Global CIO: Will The Mobile Tipping Point Bury You?Global CIO: Will The Mobile Tipping Point Bury You?

"So I would tell you it's less to us about the—and I'm trying to use the words right—'the device' than it is about the ecosystem of capabilities and services above the device layer. We're pretty good at making devices but I can tell you the device in isolation—we got some opportunity to do more cause we'll ship—Tony? 60 million, 65 million, roughly, devices in the PSG [Personal Systems Group] space, so a very major piece of footprint. I would also add to you that the web-connected printer I just described now becomes yet another device.

"And the combination of that ecosystem now gives us a tremendous opportunity to build services that can be used by those two capabilities, of which case than just a device, to your point, makes even more sense than the view you're describing. We can build a device very quickly—it's more important for us to build that services layer of capability out which is what we're driving at now."

In New Zealand, IBM has begun offering managed services for mobile IT including "policy development through to procurement, configuration, user support, data security, expense management, hardware management and monthly reporting that will enable better decision-making and cost management," according to a recent article. Which choice is best for you: handling it in-house or going with what's sure to be a growing list of third-party managed-service providers?

The seekingalpha.com article cited above notes two eye-popping statistics: Cisco predicts that by 2013, 70% of the traffic volume on mobile networks will be video—70%! And a lot of that will come from YouTube: in October last year, 20 hours of new video was being uploaded to YouTube every minute; today, just six months later, that figured has jumped to 24 hours of uploaded video every 60 seconds.

"At some point over the next two to three years these devices [smartphones] will outsell personal computers," author Woolcock says. "Looked at in terms of revenue, last year the pure PC market, net of servers, printers and storage, was worth $224 billion, compared to $165 billion for the handset market. With smartphones now the fastest growing part of the mobile phone market, they will soon over take PCs in value as well as in unit terms."

Again, I'm not pushing the investment angle here; rather, these numbers, anecdotes and questions are important because the world is about to surge up to and over the mobile-device and mobile-app tipping point, and each of us has to calibrate whether we are in a position to benefit from that massive momentum or be buried under it.

In closing, one final set of numbers from Woolcock (and I heartily recommend his entire article to anyone who's got anything to do with setting and executing enterprise IT strategy) that can't be ignored:

"The next place that this move to mobile computing will manifest itself is in the rise of the tablet computer," says Woolcock, noting that when Apple first announced its iPad, "most analysts seemed rather underwhelmed. The range was somewhere around 4 million units.

"More recently, at least one major US investment bank has increased its estimate to 6 million units. Meanwhile, the buzz in Taiwan, among component suppliers, is that Apple is looking at 10 million units. If this device proves a success, it will be emulated by other device makers."

And the mobile revolution will surely accelerate. Will you be ready?

RECOMMENDED READING: Global CIO: Why Apple's iPad Will Be A Great Business Device Global CIO: IBM Claims Hardware Supremacy And Calls Out HP's Hurd Global CIO: An Open Letter To Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer Global CIO: Hewlett-Packard CEO Hurd Shifts Strategy Toward Services Global CIO: Apple's Steve Jobs Torpedoes Another Stale Business Model Global CIO: iPhone Users Stupid And Steve Jobs Crazy, Says WSJ Global CIO: The Top 10 CIO Issues For 2010 Bob Evans is senior VP and director of information's Global CIO unit.

To find out more about Bob Evans, please visit his page.

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