Telecom Lead India: Enterprises will be buying 13 million tablets in 2012.
Purchases of tablets by businesses will reach 53 million units by 2016.
In 2016, two-thirds of the mobile workforce will own a smartphone, and 40 percent of the workforce will be mobile. Tablets will be the key accelerator to mobility.
“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 India, sectors such as healthcare, education, government, etc. are emerging as the adopters of enterprise phones. According to Sunil Lalvani, director, Enterprise sales, India, Research In Motion, government of India and several state governments are big customers of RIM, the maker of BlackBerry smartphones.
According to Gartner, 821 million smart devices (smartphones and tablets) will be purchased worldwide in 2012 and pass the billion mark in 2013. Smart devices will account for 70 percent of total devices sold in 2012.
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.
The 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.
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.
