If we as an industry aren't paying attention to the tremendous growth seen in the mobile device market, we'll miss one of the most important platform changes since the PC took hold.
In 2013, over 2.3 billion units are anticipated to be shipped. By 2014, Gartner projects over 2.5 billion units--that's equal to 32% of the world's population! Mobile access to data has now become part of our everyday life--from shopping to entertainment to work tasks. The blending of our private and public lives centers on these devices that travel with us 24 x 7.
From an industrial software perspective, it's exciting and challenging. New formats mean reaching new customers, that may not have the legacy associated with PC-based systems. So it gives us a chance to provide richer, more graphical applications. The challenge, of course, is that it requires new products, to take advantage of the form factor and expected performance in a mobile device--intuitive, report-ready, simple to operate.
We've already seen startups such as Sarla (SmartGlance) and Transpara offering mobile device-enabled reporting. But there's so much more! MES, EMI, HMI, the list goes on--all are using mobile as an important form factor to reach the increasingly mobile worker.
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