Cross Channel: Sales Predictions & Smartphone VR Challenges

Welcome to Cross Channel, a weekly round up of the most pertinent stories from our sister site ChannelBiz, where you can find out all the latest developments, views and strategies from the world of the channel.

Smartphone VR faces challenges

There will be nearly 60 million smartphone virtual reality (VR) headsets shipped in 2021, an increase of around 240 percent on an expected 16.8 million this year. However the lower price of these devices means they will only account for seven percent of all hardware revenue.

And while millions of consumers are already using VR on smartphone-based devices like Google Cardboard and Samsung Gear VR, developers need to go beyond the simple “experience-based” apps currently available and offer “compelling content” to keep users engaged, said Juniper, which did the research.

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Businesses are ‘refreshing’ networks sooner

Enterprises are refreshing their network equipment earlier in its lifecycle in a move to embrace workplace mobility, the Internet of Things and software-defined networking strategies. But despite the higher refresh rate, networks are getting less secure, largely due to neglected patching.

These are some of the findings from the annual Network Barometer Report published by IT services firm Dimension Data. The report was compiled from data gathered from 300,000 service incidents logged for client networks that Dimension Data supports.

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Most resellers will look to hardware in 2020

Two thirds of channel firms are “confident” that hardware will continue to make up an important part of their revenue streams in 2020, according to research commissioned by inventory-as-a-service firm Agilitas.

When asked which technologies will experience the greatest sales growth by 2020, respondents said artificial intelligence (25 percent), 3D printing (20 percent), Internet of Things (18 percent) and DevOps (16 percent).

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IBM builds cloud business with Travis Perkins deal

IBM is helping building merchant Travis Perkins move key business processes into the cloud, improve data quality and help reach customers through every channel.

Travis Perkins, which is a group of 21 businesses, is using IBM Business Process Manager (iBPM) on Cloud via an IBM Cloud data centre in London to better manage multiple data governance processes for data collection, coordination and approvals.

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