Volatility has been an apt adjective to describe energy company interest in smartphones. The market was trending down, shot up, and then plummeted since the pandemic. Healthy growth is expected at the close of this year and into 2024 before sales reach a mature market phase in 2024.
Smartphones became the rage in 2007 when Apple introduced the first iPhone. Initially, sales increased at an unprecedented pace. With billions of users worldwide, growth rates were trending down before the pandemic.
The Pandemic’s Unprecedented Impact on Mobile Devices
However, that event brought a dramatic change in how energy companies operated. With social distancing rules in place, employees moved out from corporate offices and worked at home. They needed new devices to do their job, so mobile device sales skyrocketed.
Once the pandemic waned, sales dropped significantly but now are on the rebound. Worldwide smartphone shipments are forecast to see 7.3% year-over-year growth in the fourth quarter of 2023, according to International Data Corp. The market recovery will continue in 2024 with 3.8% growth expected. Expected next is low single-digit growth, a five-year compound annual growth rate of 1.4% through 2027
What do the changes mean to utility companies? Planning becomes simpler. The volatility that has been present in the past few years will give way to small, steady growth. The shipment problems of the last few years ebbed and projections have become simpler. Â
Energy companies need mobile devices to support remote workers. Smartphones have been widely adopted, but their use has waxed and waned, making planning challenging. The next few years seem less volatile, meaning they spend more time deploying these systems and less figuring out what the market will do next.
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