Gartner Says 821 Million Smart Devices Will Be Purchased Worldwide in 2012, and 1.2 Billion in 2013
November 09, 2012
Share this

The consumerization trend has hit IT as an unstoppable force, as 821 million smart devices (smartphones and tablets) will be purchased worldwide in 2012 and pass the billion mark in 2013, according to Gartner, Inc. Smart devices will account for 70 percent of total devices sold in 2012.

“For most businesses smartphones and tablets will not entirely replace PCs, but the ubiquity of smartphones and the increasing popularity of tablets are changing the way businesses look at their device strategies and the way consumers embrace devices,” said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner.

“In 2016, two-thirds of the mobile workforce will own a smartphone, and 40 percent of the workforce will be mobile,” said Milanesi.

Tablets will be the key accelerator to mobility. Gartner estimates that in 2012 purchases of tablets by businesses will reach 13 million units and will more than triple by 2016, to reach 53 million units.

Smartphones have become truly pervasive in every aspect of an employee’s life. Gartner estimates that 56 percent of smartphones purchased by businesses in North America and Europe will be Android devices in 2016, up from 34 percent in 2012 and virtually no penetration in 2010.

“Today the wide range of brands and price points that the Android ecosystem is offering is winning over users. While Apple remains the heartbeat by which the market moves, Google has rapidly become its archrival,” said Milanesi.

The increasing penetration of Android in the enterprise will continue to pose challenges for the IT department and the CIO to ensure that security and manageability remain a priority. However, Android and iOS-based devices will continue to increase their presence in the enterprise side-by-side and in most cases instead of RIM.

“As businesses are looking for a multi-device strategy and a rich application portfolio it is clear that RIM has a huge challenge ahead in regaining its key presence in the enterprise,” said Milanesi.

In the business market, Windows 8 will take the No. 3 position in the tablet market behind Apple and Android by 2016, with interest coming more from businesses than consumers. Tablets and convertibles will be the way into businesses for Windows 8. Gartner estimates that the share of Windows 8 tablets and ultramobiles in businesses will reach 39 percent in 2016.

Over the past year, we have seen consumer preferences shaping not only the vendors’ landscape but also the way IT departments need to think about devices in the enterprise with BYOD becoming a part of the devices policy.

“In just 12 months businesses have moved from resisting Apple to accepting its devices in the organization. CIOs who balance workers' passion for Apple with the needs of IT will reap surprising benefits and prepare the business for entry of other consumer-market vendor technologies, as this is just the beginning,” said Milanesi.

Share this

The Latest

October 04, 2024

In Part 1 of this two-part series, I defined multi-CDN and explored how and why this approach is used by streaming services, e-commerce platforms, gaming companies and global enterprises for fast and reliable content delivery ... Now, in Part 2 of the series, I'll explore one of the biggest challenges of multi-CDN: observability.

October 03, 2024

CDNs consist of geographically distributed data centers with servers that cache and serve content close to end users to reduce latency and improve load times. Each data center is strategically placed so that digital signals can rapidly travel from one "point of presence" to the next, getting the digital signal to the viewer as fast as possible ... Multi-CDN refers to the strategy of utilizing multiple CDNs to deliver digital content across the internet ...

October 02, 2024

We surveyed IT professionals on their attitudes and practices regarding using Generative AI with databases. We asked how they are layering the technology in with their systems, where it's working the best for them, and what their concerns are ...

October 01, 2024

40% of generative AI (GenAI) solutions will be multimodal (text, image, audio and video) by 2027, up from 1% in 2023, according to Gartner ...

September 30, 2024

Today's digital business landscape evolves rapidly ... Among the areas primed for innovation, the long-standing ticket-based IT support model stands out as particularly outdated. Emerging as a game-changer, the concept of the "ticketless enterprise" promises to shift IT management from a reactive stance to a proactive approach ...

September 27, 2024

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 10, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses Generative AI ...

September 26, 2024

By 2026, 30% of enterprises will automate more than half of their network activities, an increase from under 10% in mid-2023, according to Gartner ...

September 25, 2024

A recent report by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) reveals that nearly 95% of organizations use a combination of do-it-yourself (DIY) and vendor solutions for network automation, yet only 28% believe they have successfully implemented their automation strategy. Why is this mixed approach so popular if many engineers feel that their overall program is not successful? ...

September 24, 2024

As AI improves and strengthens various product innovations and technology functions, it's also influencing and infiltrating the observability space ... Observability helps translate technical stability into customer satisfaction and business success and AI amplifies this by driving continuous improvement at scale ...

September 23, 2024

Technical debt is a pressing issue for many organizations, stifling innovation and leading to costly inefficiencies ... Despite these challenges, 90% of IT leaders are planning to boost their spending on emerging technologies like AI in 2025 ... As budget season approaches, it's important for IT leaders to address technical debt to ensure that their 2025 budgets are allocated effectively and support successful technology adoption ...