SAP yesterday highlighted the mobile dimension of its enterprise SOA platform strategy with the announcement of comprehensive extensions to its SAP xApps products and a new version of NetWeaver Mobile.

SAP’s new xApp products include an enhanced version of xApp Mobile Sales that supports road warrior access to market survey results, a special Mobile Sales extension geared to the needs of sales staff in the packaged goods sector.

For the retail sector, SAP has introduced SAP Mobile In-Store Inventory Management – a wireless utility that will help shop workers to do a better job of answer customer questions such as “where’s the mustard?” And, for field service engineers and other remote service providers, SAP xApp Mobile Asset Management (xMAM), now supports geographic information system (GIS) and radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology.

The new version of SAP NetWeaver Mobile includes a re-architected mobile infrastructure that harnesses the power of enterprise SOA and delivers an integrated platform solution. It will be available on a restricted basis from November.

Currently, only 850 of its 40,000 customers have licensed SAP’s mobile xApps. However, last year sales of SAP’s mobile products increased 50%, and the company has clearly identified support fro remote and wireless access to core business applications as a key competitive strategy in its growing rivalry with Oracle, Microsoft, Salesforce.com and others.