Well, we knew this would start to happen eventually. You can’t have upwards of 80 or so vendors of a service in a space that isn’t yet large enough to support that volume of commerce without some sort of consolidation occurring — either through attrition or a merge/acquisition.
Apparently, SAP has approached MobileIron for preliminary talks about an acquisition. The result of these talks will likely be nothing, as the official word from both camps is “this never happened” or “we don’t know what you’re talking about.” What is interesting about this is it is the first (or nearly the first) tangible sign of consolidation in the marketplace. While nothing will happen today, we can now expect to see a lot of the more boutique or specialized MDM providers either leave the space, enhance their products or join forces with others … all of which will lead to better products, better security more comfort of companies when adopting mobility and more devices in the space. In general, this will be beneficial for the industry all around.
