The FINANCIAL — Mobility is one of IDC ‘s 3rd Platform pillars, an IT market that has disrupted traditional business processes and continues to create transformative opportunities for vendors eager to engage a wider set of customers.
According to IDC’s new Worldwide Semiannual Mobility Spending Guide, enterprise and consumer spending on mobile devices, software, and services will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 2.7% from $1.7 trillion in 2015 to $1.8 trillion by 2019. EMEA mobility spending will represent 29% of worldwide spending on mobility in 2019, reaching $538 billion. The new spending guide expands on IDC’s previous mobility forecasts by offering greater detail on industry and geographic spending levels.
While the holistic mobility market may seem mature, organizations across industries are leveraging a deeper set of capabilities to further transform their businesses, driven by heightened IT acumen from the consumer mobility market. Mobility may have started with the simple concept of shifting employees from being deskbound to being mobile, but it has advanced and evolved to the point where many organizations are now embracing capabilities unique to both mobility and their industries.
• Addressing industry-specific needs and providing employees with mobile-based solutions to enhance productivity, supply chain, inventory management, and other internal processes is particularly important for manufacturers in EMEA. Spending on mobility is forecast to increase from $29 billion to $32 billion in 2019, growing at a 2.8% CAGR.
• Banking will invest heavily in mobility, with IDC forecasting spending to increase from $14 billion to $17 billion in 2019, at 4.9% CAGR. There is a strong need in the banking sector to deploy mobility solutions to provide employees with portable devices to access information and be more productive.
• Retail has already benefitted from the consumer adoption of mcommerce, but IDC believes the sector will continue to be a strong growth opportunity. Retail spending in mobility in EMEA will grow to $13 million in 2019 at a 3.3% CAGR. The ability to link supply chains to customer-facing ordering capabilities, increasingly deployed in a mobile-first context, will drive profitability for a wider set of smaller, more specialized retailers as they look to be competitive with mass merchant firms eager to modernize their in-store infrastructures.
From a company size perspective, IDC expects small offices with 1 to 9 employees to represent the strongest share of global mobility spending, as small companies deepen their capabilities with industry-specific mobile apps, or startups in emerging markets develop their own mobile-first organizations with devices and basic services.
“In an era when many corporations want to provide access to information anytime anywhere, focusing on mobile strategies is an opportunity for businesses across vertical markets to generate high returns on investments and improve communications, accessibility, portability, and productivity,” said Andrea Minonne, research analyst, IDC European Industry Solutions.
From a technology perspective, services will continue to represent the bulk of mobility investments, but software will be the fastest-growing segment. Services spending will reach $330 billion, growing at a 2% CAGR in 2019, while software spending will increase from $3.1 billion to $4.9 billion, at a 12% 2015–2019 CAGR. Growth in hardware spending will be slower (1% CAGR), reaching $203 billion by 2019. By region, Western Europe will have the highest mobility spending in 2019 ($267 billion), followed by the Middle East and Africa ($189 billion) and Central and Eastern Europe ($82 billion).
“Mobility used to be treated as an auxiliary to desktop IT systems,” said John Delaney, associate VP of Mobility Research at IDC, “but a growing number of enterprises are now treating mobility on a par with desktop. Some forward-thinking companies are going further still, designing their IT systems with mobility as the primary use case. IDC’s holistic view of mobility spending gauges the investments that are being made to achieve the increased flexibility, velocity, and richness of engagement that will form the foundation of long-term competitive advantage.”
IDC’s Worldwide Semiannual Mobility Spending Guide is designed to address the needs of technology organizations assessing the mobile opportunity by country, industry, and use case. The guide provides subscribers with spending data on seven technologies across 19 industries, four company sizes, and 53 countries. Unlike any other research in the industry, the comprehensive spending guide can help IT decision makers to clearly understand the industry-specific scope and direction of mobility spending today and over the next five years.
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