According to IDC’s new worldwide Semi-annual Mobility Spending Guide, enterprise and consumer spending on mobile devices and related software and services in Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3% from $514-billion in 2015 to $578-billion by 2019, making it the largest region in the world in terms of mobility related spend.
The new Spending Guide expands on IDC’s previous mobility market forecasts by offering greater detail on industry and geographic spending levels. While the overall growth in the mobility market may seem muted, the underlying trends show significant shifts across technology, geography and industry segments.
As hardware growth matures, software- and services-related spend will ramp up as organizations across industries start exploring the opportunities created by mobility solutions. IDC’s Spending Guide shows software revenues will double from today’s levels, reaching $2-billion by 2019 as the app economy blossoms across the region.
However, monetisation models for these apps will still be primarily services-driven with the app acting more as a conduit to acquire customers. IDC expects the services component in Asia/Pacific to reach $332-billion by 2019, growing even bigger than hardware that is expected to touch $243-billion by 2019.
From a geographic perspective, China will dominate spend across the technology categories in the region, with services already bigger than the hardware spend there. Emerging Asian countries, however, continue to see growth in hardware spend as many consumers and enterprises in these markets embrace mobile solutions for the first time.
These trends are consistent with the findings from IDC’s Enterprise Mobility MaturityScape study, which shows mature markets moving towards mobilising business processes through apps and related services while enterprises in emerging Asian countries are still working on mobilizing their employees.
Public sector spending will continue to remain relevant in Asia/Pacific, with spending expected to reach nearly $25-billion by 2019 at a CAGR of 6%. This growth is partly driven by governments in the region looking to embrace Digital Transformation (DX) to better serve their citizens. Rapid urbanisation and a still healthy GDP growth across emerging markets in Asia will drive mobility-related spending in the Infrastructure sector (telecoms and utilities) as more consumers look to connect online, making it the fastest growing vertical in the region at 7% CAGR through 2019.
“Mobility has had a significant influence in Asia, creating unique markets and business models that cater to a new generation of consumers embracing a mobile-first world. A great example of this trend is WeChat in China, which started as a messaging app rival to WhatsApp but has now transformed itself into a social commerce platform where consumers find and pay for services ranging from food to movies and even transportation,” says Avinash Sundaram, research manager for Enterprise Mobility at IDC Asia/Pacific.
