TechCentralTechCentral
    Facebook Twitter YouTube LinkedIn
    Facebook Twitter LinkedIn YouTube
    TechCentralTechCentral
    NEWSLETTER
    • News

      MTN hires outgoing Icasa CEO Willington Ngwepe into top role

      16 August 2022

      Rain in embarrassing climbdown over Telkom statement

      16 August 2022

      Jo’burg to issue RFP for 500MW of electricity ‘within weeks’

      16 August 2022

      Load shedding returns, and may last until Thursday

      16 August 2022

      Coal miner Seriti plans R12-billion Mpumalanga wind farm

      16 August 2022
    • World

      Semiconductor boom turns to bust

      16 August 2022

      Tencent plans to offload R400-billion Meituan stake: sources

      16 August 2022

      Ether leaps higher on verge of Merge

      16 August 2022

      Institutions eye crypto but retail investors remain nervous

      15 August 2022

      Tencent woes mount, even after $560-billion selloff

      12 August 2022
    • In-depth

      African unicorn Flutterwave battles fires on multiple fronts

      11 August 2022

      The length of Earth’s days has been increasing – and no one knows why

      7 August 2022

      As Facebook fades, the Mad Men of advertising stage a comeback

      2 August 2022

      Crypto breaks the rules. That’s the point

      27 July 2022

      E-mail scams are getting chillingly personal

      17 July 2022
    • Podcasts

      Qush on infosec: why prevention is always better than cure

      11 August 2022

      e4’s Adri Führi on encouraging more women into tech careers

      10 August 2022

      How South Africa can woo more women into tech

      4 August 2022

      Book and check-in via WhatsApp? FlySafair is on it

      28 July 2022

      Interview: Why Dell’s next-gen PowerEdge servers change the game

      28 July 2022
    • Opinion

      No reason South Africa should have a shortage of electricity: Ramaphosa

      11 July 2022

      Ntshavheni’s bias against the private sector

      8 July 2022

      South Africa can no longer rely on Eskom alone

      4 July 2022

      Has South Africa’s advertising industry lost its way?

      21 June 2022

      Rob Lith: What Icasa’s spectrum auction means for SA companies

      13 June 2022
    • Company Hubs
      • 1-grid
      • Africa Data Centres
      • Altron Document Solutions
      • Amplitude
      • Atvance Intellect
      • Axiz
      • BOATech
      • CallMiner
      • Digital Generation
      • E4
      • ESET
      • Euphoria Telecom
      • IBM
      • Kyocera Document Solutions
      • Microsoft
      • Nutanix
      • One Trust
      • Pinnacle
      • Skybox Security
      • SkyWire
      • Tarsus on Demand
      • Videri Digital
      • Zendesk
    • Sections
      • Banking
      • Broadcasting and Media
      • Cloud computing
      • Consumer electronics
      • Cryptocurrencies
      • Education and skills
      • Energy
      • Fintech
      • Information security
      • Internet and connectivity
      • Internet of Things
      • Investment
      • IT services
      • Motoring and transport
      • Public sector
      • Science
      • Social media
      • Talent and leadership
      • Telecoms
    • Advertise
    TechCentralTechCentral
    Home»News»Tough times, but tech still booming

    Tough times, but tech still booming

    News By Editor31 January 2012
    Facebook Twitter LinkedIn WhatsApp Telegram Email
    Deloitte's Paul Lee

    Deloitte expects demand for consumer devices to continue to grow in 2012, even in countries that continue to feel the effects of the global economic downturn.

    Developed markets, however, are expected to experience lower growth in technology sales than emerging markets. Deloitte reckons mobile device sales will continue to grow and expects both mobile and fixed connectivity providers to evolve their business models to meet ever-increasing demand from consumers for data.

    These findings are contained in the 11th edition of Deloitte’s annual report on its predictions for the technology, media and telecommunications.

    One of the interesting findings is that about 5% of tablet sales in 2012 will be to individuals or households that already have a tablet.

    Paul Lee, global director at Deloitte research, says there are various reasons people buy multiple tablets, one of them being consumers want to use different form factors for different purposes. He says smaller tablets are more portable, meaning they’re often carried, while larger tablets remain in the home or office.

    “The business model for distributing tablets is going to change, too,” says Lee. He expects a significant shift to the razor blade model, where manufacturers sell razors below cost and generate profits from subsequent sale of blades. He provides the example of the Kindle Fire — Amazon.com’s 7-inch tablet — that is essentially sold at cost, or even below cost, with the sale of value-added content bringing in the profits.

    Deloitte believes tablets are also “replicating or replacing paper” for note taking and document storage and retrieval.

    According to Lee, there is little chance of seeing a unified device that meets all of a consumer’s communication needs. “We accumulate the ways in which we communicate,” he says. “I can say with some certainty that we will never have ‘the single converged device’.”

    Deloitte anticipates smartphones and tablets will be adopted widely as “portable PVR (personal video recorder) devices” in 2012, with consumers preloading video on them for consumption while travelling.

    Although there will be more than 2m applications available for mobile devices by the end of 2012, Deloitte expects the percentage that are paid for — or even downloaded — will shrink. This could, however, be combated if developers produce more locally relevant content.

    “Germany is the largest European country, with 80m people, but there was only one localised application in the iTunes top 10 paid applications list as of 12 January 2012,” Lee says.

    On the growth of smartphones, Deloitte predicts that by year-end more than 500m smartphones, with a retail price of US$100 or less, will be in use worldwide. Lee says it’s important to note that there is a difference between the consumer perception and the industry definition of a smartphone.

    He says industry defines a smartphone by parameters such as its having an open operating system with an accompanying software developer kit and that can use native application programming interfaces and so on. Consumers, meanwhile, consider features such as touch capability or the ability to use certain applications as sufficient to denote a phone as “smart”.

    Lee adds that the specifications between $100 smartphones and high-end devices remain rather different, particularly in terms of processing power, storage capabilities and the quality of cameras. He doesn’t expect this gap to close any time soon.

    In terms of connectivity, Deloitte says it expects more developed countries to move to fixed-line data caps and away from uncapped products, particularly the most prolific Internet-using nations such as the US, Germany, Japan and France.

    Mobile data volume is expected to continue doubling every year, but in developed markets growth has been slower in response to more restrictive usage policies.

    “In the US, AT&T’s data volume growth was not 100%, but 40%,” Lee says. In the UK, meanwhile, Vodafone’s was only 20%. “There was an immediate response to mobile data limitations and consumers are turning to alternatives like Wi-Fi to reduce costs.”

    Lee also expects greater use of short-range, often device-to-device connectivity as it offers both better speeds and negates the need for data usage. Though short-range connectivity solutions like Bluetooth are now used more for voice than other purposes, Lee says these means will become more popular for data.

    Deloitte also expects mobile operators to encourage and perhaps even facilitate Wi-Fi offload as a means to alleviate network congestion while maintaining service levels.  — Craig Wilson, TechCentral

    • Subscribe to our free daily newsletter
    • Follow us on Twitter or on Google+ or on Facebook
    • Visit our sister website, SportsCentral (still in beta)
    Deloitte Paul Lee
    Share. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn WhatsApp Telegram Email
    Previous ArticleMaterial: a moving tapestry of Jo’burg life
    Next Article Start-up Snapt: making money from open source

    Related Posts

    MTN hires outgoing Icasa CEO Willington Ngwepe into top role

    16 August 2022

    Rain in embarrassing climbdown over Telkom statement

    16 August 2022

    Jo’burg to issue RFP for 500MW of electricity ‘within weeks’

    16 August 2022
    Add A Comment

    Comments are closed.

    Promoted

    HPE SimpliVity: addressing SMBs’ data conundrums

    16 August 2022

    Digital transformation – don’t get caught unprepared

    16 August 2022

    Seven reasons your business needs IP surveillance cameras

    15 August 2022
    Opinion

    No reason South Africa should have a shortage of electricity: Ramaphosa

    11 July 2022

    Ntshavheni’s bias against the private sector

    8 July 2022

    South Africa can no longer rely on Eskom alone

    4 July 2022

    Subscribe to Updates

    Get the best South African technology news and analysis delivered to your e-mail inbox every morning.

    © 2009 - 2022 NewsCentral Media

    Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.