A while back Bert said tablets are morphing into PCs as hybrids that can run
Windows, like Microsoft's surface, begin to grow market share. I disagreed,
stating that hybrids will remain a small niche market.
This article suggests that tablets are making significant inroads in business,
but not necessarily as replacements for desktop PCs and laptops. I do most of
my e-mail on my tablet, and when on the road use it to run Apples iWork office
suite with a Bluetooth keyboard. I don't think of this as a replacement for my
desktop Mac, however, this tablet has eliminated my need for both a desktop and
a laptop.
When I worked at the Grass Valley Group we still had terminals for the
corporate database, and the company was just beginning to deploy desktop PCs to
run Word Perfect and Lotus 123. Today corporate databases are networked and
accessible by desktops in corporate offices, laptops for the road warriors, and
via apps built for tablets and smart phones. According to this article it looks
like tablets are making significant inroads in business - for 40% of employees
it is their only enterprise device, a bit higher when hybrid are included.
A good example mentioned in the article is the use of tablets in restaurants
and bars, which is of special interest to me as I create the business plan for
the new brewery/restaurant/event facility I am planning. Most point of sales
systems are just PCs with a touchscreen interface running a a dedicated
application. Now tablets are replacing these POS systems - or are being used
with a server to handle order entry and credit/debit transactions. In some
restaurants they are replacing the menus and the customer enters the order.
Like the transitions we discuss as TV moves to the Internet, technology has a
way of evolving in unexpected ways...
Regards
Craig
http://www.zdnet.com/article/say-goodbye-to-the-keyboard-tablets-are-now-the-only-work-device-for-four-in-ten-workers/?tag=nl.e539&s_cid=e539&ttag=e539&ftag=TRE17cfd61
Say goodbye to the keyboard: Tablets are now the only work device for four in
ten workers
Who needs a keyboard, anyway? Nearly half of workers are doing all their work
on a tablet, a proportion that's set to rise rapidly.
According to research from analyst firm IDC, tablets are now 40 percent of
business users' only enterprise device, a figure that rises further when
two-in-one hybrid devices are added into the mix.
While the majority of tablet users in enterprises currently still have at least
one other work device, such as a desktop PC or notebook, according to Marta
Fiorentini, IDC senior research analyst, standalone tablets' share is set to
increase.
"Tablets are already used by waiters instead of pen and paper, by doctors and
nurses to replace paper-based files, or by pilots as a substitute for bulky
manuals," Fiorentini said, and IDC believes there are more opportunities for
tablets to replace paper.
The company calculates that in 2014 this "incremental" market accounted for
almost six percent of tablets used standalone in the UK, France, and Germany,
and predicted the percentage will rise to 20 percent in the next 24 months.
There's a strong link between a person's job and their tablet usage. Workers
that create or edit documents - executives, marketing and sales staff, or
engineers - tend to use their tablets in addition to desktop or notebook.
However, workers who are on the road, in the field, or facing customers are
more likely to rely solely on a tablet. According to IDC, production workers
equipped with slates use them as their only work device in 64 percent of cases.
In comparison, only 38 percent of executives and 44 percent of white-collars
work purely on their tablets.
The advance of tablets - once thought unstoppable - has slowed recently.
Consumers are holding onto their devices for longer than manufacturers expected
or have switched to big-screen phablets instead. Meanwhile, businesses have
taken a while to get comfortable with the devices while a lack of exciting
hardware running Windows has also slowed down adoption by firms.
For its enterprise tablet study, IDC surveyed 2,000 IT decision makers and
found that hybrids - in either the detachable or convertible form factor - are
usually purchased with larger screen sizes than tablets. While just over 10
percent of tablets have a screen size larger than 11 inches, the current
percentage for hybrids is almost 30 percent. That figure is expected to rise to
half over the next couple of years - which, IDC said, reinforces the assumption
"that two-in-ones and convertibles can be a replacement for portable PCs".
There's a headache here for enterprise IT departments in terms of managing
multiple operating systems: half of the IT decision makers interviewed
described it as a "key or moderate challenge".
