Touchstar Published "State of the Union" Mobile Survey

In April, Touchstar Technologies Ltd., a rugged mobile device designer, commissioned its first "State of the Union" mobile computing survey to capture insight about the current state of the mobile marketplace.

According to analysis of the issue at Noodls.com, the device designer allowed decision makers from a number of industries to fill out a multiple choice surveys that would analyze their current mobile computing practices and their future intentions with regard to the usage of mobile devices. Leaders from the oil and gas, retail, aviation, logistics, and field service industries, among others, responded.

Analysis of the report shows that 25 percent of the respondents indicated their organization’s intentions to complete "major investment[s]" in either IT or mobile computing in the next three years. In addition, 40 percent of respondents said their organizations would soon consider pilot projects. The survey indicates that this trend will include investments in both hardware and software for most of the individuals claiming to invest; a small percentage stated that they will invest in software or hardware only.

The respondents also indicated the types of devices in which they may consider investing or for which they may complete pilot programs. A large percentage of individuals, 82 percent, said they were likely to take interest in consumer-grade smartphones and tablets, and within that group, 28 percent of individuals reported that they would consider rugged handheld devices.

The research shows that the oil, gas, utilities, and field service sectors will drive this investment over the next several years; these are the fields that contain high numbers of mobile users. These findings fall in line with ABI Research (News - Alert)'s previous analysis of the wireless antenna market. ABI has indicated that the market could reach $2 billion by 2016, and companies such as Ventev (News - Alert) Wireless are investing in mobile antennas to support oil, gas, and utilities industries that utilize these devices most often.