connectedness makes the world a smaller place, keeps people in the loop, enables them to become content publishers, and in many ways makes them efficient, the device, at the centre of it all, becomes a store of critical business data and personal information. It is also a gateway to company e-mail and networks.
“Companies have to consider the implications of unsecured devices accessing company resources and storing and transferring business data. Any malicious code or unwanted, unsafe applications or downloads could put company information contained on an employee’s device at risk.
“Security breaches and data loss or leaks resulting from mobile device usage will affect about seven out of 10 companies this year,” says Morris.
He says that the more companies bring mobile devices into their day-to-day operations, the greater the requirement for effective mobile device management (MDM) will become.
“Consumers are increasingly adept at using smart devices in their day-to-day lives, and companies are quickly seeing that these devices are becoming intrinsic to business as well. Based on what we saw in 2012, we expect a huge increase in the demand for mobile device management solutions as enterprises start to leverage mobile devices in day-to-day business.”
“Smartphones and tablets are fast-becoming the devices of choice and it’s anticipated that more smartphones will be sold in 2013 than regular feature phones, which effectively translates into more people getting access to the Internet via their phones,” says Dries Morris, operations director of Securicom.
“In the last year or so, we’ve also seen a dramatic rise in enterprise applications which give a company’s employees access to corporate data from their mobile device. For businesses, having employees on-call and connected with a smart device has massive productivity-driving, cost-saving potential.
“Of course, it also brings to the fore the problem of how to manage the mobile devices at work and at play in the organisation, particularly in respect of application control and the protection of company data. This challenge is certain to be one of, if not the biggest, bugbears for companies this year and well into the future.”
The Mobility 2012 research study, conducted by World Wide Worx with the backing of First National Bank, shows that the proportion of the average user’s cell phone spend on data has increased by half in the past 18 months – from 8% of budget at the end of 2010 to 12% in mid-2012.
Browsing on the phone also increased substantially, from 33% to 41% of users, app downloads rose from 13% of users to 24%, while Facebook use rose by more than half, from 22% to 38%.
Proportionally, the biggest growth after BBM, which increased fivefold in the last 18 months, was seen in the Twitter user base, which rose from 6% to 12% of adult cell phone owners.
“South African adults are doing more on their phones that ever before. While this high level of connectedness makes the world a smaller place, keeps people in the loop, enables them to become content publishers, and in many ways makes them efficient, the device, at the centre of it all, becomes a store of critical business data and personal information. It is also a gateway to company e-mail and networks.
“Companies have to consider the implications of unsecured devices accessing company resources and storing and transferring business data. Any malicious code or unwanted, unsafe applications or downloads could put company information contained on an employee’s device at risk.
“Security breaches and data loss or leaks resulting from mobile device usage will affect about seven out of 10 companies this year,” says Morris.
He says that the more companies bring mobile devices into their day-to-day operations, the greater the requirement for effective mobile device management (MDM) will become.
“Consumers are increasingly adept at using smart devices in their day-to-day lives, and companies are quickly seeing that these devices are becoming intrinsic to business as well. Based on what we saw in 2012, we expect a huge increase in the demand for mobile device management solutions as enterprises start to leverage mobile devices in day-to-day business.”