Market Analysis

The total number of smartphones worldwide is forecast to rise from 2.74 billion at the end of 2015 (equivalent to 37.4% penetration of total mobile connections) to 4.48 billion by the end of 2018, according to the latest research by mobilesquared.

Data centre hardware market revenues fell 1% from the year-ago quarter as customer demand shifted from hardware to software. According to US-based TBR's 4Q15 Data Centre Benchmark, vendors' average revenue and gross profit slipped year-to-year as demand for legacy hardware implementations declined.

The pace of digital uptake isn't reaching its potential, resulting in widening gaps between service delivery and customer expectations, according to new research by Dimension Data. In the 19th edition of its annual Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report, organisations are unclear about who owns, oversees, and manages the digital channels in their contact centres.

European storage is a tough market and, with even more competition in the flash side of the business, is seeing a continued fall in traditional storage using hard drives.

The enterprise Wi-Fi market grew 5.9% yr/yr in Q4, and 3.7% over the whole of 2015, according to figures from IDC. The consumer market, where firms like Netgear and D-Link compete, declined 3.9% in Q4 and 4.8% in 2015. Cisco is still the enterprise market's dominant vendor.

IDC says that in the last quarter of 2015 over 14 million tablets were shipped to Western Europe as the market volume declined 10.1% YoY. In value terms, however, the decline was only 1.8% YoY, thanks to growing penetration of detachable tablets boosted by an increasing supply of devices with wide-ranging specs catering for the diverse needs of consumers and professionals.

Since 2000 when the first camera phone was introduced the number of mobile users has quintupled. By 2020, there will be 5.5 billion mobile users, representing 70% of the global population, according to the release of the Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast (2015 to 2020).

Outsourcing bounced back in EMEA with a strong fourth quarter. Outsourcing activity in the region grew 44% compared to the third quarter and ACV exceeded €3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2015 for only the third time ever. But contract values continue to decline.