Mobility Figures And Facts

The first quarter of 2013 just ended, flooding the world with reams of data like quarterly results, sales numbers, growth ratios, share values and what not. Sifting through this data and trying to make sense of it is truly a daunting task. Thanks to the dedicated efforts of number-crunching organizations across the world, we have a lot of interesting information to dwell upon. Further thanks to the enterprise mobile hub for collating some of the relevant findings. So let’s look at some numbers related to mobility, and see what sense we can make of them:

 

1. Forty five percent employers will have a hundred percent BYOD by twenty twenty – Gartner recently conducted a worldwide survey of 2,053 CIOs and asked them about their Bring your own device (BYOD) plans. The conclusion of the survey was that in the next 7 years, the percentage of organizations where a 100 percent of the compute devices will be employee owned will go up from the existing 6 percent to forty five percent in 2020. It also found that by 2017, 50 % of the employers will have some form of a BYOD in place.

 

INTERPRETATION – The rising uptake of BYO can be viewed in 2 ways. Firstly, it means that employees get a choice of technology, while the enterprises save money in purchase and maintenance of the devices. Another way to look at this trend is that the employees will be treated more as contractors who bring their own tools of trade rather than a bonafide, full time employees. They will be like the carpenters or plumbers who carry their own tools. Whichever way you look at it, the trend is increasing.

 

2. Enterprises think benefits of mobility outweigh the risks – In a recent survey by Symantec about adoption of mobility and its risks, a whopping 70 percent respondents said that while they understood the challenges and risks of mobility, they would still adopt it because the benefits were far more. Also, in the same survey, 59 percent people believed that employee owned devices should not get the same access as the company provided. It was also found that 40 percent employees use personal devices for work irrespective of the corporate mobile policy.

 

INTERPRETATION – Enterprises are taking a positive view on mobility. This is a major change from the risk-averse businesses from just a few years ago. This fact will ensure that the mega trend that is mobility will continue its forward momentum into the next decade. Another important inference is that since the organizations are aware of the risks, they would be more amenable to security management and MDM solution.

 

3. Tablet sales up by one hundred and seventeen percent – As per strategy analytics, in the first quarter of 2013, forty one point six million tablet were sold worldwide. In the same period last year, the figure was eighteen point seven million. If IDC were to be heard, they say the total tablets shipped in Q1 2013, was forty nine point two million, a one hundred and forty two percent growth over the same period last year. The Q1 2013 numbers are actually more than the first six months of 2012.

 

INTERPRETATION – Despite predictions to the contrary, tablets are an established and well received form factor. That’s good news for all the developers targeting the larger screens. You don’t need to worry about your jobs.

 

4. 197 million of the 405 mobile phones shipped in Q1 2013 were smartphones – As per ABI research, Smartphone shipments surged by 38%, while those of feature phones declined by 5.2%. This data is not filtered by age, or the figures for the 18 – 40 range would be much more skewed in favor of the smart devices.

 

INTERPRETATION – This is quite expected. People want their devices to be smarter and better. Mobility is definitely here to stay.

 

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