For business smartphones and tablets, the second quarter of 2017 was a buoyant quarter, as the market showed signs of a rebound according to Strategy Analytics. Business smartphone shipments grew 14.8% compared to the same quarter in 2016, to reach 107.1 million units, which is up 6.1% from the first quarter.
Business tablets reached 17.3 million units in the second quarter, which is an increase of 7.5% from the first quarter of 2017, and an increase of 0.7% when compared to the same quarter last year. Overall, while the second quarter showed signs of an upturn compared to a slower first quarter, the outlook still remains volatile with longer replacement cycles and GDPR likely to impact the market over the short to medium term.
Throughout the first half of 2017, the pace of business mobile devices shipments appears to be on trend, although shipments had a disappointing first quarter growth performance, but this was followed by a stronger pace of growth in the second quarter of the year.
Gina Luk, principal analyst of mobile workforce strategies at Strategy Analytics stated that, overall the business smartphone industry expanded steadily in the second quarter with Samsung showing positive shipment growth while Apple’s shipments slipped by 11.0%. Android and iOS are the two dominant operating systems in the market, as Windows 10 smartphone shipments continued to be squeezed out by the industry with close to zero market share. Worldwide personal liable smartphones continue to dominate over corporate liable shipments, at 63.5% of global deployments.
Andrew Brown, executive director of enterprise research said that, the worldwide business tablet market remains volatile although it rebounded slightly to reach 17.3 million units in the second quarter, which is a 7.5% increase from the first quarter, but growth compared to the same quarter in 2016 was flat at 0.7%.
He continued by saying that that the picture is still quite mixed with North American business tablet volumes being up 5.4%, compared to the previous quarter, but down 4.2% compared to the same quarter in 2016. It was also very similar in Central & Latin America, which grew 2.2% compared to the previous quarter, but dropped by 6.1% compared to the same quarter in 2016.
