VDC Research: Enterprise & Government Mobility Market Blog

Q3 2015 Rugged Mobile Hardware Market Overview

In Q3, the total rugged mobile hardware market, sized as all rugged notebooks, tablets, vehicle mounted devices, and handhelds, grossed just over $1 billion in revenue shipments and has produced year-to-date (YtD) revenue shipments of $3.2 billion. Also looking YtD, the market has shipped over 3.1 million units across the globe. By the end of Q4, we will likely see YtD revenue shipments surpass $4.2 billion and YtD unit shipments near 4.3 million units. While the rugged market has actually seen a year-over-year (YoY) revenue contraction of 1.7% compared with its position in Q3 2014, it has also produced 5.1% growth from Q1 2015 to Q3 2015.

Figure 1:  Rugged Mobile Hardware Global Overview

 

 

Breaking down this $1 billion market by form factor, we find weakened global demand for rugged notebooks, stagnation in revenue for tablets, and strong revenue shipments for handheld devices (the handhelds category includes devices such as smartphones and PDAs). As economic conditions continue to stabilize, this recent growth comes as welcome news to many hardware vendors who look to take advantage of increased economic stability and opportunities presented in the Americas and Asia-Pacific (APAC) regions. For example, the growth in the handheld revenues occurred primarily in the Americas and APAC, with global YoY growth of 5.0% over Q3 2014.

While global tablet revenues shipments remained at similar levels to Q3 2014, EMEA generated more revenue shipments from tablets than from notebooks this quarter. One possible reason for this stagnation in growth is due to the increased competition from consumer grade tablets. One specific instance can be seen with the latest Microsoft Surface Pro, which has received relatively positive reviews and adoption from the enterprise market. Furthermore, both EMEA and APAC regions saw slight YoY growth in tablet revenues as the Americas saw minor YoY contraction. Rugged notebook revenues witnessed their highest quarterly performance on the year, but still had YoY revenue shipments fall in all regions, producing a global revenue dip of 14.9% between Q3 2014 to Q3 2015.

Overall, the rugged hardware market continues to maintain a strong global presence, even in spite of some areas of weakness and additional competition from consumer grade technologies. While this increased competition from consumer grade devices may seem like a hard hit to the rugged space, it can be counteracted with rugged vendors offering more advanced technological portfolios. Increases in processing speed, RAM, memory, camera quality, dual-OS capabilities, touch capacity, and enhanced security are all features which are slowly making their way from the consumer market into the rugged market space. As rugged vendors add these, and other, new technological facets to their mobile solutions, their specifications comparisons to consumer grade devices become far more attractive. Additionally, as economic conditions continue to improve, especially in the EMEA regions, rugged revenues will likely rebound for many form factors.   

For more information, be sure to review our forthcoming full Q3 mobile hardware tracker and database, set to be released in late December. For additional information please contact VDC at [email protected]. The author can be contacted directly at [email protected] or via his Twitter @Cam_Roche.   

Next Generation Form Factors Leading the Trends in Enterprise Mobility Market

Yesterday, we presented a webcast highlighting key findings from our 2010 surveys on enterprise and government mobility end users.

The adoption of next generation form factors was a significant trend, as organizations are increasingly evaluating emerging solutions to support mobility requirements. Our data indicates a shift away from currently established form factors, such as standard notebooks, toward next generation form factors, such as slate tablets and Smartphones. Opportunities for these devices span multiple segments and application classes—many with high-value customer-facing interactions that leverage the device's intuitive and graphics optimized interfaces.

However, as with any new mobile form factor and device type—especially those initially designed for the consumer market—potential issues and barriers exist. For more details on our thoughts and to see some preliminary findings about enterprise and government mobility end users, we encourage you to listen to the webcast recording and scroll through the slides below.

 

Driving Enterprise Mobility Solutions Demand: Understanding End User Requirements & Preferences

View more presentations from VDC Research Group.

Keeping Pace with the Enterprise Mobility Solutions Market in 2010

By the end of 2010, the enterprise mobility market will have experienced the most change that we have seen in the past decade.  2009 budgets for enterprise mobility solutions – often one of the last segments of IT budgets to be crimped - were cut.  This exacerbated an already price and margin challenged mobile platform segment and has given managed services and hosted applications considerable traction.

Even before the latest recession, a number of core vertical markets and installation environments were slowing down, offering less margin, and forcing attrition in some supplier community segments.  We expect that this will continue and perhaps even accelerate in 2010.

Three years ago, application software became the first, and most important, solution element to be specified by users.  Today, wireless service is increasingly cited as the number one facet of an enterprise mobility solution to be specified; pushing traditional hardware platform, solution AND ISV providers aside marginally, or in some markets, materially.

These forces above, and others, are making channel architecture and partner decisions much more important. To help companies operating in, or targeting the enterprise mobility market analyze and compare their options - VDC is once again, planning to publish our Enterprise Mobility Solutions Service.  This market research will address the broad range of technology developments and consumer trends which we see unfolding in the enterprise mobility solutions market in 2010 and beyond.

We encourage you to contact us to learn more about this research, which is currently in our founding sponsorship period and provides early subscribers some significant benefits.