VMware announced on January 22, 2014 that it will acquire AirWatch, one of the leaders in the crowded enterprise mobility management market.
 
The US$1.54 billion deal ($1.175 billion cash, $365 million unvested stock) arrived a  little  less  than a year after AirWatch secured a $200 million series A investment from Insight Venture Partners in February 2013.
 
IDC expects the deal will dramatically strengthen VMware's position in the end user computing market worldwide as well as allow it to finally be able to break into the highly competitive enterprise mobility market once the deal is finalized and solutions are fully integrated.
 
While VMware's acquisition of AirWatch is significant in its own right globally, IDC  Asia/Pacific  believes  this development will fundamentally change the future of VMware's end user computing business in Asia/Pacific.
 
As the most mobilized region in the world, Asia/Pacific has been painfully slow to adopt  enterprise  mobility outside of a few pockets of developed countries  and  organizations.  The Asia/Pacific region is perhaps the most diverse  region  in  the  world  in  terms of market maturity, ranging from highly  developed  markets  of  Japan,  Korea,  Singapore and Australia; to emerging economies like Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam.
 
Going to market  with  something as complex as enterprise mobility, where both  technical  challenges  and  business drivers are highly ambiguous, is difficult  to say the least. This, of course, has not deterred vendors from trying to enter the region.  At last count, MobileIron, AirWatch, SAP, Citrix, VMware, IBM and many others have significant resources dedicated to enterprise mobility in Asia/Pacific.
 
However,  the  underlying challenge for enterprise mobility vendors is that most  customers  in  Asia/Pacific  are  simply  not ready for sophisticated mobility  solutions  from  the  likes  of  SAP, Citrix, and to some extent, VMware.
 
IDC's 2013 Asia/Pacific mobility maturity model indicates that out of 1,603 organizations  surveyed  across  Asia/Pacific,  58%  of the respondents are stuck  in  the  Ad-Hoc  phase  (the most initial phase of mobile maturity), which  means  they are struggling with basic mobility challenges like Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and Device Security.
 
Another 21% were so behind on mobility that they could not even be ranked. This  means  what  Asia/Pacific  customers  are  really  looking  for is an easy-to-digest  solution  that  can get them started on enterprise mobility such   as  Mobile  Device  Management  (MDM),  application  management  and security.

And  this  is  why  MobileIron  and  Airwatch,  with their lower cost, user friendly and easy–to-adopt solutions combined with their impressive partner enablement  and  support models, command the lion’s share of the enterprise mobility market in Asia/Pacific.

VMware has tried to break into the enterprise mobility market for the past few years.  As  one  of  the  leaders in the client virtualization market, VMware  has  always  placed  a  high  amount  of  investment  in developing solutions for the mobile platform. However, most of these developments were aimed at delivering the virtualized desktop experience onto the mobile platform, which has yet to take off due to high cost, complexity and poor user experience.  Since the middle of 2013, VMware has made available its own enterprise mobility solution, the Horizon Mobile suite.