Enterprise to drive BYOD growth

The number of employees using their personal devices in the workplace is set to increase dramatically, according to analyst TechMarketView (TMV).

The firm claims that, at the end of last year, five million UK employees had joined the "bring your own device" (BYOD) bandwagon.

TMV predicts this will to rise to 9.5 million by 2016, with large businesses with 500 or more employees leading the way.

The UK software and IT services (SITS) market will also benefit from the trend, with TMV claiming that BYOD-related spend will hit 675m in 2016.

According to TMV's "Bring Your Own Technology: Opportunities and threats from disruption" report, two groups of workers are driving the BYOD trend: senior managers and younger employees.

The report also claims, as increasing numbers of workers use their own devices in the workplace, the onus for support will shift away from IT departments.

Phil Coding, research director at TMV, said employees that take advantage of BYOD schemes are often more productive.

"Employees are more satisfied using the tools they prefer, finance no longer has to bear the cost of company-owned devices and IT can use it as the driver to move to more modern technologies, such as the cloud," he said.

However, the trend could spell bad news for hardware and IT support suppliers, warned Coding.

"Regardless of the potential opportunity on offer for SITS suppliers to provide advice and auditing as businesses transition to BYOD, the threat to desktop and mobile hardware suppliers is undeniable and suppliers need to find new business models and revenue drivers to counter this," he added.