HOUSEHOLDS WITH more than one tablet computer are forecast to reach a milestone this year, shifting faster to multiple ownership than almost any previous product category including cars, TVs and PCs.
Deloitte’s annual report predicting trends in the technology, media and telecoms industries says almost 5 per cent of tablet sales in 2012 – about five million units worth between $1.5-$2 billion in revenue – would likely be to individuals or households that already own one.
Although this is a small fraction of the total, it will have taken just three years to reach this point since the current formats emerged in 2010. This contrasts with the decades that passed before the same percentage of households owned more than one car, phone, radio or TV, and the 10 years it took for PCs and mobile phones to arrive at the same landmark.
Even allowing for the global economic crisis, the consulting firm has forecast that consumer spending on technology will remain healthy this year.
Simon Murphy, a director with Deloitte in Ireland, says public and private sector organisations here also need to brace themselves for increased tablet use in the workplace.
“What’s really driving this is that it’s not just coming from the average employee,” he says, “but people at board level are looking to use these tablets and want all of their material delivered that way.”
“Big data” is another corporate technology trend to watch. Deloitte predicts accelerating growth, albeit from a low base, as more large global organisations in a range of sectors launch projects to analyse extremely large volumes of data to gain better business insight.
This is unlikely to extend to Ireland for now. Mr Murphy says the best advice for most IT managers here is to keep watching developments while undertaking smaller analytics projects using the data they already have but are not yet exploiting.
In telecoms, Deloitte predicted the number of devices with embedded near-field communications (NFC) will reach 200 million by the end of 2012. This technology is primarily used for mobile payments but Deloitte says consumers as yet are wary of using their phones as digital wallets. It said this is due to mistaken perceptions – that NFC is not secure and that it drains battery life faster.
The firm also says it expects smartphones costing less than $100 to reach half a billion units worldwide this year, primarily in emerging markets.
In media, the online coupon market will hit saturation point during 2012.
The report says coupon intermediaries need to make their business model more sustainable, as consumers typically avail of heavily discounted one-off deals but often do not come back to the same place for repeat business.
