Signs of a Maturing MDM Market Begin to Surface

The mobile device management (MDM) market’s days of seemingly endless possibilities may be drawing to an end for some vendors.

Although the enterprise mobility management (EMM) space continues to grow briskly, there are signs that the market is settling into familiar patterns, according to Natick, Mass. analyst firm VDC Research. “Consolidation in 2013 and 2014 has produced a clearly divided market between Tier 1 vendors (who account for roughly 77 percent of the market) and all others,” the company said in a statement.

“The EMM market’s quick maturation has led to notable parity,” observed the group.

But there’s no time to rest on one’s laurels. “Competitive pressures make shortening innovation cycles and getting products to market more quickly crucial for EMM vendors to maintain momentum in the market,” stated VDC.

After a period of torrid growth and non-stop innovation, the market has chosen its pecking order.

“VDC’s analysis showed that there are currently seven Tier 1 vendors in the EMM market (AirWatch [VMware], BlackBerry, Citrix, Good Technology, IBM, MobileIron, and SAP), and these vendors each hold more than a 5 percent market share,” continued VDC. Tier 2 companies, specifically Globo, LANDesk/Wavelink, Microsoft and SOTI, “will be challenged to compete going forward,” the company predicted.

“Traditional endpoint management vendors such as Accelerite, IBM, Microsoft, and LANDesk have a rich history of delivering proven enterprise-grade solutions, but have only recently augmented their product portfolios with mobility management functionality,” said VDC’s Eric Klein, director of Enterprise Mobility and Connected Devices at the firm, in a statement. “VDC sees these vendors having an opening for broader participation in the market going forward.”

Meanwhile, securing mobile devices and the critical business data they contain has become a priority as enterprises roll out their mobile initiatives.

According to a recent forecast from International Data Corporation (IDC), mobile workers will account for 72.3 percent of the U.S. workforce by 2020. In total, there will be 105.4 million workers that businesses will presumably want to provide with secure access to data and IT services.

Seeking to satisfy growing demand for solutions that address stricter corporate data protection, compliance and security requirements, partnership opportunities abound for authentication and access control specialists. “Sophisticated application management, threat protection as well as secure cloud SSO [single sign-on], and identity lifecycle management capabilities are the key features we see EMM vendors integrating through partnerships,” said VDC.

Pedro Hernandez is a contributing editor at Datamation. Follow him on Twitter @ecoINSITE.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

RELATED NEWS AND ANALYSIS

• Ethics and Artificial Intelligence: Driving Greater Equality

  FEATURE |  By James Maguire,
  December 16, 2020

• AI vs. Machine Learning vs. Deep Learning

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  December 11, 2020

• Huawei’s AI Update: Things Are Moving Faster Than We Think

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  December 04, 2020

• Keeping Machine Learning Algorithms Honest in the ‘Ethics-First’ Era

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  November 18, 2020

• Key Trends in Chatbots and RPA

  FEATURE |  By Guest Author,
  November 10, 2020

• Top 10 AIOps Companies

  FEATURE |  By Samuel Greengard,
  November 05, 2020

• What is Text Analysis?

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  November 02, 2020

• How Intel’s Work With Autonomous Cars Could Redefine General Purpose AI

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 29, 2020

• Dell Technologies World: Weaving Together Human And Machine Interaction For AI And Robotics

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 23, 2020

• The Super Moderator, or How IBM Project Debater Could Save Social Media

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 16, 2020

• Top 10 Chatbot Platforms

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  October 07, 2020

• Finding a Career Path in AI

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  October 05, 2020

• CIOs Discuss the Promise of AI and Data Science

  FEATURE |  By Guest Author,
  September 25, 2020

• Microsoft Is Building An AI Product That Could Predict The Future

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 25, 2020

• Top 10 Machine Learning Companies 2021

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  September 22, 2020

• NVIDIA and ARM: Massively Changing The AI Landscape

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 18, 2020

• Continuous Intelligence: Expert Discussion [Video and Podcast]

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By James Maguire,
  September 14, 2020

• Artificial Intelligence: Governance and Ethics [Video]

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By James Maguire,
  September 13, 2020

• IBM Watson At The US Open: Showcasing The Power Of A Mature Enterprise-Class AI

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 11, 2020

• Artificial Intelligence: Perception vs. Reality

  FEATURE |  By James Maguire,
  September 09, 2020