Predicts 2018: Mobile, Endpoint and Wearable

Computing Strategies
Published: 14 November 2017 ID: G00342408

Analyst(s): Rob Smith, Chris Silva, Michael A. Silver, Manjunath Bhat, Charles Smulders, Bryan Taylor,
Annette Jump, Van L. Baker

The rapidly evolving landscape of devices and management processes will

allow I&O leaders to deliver new capabilities to enhance the productivity of
previously underserved employee populations. But these advancements
also will require end-user computing IT teams to develop new skills.

Key Findings
■ A changing legal environment and user push-back on onerous device controls have forced
organizations to rethink how company data should be managed on users' devices. Emerging
consolidation of client management and EMM tools will yield UEM solutions to manage PC,
Mac, mobile and wearables in a single console.
■ Managing the rapidly changing portfolio of endpoints, applications and supporting infrastructure
services will require new skill sets for both operations and support staff.
■ First-generation adoption of wearables technologies — primarily to empower frontline workers
— has uncovered unanticipated issues that can complicate production deployments.

Recommendations
I&O leaders focused on mobile and endpoint strategies should:

■ Prepare for the consolidation of application management by auditing incumbent EMM tools to
determine their ability to perform the expanded role of UEM.
■ Select candidates for UEM pilots by identifying users whose compute environment is right for
EMM, such as BYOD PCs and Macs, and those who have minimal need for Win32 applications.
■ Ensure business continuity for frontline workers by continuing to operate traditional workflows
and processes in parallel with new technology for at least two years.
■ Develop new skill sets across EUC IT teams by cross-training EMM administrative staff and
those responsible for traditional client management. Recruit externally to fill skill gaps that arise
 in managing new endpoints and building data and analytics capabilities and new support
models.
■ Create realistic project plans for rolling out wearable technologies by building in time to address
unexpected challenges and complications.

Table of Contents

Strategic Planning Assumptions............................................................................................................. 2

Analysis.................................................................................................................................................. 3
What You Need to Know.................................................................................................................. 3
Strategic Planning Assumptions....................................................................................................... 4
A Look Back...................................................................................................................................14
Gartner Recommended Reading.......................................................................................................... 14

List of Figures

Figure 1. Transformational Nature of Predicted Technology Changes...................................................... 3

Strategic Planning Assumptions

By 2022, more than 75% of smartphones used in the enterprise will be bring your own device
(BYOD), forcing a migration from device-centric management to app- and data-centric
management.

By 2022, 30% of company-owned Windows 10 PCs will be managed using enterprise mobility
management (EMM) tools or their successors, unified endpoint management (UEM) tools, resulting
in increased operational efficiency, up from less than 5% today.

By 2020, 30% of IT mobile and endpoint resources will be dedicated to enabling frontline workers,
up from 10% today.

By 2023, growth of enterprise wearables, augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR), analytics and
modern endpoint management tools will require 50% of IT end-user computing (EUC) staff to
acquire a new set of skills to remain effective at their jobs.

By 2022, expanding use cases for enterprise wearables will expose unforeseen health, ergonomic
and safety issues that will cause the delay or scaling back of 30% of projects.

Page 2 of 16 Gartner, Inc. | G00342408

 Analysis
I&O leaders with responsibility for mobile and endpoint computing are facing an explosion of new
technologies and business demands. Some are incremental (building on existing technologies),
such as Windows 10 and its new management model, and scaling BYO programs. Others are more
transformational, including empowering often comparatively neglected frontline workers
(approximately 70% of the workforce) and embracing wearables (see Figure 1). Underlying these
changes is the greater goal of using client computing technologies as a foundation for delivering an
agile digital workplace to all employees in support of the broader digital transformation initiatives.

Figure 1. Transformational Nature of Predicted Technology Changes

Source: Gartner (November 2017)

These considerable pressures will require I&O leaders to oversee a transition in skill sets, processes
and tools in their teams, and will likely involve organizational realignment. For example, Gartner
clients already regularly report issues of migrating to Windows 10, including how to deal with
continuous update processes and when to move to a single management tool across all endpoints
(unified endpoint management tools). I&O leaders' teams will also need to form new partnerships
both within and outside the company. For example, empowering frontline workers and embracing
wearables will require new vertical specific technologies, skills and processes, and be done in
partnership with IoT teams. The learning curve for these initiatives is likely to be steep and require
resets.

What You Need to Know

This research looks at emerging trends that Gartner believes are shaping the end-user computing
approach, requisite skill set and deliverables. These trends fall into the following areas:

Gartner, Inc. | G00342408 Page 3 of 16

 ■ A continued shift away from standardized, hardware-centric approaches to managing users'
endpoints, and toward achieving a sliding scale of controls that adapt, contextually, to a user's
need or task
■ Shifts in management of PCs driven by modern approaches to protecting apps and data, and in
response to evolving platforms such as Windows 10 as it makes its way into companies
■ The rise of mobility initiatives to empower frontline workers, and direct user productivity and
client satisfaction
■ A need to revisit and update skills and processes to deliver the value brought about by the
changes in policies and tools outlined here

Strategic Planning Assumptions

Strategic Planning Assumption: By 2022, more than 75% of smartphones used in the enterprise
will be BYOD, forcing a migration from device-centric management to app- and data-centric
management.

Analysis by: Chris Silva

Key Findings:

Bring your own device has faded from being a headline initiative for CIOs, but support for personally
owned devices used at work continues to expand. Gartner data shows that more than 70% of users
1
are not being provided a smartphone by their employer. A changing legal environment and user
push-back on onerous device controls have forced organizations to rethink how company data can
be protected on users' devices that cannot or will not be enrolled in a traditional device
management construct. This finding was supported in Gartner's 2017 "Magic Quadrant for
Enterprise Mobility Management Suites," where surveyed buyers cited the ability to manage apps
as the top driver for their investment.

Adding to the challenges posed by BYOD, third-party mobile apps and the workflows they enable
are at the heart of digital transformation. Pushing beyond mobile email, contact and calendar
access also drives interest in methods for managing apps and data that are independent of
managing the device with a mobile device management (MDM) profile. I&O leaders aiming to scale
mobility to support digital transformation dependent on a host of new apps, devices and platforms
will be hamstrung by policies focused on device control and configuration alone.

The tangential trend of placing PCs and mobile devices under a common management console —
Gartner calls this third evolution of tools "unified endpoint management (UEM)" — will force all
organizations to review policies and processes for managing their endpoints, with the outcomes of
modernized governance, processes and policies driving interest in more comprehensive tools or
alternatives to existing MDM tools.

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 Market Implications:

The resulting market impact of BYOD, a greater focus on third-party apps and the ability to address
a broader set of endpoints with a single tool will result in governance and process changes that
ignite a market for tools that address emerging needs:

■ A single policy for all mobile users globally, whether using company-supplied devices or BYOD,
is no longer adequate. Multiple policies and tools that can enforce multiple policy groups,
including app-specific containment of data, will challenge the use case of traditional MDM or
basic management tools, such as Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync policies.
■ Mobilizing commonly used apps, such as an office suite, in the case of Office 365, will require a
change in management approach, or a reconsideration of using device-level management at all.
2

■ Traditional client management processes, such as standard imaging, will be deprecated by the
pace and cadence of platform updates, and by the ability to customize commodity OS builds on
the fly using EMM and their successors, UEM tools, which will increase the importance of
visibility and control at the app and data level.

The change in approach from device-centric to app- and data-centric policies will not be served by
a change in tools alone. The skills and training required to equip a mobile and endpoint computing
team will need to be refreshed and expanded.

An increased interest in data-level protections also will be an outgrowth of these organic changes in
endpoint management, driving interest and input from security and risk organizations into how
mobile and endpoint governance is operationalized. This will drive interest in the integration points
of UEM and EMM tools, specifically with data protection and identity infrastructure.

The requirement for complete UEM capabilities in the average enterprise will not take shape until
2020. However, cross-training endpoint or client computing teams in the use of EMM tools in a UEM
use case (managing mobile and PC endpoints), and determining a migration path from traditional
client management tasks, should begin now.

Starting an audit of governance and the resulting policy and enforcement tool changes will be a
time-intensive task, but one demanded by the evolving legal environment around how mobile
policies are enacted, data is protected and user information is treated. Involving legal and HR
resources, from policy design through vetting and implementing tools, is critical. As part of the
policy modernization, expand to support platforms such as Google's Android, which allows a
greater degree of app-level controls than Apple's iOS.

In cases where EMM/UEM suites are already being used more broadly to support multiple, separate
management models based on device ownership or use case, a near-term priority should be
reviewing the efficacy of these tools in this role, as well as their ability to rise to the challenge of
UEM. In some cases, support for app-level data and transport protections can be achieved through
tools included in other investment areas or as part of existing enterprise agreements.

Gartner, Inc. | G00342408 Page 5 of 16

 Recommendations:

■ Identify inflexible policy control points by reviewing existing policies for mobile management
that rely on device hardware restrictions. Expand beyond IT to legal, risk and HR teams to vet
existing policies.
■ Replace policies — and, if necessary, tools — that focus on device-level management for
personally owned devices with those that focus on app-level control points to avoid legal
exposure and anemic user adoption of BYOD.
■ Prepare for the consolidation of management by auditing incumbent EMM tools to determine
their ability to provide support for app- and data-level protections and their ability to meet the
expanded set of capabilities required for UEM.
■ Replace applications with ones that enable contextual management of data to improve data
security.

Related Research:

■ "EMM Buying Decision Points to Guide a Comprehensive Endpoint Strategy"

■ "Manage and Protect Users, IT and the Business Using Gartner's Managed Diversity Model for
BYOD and CYOD"

Strategic Planning Assumption: By 2022, 30% of company-owned Windows 10 PCs will be

managed using EMM tools or their successors, UEM tools, resulting in increased operational
efficiency, up from less than 5% today.

Analysis by: Michael Silver and Manjunath Bhat

Key Findings:

Organizations have been managing their PCs using heavyweight client management tools for two
decades and are looking for better ways. Many traditional client management tools:

■ Require too much training, labor and infrastructure

■ Can manage devices only if they are running a VPN or are behind the organization's firewall
■ Don't really work with newer requirements, such as BYOD

Microsoft and Apple have instrumented their client operating systems (Windows 10 and macOS,
respectively) to be manageable by UEM and EMM products like the ones organizations use to
manage their users' smartphones and tablets, but most organizations have not begun to switch,
especially for their Windows PCs. Many organizations have less formal processes to manage Macs,
and are turning to EMM suites as they bring Macs into the management fold.

Windows PCs are not commonly managed with EMM/UEM products today for several reasons:

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 ■ Most Windows PCs in the installed base run Windows 7, which does not support the MDM-like
libraries of its successors, Windows 8.x and 10.
■ Most organizations have a significant number of Win32 applications, which cannot be delivered
by EMM suites today and will have uneven support in UEM tools as they emerge.
■ IT inertia prevents overhauling long-used processes that work relatively well.
■ IT has concerns over migrating existing policies.
■ Until recently, a PC could be managed by an EMM product or by a client management tool
(CMT), but not by both at the same time. Therefore, organizations would have to make a
significant cutover to EMM, perhaps before these tools have evolved into fuller UEM suites with
some CMT functions.

However, conditions are changing to make managing PCs with EMM/UEM more common/
attainable:

■ Organizations are moving to Windows 10, which supports being managed by EMM today. By
the end of 2017, 85% of organizations will have at least some Windows 10 installations running
in production.
■ Microsoft has released Windows Autopilot, a new EMM-based feature that enables vendors to
ship standard, "off the shelf" PCs directly to users and have them configured for their individual
requirements automatically when the user plugs it in. This reduces the time required to deploy
new PCs to users, as well as the costs to stage, image and ship PCs.
■ With the release of the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update (version 1709), Microsoft includes co-
management capability that allows a Windows 10 PC to be managed by both an EMM and a
CMT. The organization can decide which management product it wants to use for which tasks,
allowing a gentler transition from one technology to the next. Future UEM suites will be able to
serve as a single tool for many of these two tools' tasks, hence the name "unified."
■ In five years, organizations will be more comfortable with Microsoft's feature updates to
Windows and choose to allow more of them to be updated by Microsoft with Windows Update,
which will reduce the need for CMTs that currently perform the function and allow management
by UEM products as they evolve to fulfill the remaining CMT-specific tasks not met by their
EMM predecessors.

Between now and 2022, most organizations are likely to replace all of their desktop PCs once and
many of their notebooks twice. The percentage of Win32 applications in the typical organization is
likely to decline by eight to 10 points, to around 30%. Organizations could choose to run many of
the remaining Win32 apps through the Windows 10 Desktop Bridge, which ports them to a universal
Windows platform and allows them to be distributed through the app store and EMM products. By
2022, organizations will be more amenable to using UEM as a new way of managing PCs and Macs,
as they look to consolidate the management products they already have, rather than add new ones
or retain tools like CMT that have diminishing, unique value.

Gartner, Inc. | G00342408 Page 7 of 16

 Market Implications:

This prediction builds upon our 2016 prediction that the number of organizations managing a
portion of their PCs/Macs with an EMM system will rise from less than 1% (in 2016) to 40% by
2018. As the transition from EMM systems to a complete UEM is in the early stages, EMMs have
limited traction managing Windows PCs today. The portion that will be managed by 2018 is likely to
be small, but organizations will grow more comfortable with the technology for PCs by 2022. The
transition from the CMT and EMM markets to the UEM market will be well underway, and
organizations should start planning now to take advantage of lighter-weight management for PCs.

Recommendations:

■ Select candidates for PC EMM pilots by identifying users who would like BYOD PCs and Macs,
and who have limited need for Win32 applications.
■ Improve manageability options for Win32 applications in a UEM environment by using Windows
10 Desktop Bridge to port these apps to a universal Windows platform.
■ Improve security by having Microsoft install Windows 10 updates on devices that run
applications unlikely to have compatibility or support issues resulting from Windows 10
updates.

Related Research:

■ "Unlock Mobile Digital Business Opportunities Using Enterprise Mobility Management

Capabilities"
■ "Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Mobility Management Suites"
■ "Critical Capabilities for Enterprise Mobility Management Suites"

Strategic Planning Assumption: By 2020, 30% of IT mobile and endpoint resources will be
dedicated to enabling frontline workers, up from 10% today.

Analysis by: Charles Smulders

Key Findings:

By far, the majority of IT mobile and endpoint spending has been directed toward enabling office
productivity workers to be more productive and innovative. This population is estimated to account
for 30% to 40% of the workforce in mature countries. By comparison, other employees (commonly
known as "frontline workers") have been underserved, due to the lack of enabling technologies and
perceived lower ROI.

A number of emerging technologies, such as wearables, the Internet of Things (IoT), analytics,
artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) and AR/VR, will change this equation and create new
opportunities for business innovation. From a process perspective, the emergence of digital
platforms and cloud-based services has a key influence on changing thinking about how to equip
the frontline workforce.

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 From a new device perspective, Gartner has identified four common emerging high-value use cases
for non-office-productivity workers:

■ Remote expert guidance

■ Hands-free workflow
■ Immersive technology for worker training
■ Wearables for safety/health monitoring

The benefits of making these investments are listed below. All can be tied back to cost optimization,
revenue growth and customer experience improvements:

■ Process optimization/improved workflow

■ Improved quality/error reduction
■ Safety improvement/injury prevention
■ Compliance/regulation adherence
■ Faster problem resolution
■ Employee satisfaction
■ Travel expense reduction

The four categories of use cases are discrete, but the technologies supporting them will, in some
combination, provide common higher-level services such as contextual delivery. Delivering new
endpoint-centric technologies will require high degrees of collaboration and new skill sets.

The impact on people and processes will depend on the goal and type of digital workplace. For
example, analytics can be applied at the personal, group or organizational level, and the
combination of a user device plus an IoT device might be used in a very different way in a
warehouse versus in the field. Some use cases may not require a new category of device, but will
rely on an existing one, such as a smartphone, tablet or mobile PC. One of the big challenges is
identifying where the high ROIs are.

Market Implications:

The IT industry's focus on office productivity workers will continue to be important, but the
emergence of these new technologies will open up new opportunities to serve frontline workers.
While this will be an attractive market, initially it is unlikely to be very horizontal in nature, instead
requiring significant amounts of integration between technologies, as well as user experience
customization.

Gartner, Inc. | G00342408 Page 9 of 16

 Recommendations:

■ Collaborate with lines of business, partners and customers to identify high-priority scenarios for
frontline investments.
■ Assume investments to be tactical for the next few years, and focus on an ROI of less than 18
months.
■ Ensure business continuity by operating traditional workflows and processes in parallel with
new technology for at least two years.
■ Develop the core competencies to deliver emerging technologies by building a cross-discipline
project team and/or identifying relevant partner capabilities.
■ Create and justify budget for these new investments by identifying new ways to optimize costs
for frontline operations and focusing on high ROI use cases.

Related Research:

■ "Identify Innovative Opportunities for Wearables in Your Organization"

Strategic Planning Assumption: By 2023, growth of enterprise wearables, AR/VR, analytics and
modern endpoint management tools will require 50% of IT end-user computing staff to acquire a
new set of skills to remain effective at their jobs.

Analysis by: Bryan Taylor and Manjunath Bhat

Key Findings:

The primary device for an end user is shifting from a PC (by default) to any endpoint, such as a
mobile device or wearable, that is best suited for a particular task. Wearables like head-mounted
displays (HMDs) and smartwatches are beginning to deliver business value in many vertical
applications, such as field service collaboration, collaborative design and machine maintenance, as
well as in assembly and warehouse environments. Investments in technology for frontline workers
will require new skills in design, implementation and management.

The adoption of Windows 10 and macOS in the enterprise is, in large part, driving the convergence
of CMT and EMM tools to a single UEM solution. MDM management APIs in Windows 10 and
macOS provide an opportunity to transition to a common management paradigm. Taking advantage
of that opportunity will combine CMT and EMM skill sets.

Organizations will use workspace analytics to extract integrated insights across multiple toolsets,
such as enterprise knowledge graphs and EMM/UEM systems. As the data from managed mobile
devices and modern endpoints grows exponentially, the use of analytics becomes inevitable to act
on and respond to changes in real time. The following near-term flags can serve as a means to track
progress toward the predicted future state.

Page 10 of 16 Gartner, Inc. | G00342408

 Near-Term Flags:

Organizations will need new skills to accomplish (or avoid) the following near-term events that
Gartner believes will occur:

■ By 2019, 30% of organizations will face significant financial exposure from regulatory bodies
due to their failure to comply with the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
requirements to protect personal data on mobile devices. Organizations that are not properly
staffed are likely to be affected.
■ By 2020, 60% of organizations will have transformed a business process using wearables.
■ By 2020, the top 40% of digitally dexterous organizations will increase employee productivity by
at least 10% using workspace analytics.

Market Implications:

With cloud office services increasingly being consumed on mobile devices, the endpoint support
team comprising PC and mobile support groups will combine with the cloud office support team to
create a single digital workplace support team. The consolidation of approaches to manage PCs,
wearables and smartphones using a UEM solution will put the focus on DevOps and bimodal
capabilities. End-user computing leaders, by virtue of being responsible for the "last mile" digital
experience, will need to go beyond managing devices. This will require investment in building new
expertise in data analytics and data privacy, especially as new data privacy laws, such as GDPR,
come into effect in 2018.

The convergence of multiple EUC teams will require cross-functional training, acquiring
complementary skills and planning ahead for the cost per full-time employee. Building the
workforce and growing the required capabilities from within are key approaches to closing the skill
gaps. Strategic workforce planning will need to include EUC staff to improve its effectiveness in
current roles and prepare for future roles that the organization wants to retain in-house. Relying on
external sources to meet the surge of demand in some areas will be necessary for the short term.
However, practices such as job shadowing and contractor conversions also need to be in place to
enable IT organizations to transfer and build organizational capacity over time.

Recommendations:

■ Prepare for the need for new skill sets by evaluating the EUC IT team's existing skills, and
reskilling/upskilling and recruiting externally to fill skills gaps that arise in managing new
endpoints, data and analytics, and contextual delivery of applications.
■ Facilitate skill acquisition by investing in building technical skills focused on operations and
nontechnical skills focused on enablement. Operations will involve administration, governance
and service delivery. Enablement will focus on user productivity through effective
communication, support forum participation and appropriate documentation.

Gartner, Inc. | G00342408 Page 11 of 16

 ■ Position your organization to exploit use cases for managing PCs using EMM tools by building
cross-functional teams to manage continuous updates of operating systems and applications
across PCs and mobile devices.
■ Ensure compliance with privacy and labor laws as personal data accrues in the workplace by
accelerating the acquisition of new skills to establish a consistent set of policy guidelines.

Related Research:

■ "Ten Technologies Defining the Future of Mobility"

■ "Operationalize an Instrumented Workplace With Analytics to Support Digital Business"
■ "Best Practices to Augment Employees With Wearable Technologies"

Strategic Planning Assumption: By 2022, expanding use cases for enterprise wearables will
expose unforeseen health, ergonomic and safety issues that will cause the delay or scaling back of
30% of projects.

Analysis by: Bryan Taylor

Key Findings:

Wearable devices hold the promise of fundamentally transforming many business processes across
a wide range of industries over the coming five years. Already, Type A, technology-aggressive and
risk-tolerant organizations in industries such as warehousing/distribution, healthcare delivery and
manufacturing are well into production deployments of HMDs and augmented reality, ear-worn
wearables, smartwatches and health trackers in pursuit of process optimization or transformation.
The most common current use cases include remote expert guidance ("see what I see"), hands-free
workflow enablement, employee training and health/safety monitoring.

But despite the very real promise of enterprise wearables, early trials are revealing the potential for
unexpected complications. From battery life challenges to ambient noise interference to ergonomics
problems, first-generation adoption has surfaced unanticipated issues that can complicate
production deployments. Examples include the following:

■ HMD users complaining of headaches after moderate or extended use

■ Insufficient battery life to power the device through task or shift completion
■ Reduced peripheral vision with HMDs that may create a safety hazard
■ Ear-worn wearables causing discomfort after extended use or falling out of the ear during
vigorous movement
■ Wearable incompatibilities with required safety gear such as helmets, heavy gloves or sound-
reducing earmuffs

Though vendors and solution providers are constantly evolving their products to address such
issues, new and unanticipated challenges arise as use cases become more varied and complex.

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 But this phase is common in immature, dynamic markets and will pass. In the meantime,
organizations adopting wearables should expect the unexpected when applying them to use cases
that are not yet well-proven in the market.

Near-Term Flags:

■ By 2020, 70% of new investment in mobile technology will be focused on the task worker.
■ By 2021, 15% of organizations will have incorporated wearables into employee training.
■ By 2022, 60% of organizations will have optimized or transformed a business process using
wearables.

Market Implications:

More than with any previous advancement in computing, wearables vendors will have to contend
with human and environmental factors to be successful. Continuous improvement feedback loops
from the field must be accelerated and broader in scope than for traditional computing
technologies. The stakes are higher as well. Product implications for human health, comfort and
safety are an enormous challenge to any company's success in the market. Combine that with the
traditional challenges of mobile computing — battery life, ruggedness, connectivity, processing
power and so on — and it's clear that the most viable vendors will have to innovate across a wide
spectrum with deep ties to the field.

IT departments frequently struggle in the area of UI/UX when developing applications, even where
the user/computer interaction paradigm is well-understood. Those issues get compounded when
the physical comfort, health and safety of the user are factored in. IT will have to develop new
testing and piloting processes aimed at uncovering such issues, and new skills in anticipating and
avoiding them in the first place. Project plans must account for the unexpected. Moreover,
operations and support teams will need to create processes for dealing with battery life limitations
for wearables initiatives involving long shifts or extended field work. And, in many cases, IT will need
to work with HR and legal to create new governance processes prior to rolling out wearable
technologies, based on a new set of risks.

Recommendations:

■ Create realistic project plans for rolling out wearable technologies by building in time to address
unexpected challenges and complications.
■ Identify potential problems with wearable devices in areas that are often overlooked; evaluate
wearables vendors' understanding of the potential user health, safety and ergonomics issues, in
addition to their products'/solutions' features and functionality, and the vendors' continuous
improvement processes for addressing issues when they arise.
■ Account for health, comfort, safety and ergonomics factors in UI/UX development and testing.

Gartner, Inc. | G00342408 Page 13 of 16

 ■ Improve governance processes regarding wearables by collaborating with HR and legal teams
to incorporate use policies for wearables that govern safe use, immediate reporting of health/
safety/ergonomics issues and backup processes for business continuity if health or safety
issues with wearables arise.

Related Research:

■ "Ten Technologies Defining the Future of Mobility"

■ "Best Practices to Augment Employees With Wearable Technologies"

A Look Back
In response to your requests, we are taking a look back at some key predictions from previous years.
We have intentionally selected predictions from opposite ends of the scale — one where we were
wholly or largely on target, as well as one we missed.

On Target: 2015 Prediction — By 2018, more than 50% of users will go to a tablet or smartphone
first for all online activities.

While it is likely accurate that well more than 50% of users go to their smartphone first for email
transactions, it may have been aggressive to predict that this would be the case for all online
activities. Significant numbers of users still go to the browser for e-commerce activities and product
research, with a minority of transactions being completed on mobile devices. Additionally, many
businesses have been slow to develop and deploy mobile versions of business applications for the
workforce, continuing to require their workers to access these applications via the browser on a
notebook or desktop computer. Perhaps a more accurate prediction would have been that, by 2018,
more than 60% of transactions would take place on a mobile device, as most email, Facebook
transactions, tweets and news headlines are consumed on mobile devices as the first choice for
users.

Missed: 2016 Prediction — By 2018, 5 million people will have enterprise-confidential information
on their smartwatches.

The adoption of smartwatches is certainly growing and, based on Gartner's 2017 Personal
Technology survey, 9% of consumers in mature markets, like the U.S., U.K. and Germany,
personally own and use a smartwatch. Gartner estimated that by early 2018 the installed base for
smartwatches would be about 70 million units, so 5 million will represent 7% of the total installed
base. While most working adult users of smartwatches will have some company contacts and
calendar information exposed to a smartwatch, in most cases, it is not critical business data or
applications. Business deployments for smartwatches remain very small, therefore our estimates for
the scale of this prediction (5 million people) and the timing were too aggressive.

Gartner Recommended Reading

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Page 14 of 16 Gartner, Inc. | G00342408

 "Smartphones, Tablets and Things — It's Time to Integrate Your Mobile and IoT Strategies"

"Use Analytics to Convert Enterprise Mobility Management Data Into Business Value"

"2017 Strategic Roadmap for Mobile and Endpoints"

"Toolkit: BYOD Mobile Device Policy Template, 2017 Update"

"Operationalize an Instrumented Workplace With Analytics to Support Digital Business"

Evidence
1Findings published in "User Survey Analysis: Mobile Device Adoption at the Workplace Is Not Yet
Mature" based on Gartner's 2016 Personal Technologies survey.

2Gartner sees growing interest from clients in Microsoft's Intune EMM tool, in part driven by its
ability to provide data leakage controls and information protection inside of the Office 365 mobile
apps themselves, something no other vendor's EMM can provide natively.

Gartner, Inc. | G00342408 Page 15 of 16

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