Over 110 million enterprise smartphones and tablets were shipped worldwide in Q1 2016, Strategy Analytics said.
Worldwide business smartphone shipments were 92.2 million units, down 21 percent from the previous quarter. However, it was up 0.5 percent annually from 91.8 million in Q1 2015.
Similarly, tablet shipment dropped 34.5 percent to 17.3 million units from the previous quarter. Shipment declined 9.8 percent annually.
Strategic Analytics said the worldwide business tablet market is undergoing a downward spiral and has reached its lowest point since Q4 2013.
Weakening global smartphone and tablet demand, slowing economy, and piling-up inventory were hammering the growth of both BYOD and Corporate-liable markets in first quarter of the year.
According to Gina Luk, Senior Analyst and author of the Strategy Analytics Mobile Workforce Strategies (MWS) report, “Global Business Smartphone Quarterly Tracking Q1 2016”,
“Many enterprises withheld from investing in new deployments of smartphones in Q1 2016 and inventory built-up due to large volume purchases in Q4 2015,” said Gina Luk, Senior Analyst and author of the Strategy Analytics Mobile Workforce report.
“New device launches from vendors popular with enterprises, such as Apple and Microsoft, were on the horizon, meaning enterprises held off large volume purchases until official launch dates were announced”.
Andrew Brown, Executive Director of Enterprise Research at Strategy Analytics noted that longer life cycles, increased competition from other categories such as larger smartphones/phablets, combined with the fact that end users can install the latest operating systems on their older tablets has stifled enthusiasm for these devices in both BYOD and corporate-liable environments.
