I wish people on HN would use less unexplained acronyms.
Thanks for this. It summarizes succinctly my uneasy observations of large numbers of mobile users.
For desktop power users, however, the mobile is somewhat an extension of their desktop.
My MacBook is my work life. My phone is super important to me, but given some devil's choice, I'd go back to a StarTac before giving up the laptop!
My wife is the opposite. For her, in both professional and personal contexts, the computer is more like a screwdriver -- just another tool. The phone is where the computing happens, and you'd have to pry it out of her cold dead fingers.
Right now it's a split of app and desktop. If you have the leverage on the OEMs, teradici clients are cheapest, but they are at the edge of not having sufficient lifespan for us. There are newer Intel devices that are getting close that we're using on a trial basis.
I can't get into specific dollars, but all-in the cost for VDI delivery is about 10% more, and we end up in the black with a longer client device cycle (which basically skips a rollout cycle) and dropping field service contracts -- FedEx is cheaper than a tech.
We're big enough that the component makers are willing to discount parts like CPUs for us though. Our pricing is generally 18 months cheaper than the market.
The reality is that computers are still computers. Mobile is the new TV.
I run EUC in a large diversified enterprise. We have about 0.05% pure mobile users, mostly iPad based. That is growing quickly, but probably won't exceed 3% in the next 5 years based on the current pipeline. There are exceptions, iirc Comcast has 50k iPads. Other field service orgs are similar.
Server based computing is a thing though. There's alot of BYOD and thin clients in our future. Thin clients are approaching $100 and going lower. VDI/Citrix has a positive ROI for me.
I think the future looks more like Issac Asimov's multivac.