Mobile Printing Gets Down to Business
By all accounts, 2011 marked a milestone in the rise of mobile computing. According to a survey by Deloitte Canada Research, 2011 was the year when sales of “non-PCs” – the umbrella term for smartphones and tablet devices – overtook that of traditional PCs. This turning point should come as no surprise to most industry observers, especially now that mobile devices have become so powerful and affordable that few people can resist getting into the act.
“People are doing things on their mobile devices that they used to have to do on their laptops,” says Duncan Stewart, a director with Deloitte Canada Research. As with sales of mobile devices, the trend toward a more mobile workforce only shows signs of strengthening. A recent report by IDC predicted that by the end of 2011, the number of mobile workers worldwide could reach as high as 1 billion1 – and by 2013, the research group says the mobile worker population will represent nearly 35% of the global workforce.
Worker mobility is being propelled and aided by faster and more powerful mobile devices, more and better cloud services, and an expanding ecosystem of applications, or apps as they are commonly called. Inventive business leaders are intrigued by the possibilities for implementing new computing models, serving work environments not practical for traditional approaches, and gaining competitive advantages from new mobile applications.
Although today’s tablet devices don’t yet rival PCs when it comes to heavy data entry or content creation tasks, users are starting to see tablets and smartphones as more than just a companion to their PCs. People appreciate the instant-on convenience of mobile devices, which lets them collaborate with coworkers, share information with a client, or explain a medical procedure with a patient without waiting for the device to boot up. Other features such as multi-touch interfaces, motion sensing and location services are boosting the attractiveness of mobile devices. All this means that more people are reaching for their mobile devices first – and leaving their heads-down, PCbased data entry chores until the end of the day or during downtime.
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