Optimal SAP Blog

Productivity gains delivered by today’s mobile apps are very real and very significant. Vital, actionable information received on a mobile device can yield immediate and significant business value. No one would deny this. But as mobile apps proliferate, mobile technology matures and the business demand for greater efficiency and productivity grows, it becomes increasingly clear that we’ve barely scratched the surface when it comes to enterprise mobility’s potential. From the wealth of glowing mobility predictions we’ve compiled, it appears that industry experts agree.

SAP Mobility Predictions

• The percentage of SAP organizations with a comprehensive, enterprise-wide mobile strategy will more than double in the next three years, from 32% to 67% (insiderRESEARCH)
• Three quarters of SAP organizations expect their mobile applications to be supported on multiple devices three years from now (insiderRESEARCH)
• Almost a third (32%) of SAP organizations will deploy five or more mobile applications in the next twelve months (insiderRESEARCH)

Enterprise Mobility Predictions

• 61% of survey respondents will improve their mobility capability over the next 3 years (Gartner)
• Mobility will be the most disruptive functionality for BI in 2012 (Gartner)
• By 2013, 33% of BI functionality will be consumed via handheld devices (Gartner)
• The emergence of tablets as a business device has provided an ideal platform for the delivery and dissemination of BI and dashboard reports (Gartner)
• By 2013, 80% of businesses will support a workforce using tablets (Gartner)
• 68% of survey participants listed mobile BI as ‘critical’ or ‘very important (DAS)
• 55% of organizations now list the the iPad as their favored platform for mobile BI (DAS)
• 61% of 2011 survey contributors have established iPad-oriented mobile BI programs in 2011, with an additional 21% of respondents planning to deploy mobile BI projects on the iPad in 2012 (DAS)
• iPad-based mobile BI implementations were the most widely deployed in 2011 (DAS)
• 33% of enterprises will implement mobile BI in 2012 – in addition to the 25% of enterprises that already have mobile BI apps in place (Heavy Reading)
• Mobile spending will be 15% of IT spending in 2012 (IDC)
• Enterprise mobile investments will lead device spending to $600,000 million by year’s end, and continue an upward march annually to $700,000 million by 2015. (IDC)
• By 2013, more than 1.19 billion workers worldwide will be using mobile technology, accounting for 34.9% of the workforce.
• Over the next 12 months enterprise spending on mobile apps will increase 57% (CIO Magazine)
• The vast majority of organizations (91%) expect to spend on mobile devices in 2012 (CIO Magazine)
• UK and US businesses are expected to double their spending on mobile technologies in the next 18 months (Vanson Bourne)
• Organizations are planning to spend an average of $447k on employee mobility and another $476k on consumer mobility in the next 12-18 months; in total that’s a projected average mobility spend of $926k — more than double the amount they’ve currently invested in the channel to date (Vanson Bourne)
• On average, U.S. and UK companies with more than 500 employees are planning to invest $690k in employee mobility projects and another $653k in consumer mobility projects in the next 12 to 18 months. The total planned investment of those companies — $1.3M — dwarfs their current investment of $541k (Vanson Bourne)
• On average, UK and U.S. businesses are currently involved in
  building, managing, and implementing four separate mobile projects, and that figure goes up to five amongst ‘large’ companies with more than 500 employees (Vanson Bourne)
• Enterprise mobile workers will make up 73% of the workforce in 2012 (Forrester)
• 200 million of the 350 million employees who will use mobile devices for work in 2016 will use their own devices rather than devices provided by their employers (Forrester)
• 60% of large companies are in the process of making their internal line-of-business applications accessible to workers on smartphones and tablet (Symantec)

More Mobility Predictions

• The mobility market will top $11 billion in 2012 (CMI)
• Smartphone/tablet spending will grow 25% in 2012 – 5x PC spending growth (IDC)
• 1.5 million mobile apps will be available in 2012, with 85 billion downloads expected (IDC)
• 54% of IT leaders are currently implementing or planning to implement mobility projects in 2012 (TEKsystems)
• Mobile devices will be the primary method of Internet access by 2013 (Gartner)
• The number of mobile-connected devices will exceed the number of people on earth by the end of 2012 (Cisco)
• By 2016, there will be 1.4 mobile devices per capita (Cisco)
• One-quarter of mobile users will own two or more mobile-connected devices by 2016
• By 2012, over 100 million smartphone users will be using over 1 GB/month of data. And by 2016, the monthly global smartphone data traffic will pass 10 exabytes per month, with the average smartphone generating 2.6 GB/month, a 17-fold increase from 2011′s average (Cisco)
• The number of mobile-connected tablets tripled in 2011 to 34 million (Cisco)
• By 2016, tablets will be 10% of global mobile data traffic (Cisco)
• Mobile-connected tablets will generate almost as much traffic in 2016 as the entire global mobile network in 2012 (Cisco)
• There will be 1 billion smartphone customers by 2016, with 257 million smartphones and 126 million tablets in the U.S. (Forrester)
• Apple has sold 55 million iPads to date (Forrester)
• By 2015 media tablet shipments will reach around 50% of laptop shipments (Gartner)
• By 2014, there will be more than 70 billion mobile app downloads from app stores every year (Gartner)