E-Business
Manufacturing, Banking & Retail Drive EMEA Mobility Spending- IDC
Mobility is one of IDC ‘s 3rd Platform pillars, an IT market that has disrupted traditional business processes and continues to create transformative opportunities for vendors eager to engage a wider set of customers.
According to IDC’s new Worldwide Semiannual Mobility Spending Guide, enterprise and consumer spending on mobile devices, software, and services will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 2.7% from $1.7 trillion in 2015 to $1.8 trillion by 2019. EMEA mobility spending will represent 29% of worldwide spending on mobility in 2019, reaching $538 billion.
The new spending guide expands on IDC’s previous mobility forecasts by offering greater detail on industry and geographic spending levels.
While the holistic mobility market may seem mature, organizations across industries are leveraging a deeper set of capabilities to further transform their businesses, driven by heightened IT acumen from the consumer mobility market. Mobility may have started with the simple concept of shifting employees from being deskbound to being mobile, but it has advanced and evolved to the point where many organizations are now embracing capabilities unique to both mobility and their industries.
• Addressing industry-specific needs and providing employees with mobile-based solutions to enhance productivity, supply chain, inventory management, and other internal processes is particularly important for manufacturers in EMEA. Spending on mobility is forecast to increase from $29 billion to $32 billion in 2019, growing at a 2.8% CAGR.
• Banking will invest heavily in mobility, with IDC forecasting spending to increase from $14 billion to $17 billion in 2019, at 4.9% CAGR. There is a strong need in the banking sector to deploy mobility solutions to provide employees with portable devices to access information and be more productive.
• Retail has already benefitted from the consumer adoption of mcommerce, but IDC believes the sector will continue to be a strong growth opportunity. Retail spending in mobility in EMEA will grow to $13 million in 2019 at a 3.3% CAGR.
The ability to link supply chains to customer-facing ordering capabilities, increasingly deployed in a mobile-first context, will drive profitability for a wider set of smaller, more specialized retailers as they look to be competitive with mass merchant firms eager to modernize their in-store infrastructures.
From a company size perspective, IDC expects small offices with 1 to 9 employees to represent the strongest share of global mobility spending, as small companies deepen their capabilities with industry-specific mobile apps, or startups in emerging markets develop their own mobile-first organizations with devices and basic services.
“In an era when many corporations want to provide access to information anytime anywhere, focusing on mobile strategies is an opportunity for businesses across vertical markets to generate high returns on investments and improve communications, accessibility, portability, and productivity,” said Andrea Minonne, research analyst, IDC European Industry Solutions.
From a technology perspective, services will continue to represent the bulk of mobility investments, but software will be the fastest-growing segment. Services spending will reach $330 billion, growing at a 2% CAGR in 2019, while software spending will increase from $3.1 billion to $4.9 billion, at a 12% 2015–2019 CAGR.
Growth in hardware spending will be slower (1% CAGR), reaching $203 billion by 2019. By region, Western Europe will have the highest mobility spending in 2019 ($267 billion), followed by the Middle East and Africa ($189 billion) and Central and Eastern Europe ($82 billion).
“Mobility used to be treated as an auxiliary to desktop IT systems,” said John Delaney, associate VP of Mobility Research at IDC, “but a growing number of enterprises are now treating mobility on a par with desktop. Some forward-thinking companies are going further still, designing their IT systems with mobility as the primary use case. IDC’s holistic view of mobility spending gauges the investments that are being made to achieve the increased flexibility, velocity, and richness of engagement that will form the foundation of long-term competitive advantage.”
IDC’s Worldwide Semiannual Mobility Spending Guide is designed to address the needs of technology organizations assessing the mobile opportunity by country, industry, and use case.
The guide provides subscribers with spending data on seven technologies across 19 industries, four company sizes, and 53 countries.
Unlike any other research in the industry, the comprehensive spending guide can help IT decision makers to clearly understand the industry-specific scope and direction of mobility spending today and over the next five years.
E-Business
Cyber Resilience a Critical Priority for Manufacturing Amid Rapid Digitalization – Report Shows
As 60% of manufacturers race toward full digitalisation, cyber risk is increasingly manifesting as a business risk, according to a new global report by Kaspersky and VDC Strategy.
This means cybersecurity is not merely a compliance function, it is a cornerstone of production assurance, safeguarding uptime, quality, and operational continuity.
Manufacturers are modernising to deliver safer, more consistent and more cost-effective production and digitalization is moving fast: just 9% of organisations describe themselves as fully digital today, but 60% expect to get there within two years, according to the joint report by Kaspersky and VDC, titled ‘Cyber Resilience, Built for Manufacturing’.
That shift links shop-floor equipment, production lines and site operations to platforms such as Manufacturing execution systems (MES), Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) and historians, turning many plants into cyber-physical systems (CPS), where a digital disruption doesn’t stay digital. It can slow production lines, quarantine work in progress, invalidate traceability records, or halt production outright.
What’s driving manufacturing digitalization?
Manufacturers are digitising for measurable operational gains, not novelty. Survey respondents identified the primary drivers of their digital transformation strategy as:
- Improving production output or efficiency (24%)
- Reducing operational or production expenses (15%)
- Enabling new strategic opportunities (14%)
- Improving cyber resilience (13%)
The same connected systems that unlock these gains, including MES, IIoT sensors, automated material handling, remote engineering access, also become the systems that determine whether production can be trusted to keep running.
Cyber risk is now a business risk
Cyber risk has evolved from a mere IT concern to a direct threat to revenue generation, as environments transform into cyber-physical systems. In these integrated settings, digital disruptions like malware no longer just affect data, they can cause unsafe operations, scrapped batches, and halted production on the plant floor. This shift highlights the urgent need to treat cybersecurity as a key part of operational resilience.
According to the report, nearly 60% of manufacturing organisations estimate that cyber incidents cause damages exceeding $1 million per event, with an average disruption of 15.3 hours. The most significant losses often result from production halts, missed delivery commitments, and penalties, rather than just forensic costs.
In this context, downtime links cybersecurity risks to overall business performance. Cyber incidents can reduce Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), strain staffing, and disrupt supply chains. Recovery involves more than system restore, it requires re-establishing confidence in process parameters, quality records, and traceability before resuming operations.
Mature cybersecurity programs now incorporate OT security into governance, focusing on metrics valued by production leaders such as time to restore, backup confidence, legacy asset coverage, and safe degraded operation. This alignment ensures cybersecurity supports continuous production and resilience, not just IT compliance.
However, challenges remain due to split ownership. While 59% of organisations’ IT departments manage security policies, these often overlook plant realities. Managing many security tools (44%) and OT patching issues (38%) show that cybersecurity must be embedded into daily routines of production, engineering, and quality teams. Only through such integration can cybersecurity effectively enhance operational reliability and defend against evolving threats.
“As manufacturing environments become increasingly interconnected, cybersecurity shifts focus from merely adding protective layers to ensuring the availability, resilience, and integrity of production processes. The goal is to minimise operational impact and speed up recovery, rather than solely preventing intrusions.
“Kaspersky offers a unified ecosystem that integrates IT, OT, and IIoT security, empowering manufacturers to pursue digital transformation securely. This strategy helps maintain operational continuity and reduces long-term cybersecurity costs,” comments Andrey Strelkov, Head of Industrial Cybersecurity Product Line at Kaspersky.
To implement this strategy, manufacturing companies can leverage solutions from the Kaspersky OT Cybersecurity Ecosystem, centered around Kaspersky Industrial CyberSecurity (KICS), a native Extended Detection and Response platform designed for critical infrastructure protection. KICS enables centralised detection and response to complex attacks across the entire industrial network, ensuring comprehensive visibility and security.
Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC) has commenced a forensic investigation into the University of Lagos (UNILAG), Lotus Bank and Hackerbella Ltd over alleged violations of data protection laws involving students’ personal information.
The investigation follows public complaints alleging that students’ personal data were used to open bank accounts without a lawful basis.
Dr Vincent Olatunji, national commissioner and chief executive officer of the NDPC, directed the investigation team to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the circumstances surrounding the collection, processing, use and disclosure of the affected students’ personal data.
The investigation will also determine the respective roles and responsibilities of UNILAG, Lotus Bank and Hackerbella in the alleged processing of the data.
According to the Commission, the investigation will assess the data protection compliance obligations of the parties under the Nigeria Data Protection Act, 2023 (NDP Act), as well as potential risks posed to the rights and freedoms of the affected data subjects.
The NDPC said the probe would cover several areas, including Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs), the lawfulness and transparency of credit scoring or profiling activities, and the use of automated decision-making systems.
It will also examine the adequacy of privacy notices, data-sharing arrangements, lawful bases for processing, data minimisation and purpose limitation.
Other areas include data retention policies and the adequacy of technical and organisational measures put in place to safeguard the rights and personal data of affected students.
The Commission reiterated that institutions entrusted with the personal data of students, staff and other members of their communities have a heightened responsibility to ensure that such information is processed lawfully, fairly, transparently and securely.
The NDPC therefore warned educational institutions that are yet to comply with its existing data protection compliance directives to take immediate steps to achieve compliance.
The Commission said it would continue to exercise its regulatory mandate to protect the privacy rights of Nigerians and ensure that organisations processing personal data comply with the provisions of the Nigeria Data Protection Act, 2023.
Microsoft is planning to unveil its new Maia 300 AI chip this fall, potentially as soon as next month, The Information reported on Monday, citing people with direct knowledge of the plans.
The company introduced its Maia AI chip in November 2023 but has lagged rivals such as Alphabet and Amazon in scaling up its in-house chip efforts as it seeks to reduce its reliance on Nvidia’s costly processors.
Google began recognizing revenue from direct sales of its custom AI chips, called Tensor Processing Units, in the quarter ended June, while Amazon has also seen growing adoption of its processors, including its Trainium chips.
Microsoft has been in talks with chipmaker TSMC to secure manufacturing capacity for more than 300,000 units of the chip for delivery in 2027, according to the report. It is also looking to significantly ramp up production and persuade major cloud customers such as Anthropic to adopt the chip.
Microsoft ultimately aims to secure capacity for more than 1 million Maia 300 chips, though component supplies and ongoing capacity negotiations with TSMC could constrain its plans, according to the report.
It unveiled its second-generation Maia 200 in January, built by TSMC using 3-nanometer technology.
Microsoft packed the chip with a significant amount of SRAM, a type of memory that can provide speed advantages for AI systems handling large numbers of user requests.
Nigeria Not Making Progress in Fiscal Transparency –US
NCAA to Introduce RFID Technology to Tackle Missing Luggages
SEC Directs Operators to Subscribe to NigSac Alerts, Freeze Terrorists-Linked Funds
Davido Bets $1m in Hit-for-Hit Battle with Colleagues
GSMA Industry Services Unveils Circularity Services to Help Operators Reduce E-Waste and Unlock Value
EFCC Busts NIS Visa Overstay Racket, Uncovers N700m in an Account
Fact-Check: Elon Musk’s “Tesla Pi Phone” is Internet Rumor
NBC Tasks Broadcasting Stations over 2028 DSO Global Deadline
NBC Scraps Annual Digital Access Fee on DSO
Glo Sponsored African Voices to Feature Netflix’s “The Polygamist” Stars
News2 days agoMoove Achieves Unicorn Status With $250m Funding
Telecom2 days agoMTN Nigeria Clocks 25, Connects over 90m People
E-Financial2 days agoFG Suspends NAICOM’s N680m Insurance Recapitalisation Fees
Broadcasting2 days agoAffordable, Flexible Streaming Platforms May Kill PAYtv – Report
Telecom2 days agoSubscribers to Seek Legal Redress if Poor Quality of Service Continue in September
E-Business2 days agoMicrosoft to Unveil Next-generation AI Chip in September
E-Financial2 days agoSEC Moves to Recover Unclaimed Dividends, Inherited Investments Nationwide
Telecom2 days agoipNX Collaborates with ICT Stakeholders on the Future of Fibre-to-the-Home in Nigeria @ ATCON Forum