APeJ mobility solutions revenue to grow 5.7% in 2018

Source: IDC. Process manufacturing will be the industry that will grow the most in terms of CAGR by 2022.

The latest update of the IDC Worldwide Semiannual Mobility Spending Guide forecasts that mobility solutions revenue from Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APeJ) will record 5.7% growth year over year (YoY), reaching US$541.9 billion in 2018 and US$615.4 billion by 2022.

Spending on mobility-related hardware, software, and services is estimated to achieve a five-year CAGR of 3.7% during the forecast period.

“The region is leading the charge in becoming a mobile-first society. Favourable government policies for mobile payments, healthcare, connectivity and citizen focus services are propelling overall investments in mobile technologies and ecosystem development,” said Avinav Trigunait, Research Director for Future of Work at IDC Asia/Pacific.

“While for many years the mobility discussions focused on tactical issues such as access to resources and device policies, now organisations are focusing on mobilising business processes and workflows to drive mobile-first experiences for both employees and customers.”

Enterprise mobility today lays the foundation for the future of work, and enterprises now consider mobility as a strategic value driver, IDC said. These trends along with emerging technologies such as augmented reality/virtual reality, artificial intelligence and 5G are expected to accelerate investments in mobility technologies over the next few years, the consultancy predicted.

Hardware purchases lead software and services with US$270.9 billion in 2018 and this trend is likely to continue with a five-year CAGR of 5.2% over the forecast period (2017-2022). Services and software follow with 49.7% and 0.3% market share respectively in 2018.

Mobility services, which represents the second-largest technology spend, is dominated by mobile connectivity services at over 97% of services spending. Overall mobility services spending is expected to reach US$288.9 billion by 2022 and will see a notable rise in spending with a five-year (2017-2022) CAGR of 16.2%.

Mobility software technology spending will reach US$1.7 billion in 2018 but it is estimated to witness the strongest spending growth out of the three at 25.7% CAGR over the forecast period. Mobile enterprise applications will be the largest segment of software followed by mobile enterprise security, enterprise mobility management (EMM) and mobile application development platforms.

The consumer segment will account for more than 84% of total mobility spending throughout the forecast period. In the commercial segment, the industries that will drive the largest spending on mobility solutions in 2018 are banking, education and discrete manufacturing*. While most of the spending in the commercial segment will be driven by connectivity and hardware, enterprise mobility services will also be a significant spending category as these industries implement and execute their mobile strategies.

However, mobility spending in process manufacturing and telecommunications industry is expected to deliver the highest five-year CAGR of 8.7% and 8.2% from 2017 to 2022 respectively.

“The region (excluding Japan) sees a huge adoption of mobility projects catering to multiple operational functions for enterprise workforce to end user interactions in banking, education and discrete manufacturing industries,” said Ritika Srivastava, Associate Market Analyst, IDC Asia/Pacific.

“A more potent security system and significant push for mobile payments across markets is encouraging mobility adoption for operational and customer engagement in the banking industry while the education industry is looking to leverage on mobility to create new experiences for learning.”

*With discrete manufacturing the end-products are assembled and can be further broken down into distinct items. Examples are cars and toys. With process manufacturing the end-products are distinct items that cannot be broken down further.