APAC BYOD market to continue strong growth in 2014-2015: IDC

• BYOD in 2014: Smartphones up 40.4%, tablets up 62.7%, notebook PCs down 20%
• Will peak until 2018, then to be followed by Choose Your Own Device (CYOD) trend

INTERNATIONAL Data Corporation (IDC) said it expects the Asia Pacific BYOD (bring your own device) market to continue strong growth in 2014 and into 2015 as consumer smartphone and tablet continue gain market across the region.
 
In IDC’s latest BYOD studies, Asia/Pacific (Excluding Japan) Bring Your Own Device End-User Survey 2014 and Asia/Pacific Bring Your Own Device 2014–2018 Analysis and Forecast, BYOD is defined as part of enterprise mobility.
 
The practice of BYOD refers to devices that users have personally purchased with their own funds, without help from the employer. The employer is not obligated to subsidise any part of the device nor is it responsible for supporting the devices' hardware and software.
 
IDC’s findings show that across Asia Pacific, mobile devices utilised under the BYOD model has accounted for 22.5%, 4.9% and 11.7% of all consumer smartphones, tablets and notebook PCs shipped in 2013, respectively.
 
“The momentum of BYOD has definitely increased over the past 12 month and IDC expects it will continue the upward swing in 2014 and well in 2015,” said Ian Song, research manager for Enterprise Mobility at IDC Asia/Pacific.
 
“With the user experience of mobile devices improving, end-users can start to perform more complex task on those devices. In addition, the price of device has also dropped to a level where increased proliferation becomes possible,” he added.
 
Song said that enterprises across the region are also becoming more open to the idea of BYOD as a way to drive mobility in their organisations.
 
“Close to 60% of all surveyed organisations across Asia Pacific stated that they have some kind of mobility policy that caters to the practice of BYOD,” he added.
 
Song said that BYOD in Asia Pacific is being driven primarily by the use of personally owned smartphones in the enterprise.
 
IDC expects that close to 155 million consumer smartphones will be used within the BYOD model across the region in 2014, a year-on-year growth of 40.4%. Tablet BYOD will grow to nearly four million units, a year-on-year growth of 62.7%. Notebook PC, on the other hand, will see a steep decline as the PC industry slows down and BYOD users migrate to other BYOD platforms.
 
IDC expects just 3.1 million units of consumer notebook PC will be utilised under the BYOD model, a year-on-year decline of 20%.
 
However, IDC does not anticipate the BYOD growth will last.
 
“BYOD smartphone utilisation will peak around 2016-2017, and tablets will peak around 2017-2018,” said Song.
 
He said that the bottomline is that BYOD is a compromise between users and the enterprise.
 
“While BYOD has a capability to streamline some of the internal operations, personally owned devices will not be able to drive core business functions without compromising security and management,” he added.
 
To this end, IDC believes that enterprises across Asia Pacific will begin to revisit the corporate-liable model with a twist: giving employees options to choose the device they want to use.
 
IDC calls it Choose Your Own Device (CYOD). CYOD may eventually take some of the steam away from BYOD, but IDC believes that most organisations will adopt a hybrid BYOD/ CYOD policy that address device ownership and usage base on requirement.
 
“IDC expects that developed markets like Australia or Singapore will see a decline in BYOD adoption as early as the first half of 2016 as mobile devices saturate the market and this hybrid model begins to take hold,” said Song.
 
“Developing markets will take quite a bit longer before smartphone and tablet BYOD start to decline as these types of devices are still in a high-growth phase in those markets, and maturity toward enterprise mobility is low,” he added.
 
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