Decision makers at telecom operators globally are eager to know the annual spending on mobility solutions by retail and enterprise customers this year.

Since mobility spending will trigger the growth in Capex (capital expenditure), the telecom engineer community can now gear up for better spending on infrastructure that will support the growth in mobility spending by telco customers.

Spending on mobility solutions will grow at 3.2 percent to more than $1.6 trillion in 2018, according to IDC.

Spending on mobility-related hardware, software, and services will be surpassing $1.7 trillion with a five-year CAGR of 2.8 percent.

“The new mobility use cases and technology adoption in enterprises is driving growth in all three facets of the market, from devices to software and services,” said Phil Hochmuth, program director, Enterprise Mobility at IDC.

Mobility services will account for nearly 60 percent of mobility spending and surpassing $1 trillion in 2021.

Mobile connectivity services will deliver more than 90 percent of mobility services spending, IDC said. Enterprise mobility services, which are focused on the planning, implementation, operation, and maintenance and support of mobile strategies, applications, and devices or the final consumption of services through a mobile device, will achieve a five-year CAGR of 15 percent.

Hardware spending will reach nearly $675 billion in 2021. Smartphones will account for roughly 75 percent of all hardware spending.

Notebooks will achieve 1.5 percent CAGR.

Tablets are expected to decline at 1.9 percent CAGR.

Software spending growth will be 14.7 percent CAGR.

Mobile enterprise applications will be growing to $7.1 billion in 2021.

Businesses will also increase their development efforts with mobile application development platforms experiencing a five-year CAGR of 19.5 percent.

All four software segments, including mobile enterprise security and enterprise mobility management, will deliver double-digit five-year CAGRs.

Consumers will provide more than 70 percent of mobility spending with most of this spending – more than $1 trillion per year – going toward mobile connectivity services and smartphones combined.

Consumer spending will slow considerably starting in 2019 when annual growth rates dip below 1 percent, contributing to a five-year CAGR of 1.6 percent.

Professional services will be spending nearly $45 billion, banking $43 billion, manufacturing $38 billion, and retail $32 billion. In all four cases, a majority of the spending will go to mobile connectivity services and devices, primarily smartphones and notebook PCs.

Banking and discrete manufacturing industries will each invest more than $1 billion in mobile enterprise applications and mobile application development platforms in 2018.

“Even smaller scale mobility solutions are expanding from their initial single-function footprint to empower and enable workers across the enterprise,” Jessica Goepfert, program vice president, Customer Insights & Analysis at IDC.