This has perplexed me for a couple of years now and I am curious if there is an emergent way to holistically manage the mobile estate.
In the expense management space, the phone number associated with the device drives allocation and payment. Carrier invoicing does not care about the device. But Device Management and provisioning focuses on the device (IMEI) caring little about the phone number since the phone number can be changed at any time without impacting the device. To say nothing of the reality that you can associate the same phone number to multiple devices because of upgrades.
Has any figured out a way to solve this riddle.
Somewhat related. How well does SAM do with Mobile App licenses? Does it associate to the Device or the phone number?
Phone number (SIM card) and mobile devices are two different IT assets which can be associated with each other.
It need to be taken into account that one mobile device may have associated 1 or more SIM cards (i.e. dual SIM devices). Furthermore, upcoming eSIM introduction will allow associate 3 or more SIMs to one terminal.
On other hand one SIM card can be associated to multiple devices (i.e. through SIM card cloning).
In function of the license model, the Mobile App licenses is either associated to user or to the device.
Current Mobile Device Management solution (MDMs) allow containerization approach, enabling setting up corporate and personal profiles. This is opening the door to set scope boundary limited only on apps associated with the company profile.