Mobility spending in META to hit $185bn

ALKESH Sharma / Emirates Business

Enthused by the huge capital inflow and enhanced shopper expenditure on mobile devices, software, and related services; the annual spending on mobility across the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa (META) region is expected to reach the whopping mark of $185 billion by 2019.
This constitutes a 10.2 percent share of worldwide enterprises and individual consumer spending that is predicted to achieve the target of $1.8 trillion in 2019. These encouraging figures for the industry have been revealed in the IDC’s new ‘Mobility Spending Guide’.
“The META mobility market is generally on the rise. However, due to the diversity of the region’s economic conditions, the adoption of mobility is more mature in markets such as the GCC and Turkey, while countries in Africa remain largely underpenetrated,” said Krishna Chinta, programme manager for telecommunications and media at IDC META.
Saudi Arabia is the single largest mobility market in META, followed by Turkey. Together, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, South Africa, and the UAE accounted for approximately 38.7 percent of the entire mobility opportunity within the META region in 2015. The rest of the META region is expected to grow at faster compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.1 percent over the 2014-19 period.
However, IDC predicted that if on one hand slump in oil prices could slightly hinder the mobility sector growth in GCC for some time then on the other hand low penetration rate in Africa region could represent plethora of growth opportunities.
“The ongoing economic diversification measures underway in the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) region will drive the growth of mobility across the META region. However, the prevailing slump in global crude oil prices might impact the investment propensity of enterprises in the short-to-medium term,” stated Chinta.
“Africa itself is also a diverse region where countries such as South Africa and Nigeria are more mature than markets such as Ghana and Namibia, which typically remain underdeveloped. While the low penetration rates across Africa naturally present considerable growth potential for mobility,” he pointed out
Manufacturing, retail, and banking and financial services are among the early adopters of mobility in this region. While improving productivity, efficiency, and customer services are some of the probable drivers, ensuring security, data privacy, and regulatory compliance remain the key challenges for mobility adoption.
Mobility spending (including hardware, software, and services) by META manufacturing organisations will grow from $5.8 billion in 2015 to $6.5 billion in 2019. Meanwhile, both the retail and banking and financial services verticals will see increases from approximately $3 billion to $3.8 billion in 2019.
IDC’s ‘Worldwide Semiannual Mobility Spending Guide’ is designed to address the needs of technology organisations by assessing the mobile opportunity by country, industry, and use case. The spending guide provides subscribers with spending data on 7 technologies across 19 industries, 4 company sizes, and 53 countries.