Smart Devices Are Becoming the First Device for Content Consumption

 In the emerging economies, users are adopting smartphones as their exclusive mobile devices while in developed economies, multi-device households are becoming the norm, with tablets growing at the fastest rate of any computing device. Gartner predicts that, by 2018, more than 50 percent of users will go to a tablet or smartphone first for all online activities.

“The use pattern that has emerged for nearly all consumers, based on device accessibility, is the smartphone first as a device that is carried when mobile, followed by the tablet that is used for longer sessions, with the PC increasingly reserved for more-complex tasks,” said Van Baker, research vice president.  

Gartner outlined key predictions around mobility:

40% of enterprises will specify Wi-Fi as default connection for non-mobile devices, by 2018.
“Ethernet cabling has been the mainstay of the business workspace connectivity since the beginning of networking. However, as smartphones, laptops, tablets and other consumer devices have multiplied, the consumer space has largely converted to a wireless-first world," said Ken Dulaney, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner.   

As the first connection to the enterprise infrastructure, Wi-Fi brings workers the ability to choose any device and move anywhere without worry.  

By 2020, 75% of smartphone buyers will pay less than $100 for a device.
By 2018, 78 percent of global smartphone sales will come from developing economies. New buyers in these regions are rapidly transitioning to utility and basic smartphones, helped by declining average selling prices (ASPs). By contrast, the premium smartphone category has reached saturation levels as demand is mainly driven by replacement users and has begun to slow down. By 2018, Gartner expects the ASP for a basic and a utility phone to be $78 and $25, respectively.  

By 2018, more than half of all B2E mobile apps will be created by enterprise business analysts using codeless tools.
Conventional mobile application development platforms (MADPs) are rapidly introducing graphical tools for the design of screens, workflow and data sources to reduce the scope of possible projects. The use of codeless tools for the rapid development of straightforward projects by IT and enterprise business analysts will become an alternative to outsourcing, limiting the use of development partners to more-advanced projects. IT departments that provide clean APIs for internal applications and also support codeless tools will create a framework that enables and accelerates the growth of reliable digital business.  

Salomon Sko