January 31, 2019. BOSTON: Mobile has transformed the way we work, interact and even spend our time owing to various technological advancements. GDPR, Brexit, California privacy law, device fragmentation and mobile security issues, among others, are making it difficult for businesses to stay compliant and competitive, but technology and solutions such as 5G, Artificial Intelligence, Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM), Rich Communication Services (RCS), mobile UCaaS and mobile business apps adoption, will all pick up pace in the next few years, which will empower business owners by means of increasing cyber-defense, productivity and improving collaboration and communication.**

According to Gina Luk, Principal Analyst of Mobile Workforce Strategies at Strategy Analytics and author of the report, “Despite global political issues and economic woes, global mobile workforce spending remains healthy. According to Strategy Analytics’ latest Enterprise Survey, 42% of surveyed companies indicated IT spending will increase 1-6% in next 5 years and another 25% will increase 6-10% in next 5 years. The outlook for operators is also positive, with strong with trust in telco-based enterprise apps (compared to OTT providers) and growing interest in Location-based Services (LBS). Rich Communication Services (RCS) and Artificial Intelligence are ranked as the most important investment areas for many businesses, while Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) is a hot area for 2019 and beyond. On top of that, automation remains a key opportunity to boost productivity and efficiency. Enterprise mobility solutions can play a crucial role in this area.”

Andrew Brown, Executive Director of Enterprise Research at Strategy Analytics, added, “Successful organizations are looking at agility, faster response to customer or user needs, and other efficiencies – including data protection and privacy. This translates into better outcomes that ensure business survival and success. We can expect more developments in areas like IoT, UEM, RCS, LBS and 5G networks that will shape the enterprise technology landscape in 2019 and beyond.”

In summary, the key trends in 2019 include:

• The Advent of 5G, AI and foldable screens will drive business mobile devices adoption in future, but not in 2019, where replacement cycles are generally becoming longer.
• Organizations will drive a demand for a holistic and harmonious view of all their data, and ultimately, an exploding intelligent multi-cloud strategy.
• Rich Communications Services (RCS) proved its capacity, not only to work as promised, but to make the brands using it some serious returns on investment. 2019 will see RCS deploy at scale.
• UEM will really start taking off in 2019 and eventually evolve to Intelligent Edge Management.
• AI voice-controlled assistants will breach the enterprise; 2019 will be the year that devices increase their overall knowledge and intelligence and add more value as augmented intelligence tools.
• Chatbots are on the rise and will dominate customer service.
• Organizations will scale Real-Time Location Systems (RTLS) deployments to the next level, 2019 will see more partnerships, broader interoperability of technologies and solutions, larger-scale rollouts.
• Realizing the promise of IoT and edge computing in order to help companies managing device, data and security efficiently.