Boom time for commercial tablet market

Drive among firms to boost productivity will propel western European commercial tablet market to 11 million units by 2019, according to IDC

The commercial tablet market is poised for "significant growth" as Apple, Microsoft and Google step up their efforts to cater for enterprise users, according to IDC.

Shipments of commercial tablets in western Europe will reach more than 11 million units by 2019 across the region, 130 per cent more than the 4.7 million units shipped in 2014.

IDC said the launch of Windows 10 will boost the tablet's credentials as a notebook replacement. Apple's recent app alliance with IBM and Google's introduction of Android for Work will also bolster the form factor's appeal in the enterprise arena, it added.

"Increasing employees' productivity is the main driver behind tablet adoption in enterprises," said Marta Fiorentini, senior research analyst at IDC EMEA Personal Computing.

"As more companies embrace digital transformation and their workforce becomes increasingly mobile, tablets have clearly emerged as a winning form factor to provide computing power for new users and processes in enterprises. The commercial segment is therefore expected to grow significantly in the coming quarters."

By 2019, IDC expects a third of overall client computing shipments to be tablets. Across most vertical markets, companies expect tablets to represent 15 per cent of their computing equipment within the next three years, it added.

IDC definition of tablets also takes in two-in-ones.

While tablets were seen as a consumer play when they first burst on the scene in 2010, IDC said most businesses are now proactively rolling them out.

"While the first perception might have been that tablets were entering enterprises mostly as employees were bringing in their own devices, the reality is that more than two thirds of the enterprises surveyed in France, Germany, and the UK have already deployed tablets," said Chrystelle Labesque (pictured), research manager at IDC EMEA Personal Computing.