IDC Research Reveals How Smartphones and Tablets Change Document Solutions

Printing, scanning and document management are in the midst of profound and significant changes, due to the prevalence of smartphones and tablets. New global research from International Data Corporation (IDC) reveals that the mobile option for document solutions continues to grow due to the trend of companies adopting mobile technology. Large and medium companies are leading the change, accounting for 54% of smartphone and/or tablet users. Additionally, six vertical markets stand out as having a statistically higher percentage of smartphone and tablet users: Information Technology, Wholesale Trade, Banking, Life Sciences, Resource Industries, and Securities.

Angèle Boyd, Group Vice President and General Manager, IDC Document Solutions said: “The business value for smartphone/tablet printing is enormously clear, and yet support for this is shockingly lacking in 2015. This is a huge missed productivity opportunity for both businesses and print providers,”

Feedbacks show that 15% of users saw a greater business value when comparing with PC printing, while 75% of users saw no big difference. The top four benefits mentioned by 32-57% of respondents were speed of reviewing documents, customer satisfaction, the number of transactions processed, and the number of new customers brought on board. Only 56% of users were satisfied.

Additional findings from IDC’s research include the following:

Smartphone and tablet users prefer to read documents on a PC rather than in print, but they prefer to read documents in print rather than on a smartphone or tablet (likely due to screen size). Indeed, they have a greater tendency to print from their PC than non-users.

Survey respondents expect their share of prints from smartphones and tablets to increase from 20-21% today to 28-30% in three years.

IDC’s mobile print forecast for the six countries is a huge bright spot with double-digit growth compared to flat declining growth for the rest of the print market.

Cloud file services and smartphone/tablet camera use have the highest usage rates amongst document solutions tested.

Top scan drivers in the study include the company scanning more documents, cost to store electronically is lower than print cost, security related to documents, green/sustainable environment, smartphone information access anywhere/anytime, and tablet information access anywhere/anytime.

Smartphone and/or tablet users make significant use of the camera on their device for document capture.

Smartphone/tablet users are more likely than non-users to scan a wide range of document types, especially accounting, financial, legal, education, marketing/customer communications, and sales documents.

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