Tablet user

Feted not slated

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29 June 2015

Paul HearnsThere has been an interesting report from analyst IDC in its series tracking personal computing devices.

It found that across EMEA, the adoption of tablet and 2-in-1 devices is accelerating in enterprise, large and small. In the UK, Germany and France, IDC said that it expected the total client device base to exceed 15% by 2018, compared to just 6% in 2014.

However, the current adoption rate means that there are more than 10 million such devices already in use in the region.

More interestingly, the reason given for the adoption rate, according to Marta Fiorentini, senior research analyst, IDC EMEA Personal Computing, is the demand for increasing mobility and digitisation in the workplace, driving a reconsideration of computing infrastructure, especially when it comes to personal computing.

“The drivers of change are efficiency and productivity gains. In this increasingly mobile and digital environment, tablets are emerging as an ideal tool to provide employees with seamless access to content and data anywhere and anytime,” said Fiorentini.

While Fiorentini admits that adoption varies by vertical, with transport leading with double figures percentages, there are also strong rates in government, distribution and education too.

“The drivers of change are efficiency and productivity gains… tablets are emerging as an ideal tool to provide employees with seamless access to content and data anywhere and anytime,” Mart Fiorentini, IDC

What connected all of the verticals was that adoption rates were accelerating. The IDC report said that 70% of the interviewed companies were planning to purchase tablets in the next two years and the vast majority expected tablet usage to increase by 2018.

The report found that anywhere there has traditionally been heavy reliance on paper, there were benefits from these mobile devices, with areas such as aviation and hospitality showing particular benefits.

And while keyboard equipped devices were well represented, pure touch devices, with onscreen keyboard features, were the most common.

This is an interesting confirmation of what has been argued for years: make things easier and people will go along. Whether it is applications, processes, or now hardware, make things easy and the rest simply follows.

Laptops, though portable, are still too close to a desktop to be really usable on the hoof, and particularly standing up. A tablet, even a fairly hefty one, can be far more easily wielded in anger, and the IDC figures would seem to support that, as customer interface, as well as personal productivity, was cited as a key feature in adoption.

Now that the form factor, along with long battery life, can be wrapped up with a full operating system that admits of no compromise — as in the new Microsoft Surface 3 — there are even more reasons to ask the question do you need anything more than a tablet?

 

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