Type of Article: MacTech Blog

Retailers are failing to meet consumer demand for increased convenience while shopping with mobile devices, according to new research from Accenture, which conducted two pieces of research: the Accenture Adaptive Retail report, which surveyed more than 10,000 consumers across 13 countries; and a separate benchmarking study that evaluated a global sample of 162 retailers in 10 countries across multiple industries. 

Gartner, Inc. (www.gartner.com) forecasts that 274.6 million wearable electronic devices will be sold worldwide in 2016, an increase of 18.4% from 232.0 million units in 2015.

Sales of wearable electronic devices will generate revenue of $28.7 billion in 2016. Of that, $11.5 billion will be from smartwatches.

A new report from IDC (www.idc.com) examining the results of the “2015–2016 Healthcare Provider Technology Spend Survey” reveals that while 40% of providers reported their IT budgets are still growing, only 25% of providers with growing budgets attribute the growth to electronic health records (EHR), providing evidence that the post-EHR era is upon us as providers turn to optimizing the business for accountable care, adding analytics and care management, and away from massive enterprise EHR projects.

The cloud email market is still in the early stages of adoption with 13% of identified publicly listed companies globally using one of the two main cloud email vendors, according to Gartner, Inc. (www.gartner.com).

A recent study by the research group found that 8.5 percent of public companies in the sample use cloud email from Microsoft’s Office 365 service, while 4.7% use Google Apps for Work. The remaining 87% of companies surveyed have on-premises, hybrid, hosted or private cloud email managed by smaller vendors. 

The global connected device market is set to reach $6.2 million by 2020, growing at a compound annual growth rate of over 10%, according to new data from the Technavio (www.technavio.com) research group.

In 2015, the Americas was the largest market for connected devices, accounting for almost 46% of the overall market share. Technavio’s report states that rapid advances in technology and changing consumer preferences regarding the use of electronic devices are the main factors contributing to market growth in this region.