Africa has one of the most highly developed mobile workforces in the world, even in the poorer and least developed countries on the continent, says Eric Anderbjork, Nokia enterprise solutions head for Middle East and Africa.
Anderbjork says a limited and unreliable fixed-line infrastructure has led to the rapid adoption of wireless technology by African countries, led by SA, which is one of the biggest users of mobile data in the world.
"SA is also one of Nokia`s most important partners globally for developing mobile solutions for enterprise," says Anderbjork. He is in SA to talk to partners ahead of the opening a local enterprise solutions office later this year.
Nokia`s enterprise solutions division works with partners around the world to improve workforce productivity using mobile devices. This is part of Nokia`s strategy to move to solution-based selling for the enterprise market.
Nokia has identified SA as a source of good software developers able to integrate various services for enterprise.
"Local developers have an impressive ability to integrate mobile data applications because SA is more developed in its use of mobile devices and data services like mobile and push e-mail than even Sweden, Norway and Denmark," says Anderbjork.
Nokia also sees the potential for SA to become a key development hub for solutions to meet the future mobility needs of enterprise workers.
"We foresee that the average businessperson will soon be able to travel without a PC and use a single, compact mobile device for voice communications as well as doing everything they would do on a desktop," says Anderbjork.
He concedes that screen size will restrict the use of certain specialist applications, but says mobile devices should be able to handle up to 90% of what the average business user needs, including voice, messaging and enterprise data applications like ERP and CRM.
"SA is playing in a league of its own, but is helping other countries like Kenya, which is likely to emerge as the second largest mobile data market in Africa, followed by countries like Morocco and Egypt," he says.
Anderbjork explains that other big voice markets like Nigeria are still trailing when it comes to mobile data.
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