Nokia recently announced that it will focus on expanding its US presence by strengthening relationships with communication service providers and developing smartphones to address US customer requirements. We have heard this US market focus refrain from Nokia multiple times during the past few years. Nokia is the leading handset manufacturer in many other regions of the world, but the company has not had the same success in the US. Can Nokia succeed with its US market efforts this time around? To succeed, Nokia must address three key issues:

1. Consumer smartphone usage is driving US market momentum. Nokia’s strength is in developing enterprise grade smartphones; however, the US smartphone market is increasingly driven by consumer purchases. Results from Forrester’s survey of IT decision-makers in North America reinforce this trend with approximately 60% of firms in North America providing some level of support to some types of personal mobile devices.
2. Intense competition is coming from other mobile device manufacturers with a strong presence in North America. To succeed in the US market, Nokia will face stiff competition from RIM, Apple, and Android smartphones. RIM’s BlackBerry devices are the most commonly used operating system among North American enterprises, with 73% of firms officially supporting these devices. We are also seeing a rise in enterprise support of new types of mobile operating systems to support iPhone and Android smartphones. Currently 30% of North American enterprises support iPhone devices, and 16% support Android devices. In comparison, Symbian operating system devices, which Nokia develops, are currently only supported by 4% of US firms.

Lots of sleek new touchscreen and tablet devices have launched this year. Where many information workers and consumers see nifty new devices with high-resolution screens and multiple wireless interfaces that enable Web surfing and greater ease of use, I see a new class of device. I call them collaboration devices because I believe that they are especially suited to collaboration tasks that today’s information worker must perform with increasing regularity while on the move. There is an open space in the market for these devices caused by the colliding market forces of an increasing need for employees within a company to quickly and efficiently communicate and the increasing likelihood that these employees will not be in the same location. Most companies today (approximately 60% according to Forrester’s Enterprise And SMB Software Survey, North America And Europe, Q4 2009) are adopting Web conferencing, and information workers are increasingly mobile and distributed — a device that can be on the go and connect to communications and collaboration tools easily will be highly valued. These devices feature slick, usable interfaces and unique connectivity capabilities. Many of these devices run on Android, creating an opportunity and a challenge for Android to enter the business applications market. Android-based devices will fall short of any collaboration aspiration until the marketplace offers standard enterprise Web conferencing tools — where are my Cisco WebEx, AT&T Connect, etc., clients for Android?

I see three categories of these devices :

My colleague Heidi Shey brought this article to my attention. It talks about how China mandates that government and core industry sectors (banks, transportation, etc. -- what we would refer to as "Critical Infrastructure" sectors) buy certain IT products only from Chinese companies. The attorney quoted in the article says that "Right now, it seems to only affect the companies that are in the information security sector," but the journalist wasn't able to substantiate or refute this. There could indeed be a national security rationale behind this -- however misguided. Of course, this isn't the first time we've seen interests of national security come into direct conflict with interests of corporate security: see RIM's troubles with the BlackBerry in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and India; or ask a US-based service provider selling to overseas companies about those customers' concerns about whether their data would be exposed to USA PATRIOT Act disclosure). Some vendors I've spoken to speculate (off the record) that this could all be designed to give the Chinese government access to these systems by having the Chinese vendors install back doors. Others think this is simply a matter of funneling business to Chinese companies.

Whatever the reason, I'd be interested to hear from you about whether this is really happening or not. Do you sell security, or other IT infrastructure, products in China? Are you seeing this come up as an issue with Chinese companies in certain industry sectors? Are you seeing anything similar in other countries?