IDC Opinion

In 2023, rugged tablets and PCs are mission-critical business tools designed to serve specific enterprise use cases where high-performance computing power and reliability are paramount. Rugged devices offer all the benefits of consumer-grade tablets and PCs, with increased durability and enterprise-specific features such as physical keyboards, detachable keyboards, nonstandard serial ports, extra bright screens, high-capacity user-swappable batteries, interchangeable internal components, and extra loudspeakers. Rugged tablets and PCs are primarily targeted for frontline workers in manufacturing, public safety, utilities, healthcare, government, and field services. They allow workers to interact with larger volumes of visual data with greater precision than handheld mobile devices and perform better at delivering a desktop user experience for Windows applications and embedded systems.

Rugged Benefits

In 2022, 44% of U.S. enterprise organizations reported they deploy rugged PCs, with another 38% reporting they deploy rugged tablets and handheld devices. Without question, the primary reason businesses choose to deploy rugged devices is to help prevent damage to the hardware in challenging work environments. Rugged devices are often designed with extremely tough exterior shells, shatter resistant screens, and protected internal components to help protect the device from accidental drops, moisture, dust, and electrostatic discharge. Most rugged devices meet a minimum IP65 (ingress protection) rating, and many more also meet MIL-STD-810 (military standard) defense requirements. Essentially, enterprise-grade rugged devices are built tough and are meant to see heavy repeated use in harsh environments. 

Rugged devices also can include features and components that make them especially well-suited for enterprise use cases, such as smart card readers, nonstandard serial ports, multiple connectivity options, user-swappable batteries, and a range of support accessories and docking stations that increase the usefulness of the device in a specific workflow. While consumer tablets and PCs are incredibly capable and sophisticated pieces of technology, they are not designed for the types of enterprise use cases or environments rugged devices have been purpose built for and therefore do not offer the same levels of customization and capability of dedicated rugged devices.

Finally, because of their added durability and enterprise-specific workflows, rugged devices often have much longer deployment life cycles than consumer-grade devices. Since they break less often than consumer devices, these devices can last anywhere in the field from three to five years, and most rugged device manufacturers offer additional extended support services to increase the life of the device beyond five years. While this is obviously convenient for the customer from a logistics and deployment perspective, it also frequently translates directly to an overall lower total cost of ownership (TCO) than consumer devices.

Rugged Challenges

One of the core challenges rugged device manufacturers often face is communicating to potential customers that rugged devices do in fact deliver a lower TCO than consumer-grade devices. Due to their added durability, components, and additional features, rugged devices often have a much higher MSRP than a consumer-grade device, even two times or three times as much depending on the device, especially rugged PCs. As enterprise IT departments are becoming increasingly price conscientious regarding IT investments, the high price tags associated with rugged deployments present a significant obstacle for new customers.

Compounding the issue with the high up-front costs of rugged deployments is consumer-grade devices themselves. The familiarity of consumer-grade devices among business end users and IT departments alike makes them a seemingly obvious solution for enterprise deployments. When combined with their lower initial cost compared with purpose-built rugged devices, they often end up getting selected for suboptimal deployments where a purpose-built rugged device should be deployed. This is somewhat less of a challenge regarding rugged PCs, as they are often deployed in specific field service, defense, or law enforcement scenarios where durability and reliability are absolutely mission-critical requirements. However, it must be noted that the rugged PC market is not wholly immune from the ingress of consumer-grade devices, especially as consumer models can include semi-rugged construction and features at a lower cost of entry. Educating potential customers on the pitfalls of deploying consumer-grade tablets and PCs in rugged scenarios is an ongoing but very important challenge to overcome in the rugged market.

Last, by design, rugged devices address a specific set of key workflows in certain industries, meaning they are not general-purpose devices. Unlike consumer-grade devices, they cannot be marketed and sold to consumers and businesses the same way or at the same volumes as their consumer equivalents. This means that the overall total addressable market (TAM) for rugged devices is generally limited to certain verticals and use cases, presenting a challenge for broader enterprise growth. However, while rugged devices may not see the level of demand of consumer devices in business, the good news is that there is growing demand and opportunity for rugged expansion in frontline worker mobilization.

Future Outlook

Despite challenges, the future of rugged mobility is secure. Rugged devices perform tasks that consumer-grade devices cannot, and they excel in highly specialized enterprise workflows. As more businesses seek to enable larger segments of their workforce, frontline workers present a clear opportunity for growth.

Historically, deskless frontline workers have been slower to benefit from mobile and desktop computing than office-based information workers, but this is changing. Frontline work is often manual in nature, task oriented, and many frontline workers spend most of their day on their feet interacting with customers directly, whereas office-based information workers primarily worked with computers, and through adoption, mobile devices naturally helped augment their primary workflows. In addition, frontline workers are much more likely to use shared workstations when desktop computing is required. However, access to mobile hardware, software, services, and connectivity is becoming increasingly essential to frontline workflows. In fact, in 2022, 42% of non-office-based workers (frontline) in the United States are mobile-dependent workers, meaning they cannot physically complete their assigned tasks or workflows without the aid of a mobile device or mobile connectivity. 

With increased mobilization efforts targeted at frontline workers, rugged deployments will see increased demand, as will expanded rugged use cases. Businesses will continue to require durable, capable, and purpose-built enterprise devices to enable frontline workers in this second wave of digital transformation, and rugged devices will play a crucial role in these efforts.

Tech Buyer Advice

Technology buyers should evaluate rugged tablet and PC offerings with a wholistic view of current and future goals for enabling rugged computing. To that end, the criteria and attributes that are key for IT buyers to consider when evaluating rugged device providers are discussed in the section that follows.

Key Measures for Success

• Total cost of ownership and return on investment (ROI): While rugged devices initially cost more to deploy than consumer-grade devices, in the long run, the TCO is usually lower. Compared with consumer-grade devices, rugged devices are expected to have extended deployment life cycles far beyond two years (as much as five to seven years) and see heavier day-to-day use in challenging environments. Rugged solutions should present a clear ROI over consumer-grade devices for businesses deploying them.
• Defined and business-driven use cases: Rugged solutions should be designed to address specific business-driven use cases, with defined workflows that require the added features and durability that rugged devices provide.
• Device capabilities: While increased durability and ruggedness are a core feature of rugged solutions, the devices should have capabilities on par with modern-day tablets and PCs, as well as additional features that make them suited for rugged deployments such as modular components, user-swappable batteries, brighter screens, louder speakers, flexible connectivity options, varied input methods, user-accessible components, and the ability to be repaired by users in the field.
• Device life-cycle management: In most cases, rugged tablets and PCs are intended to be deployed beyond the traditional two- to three-year refreshment cycles of consumer-grade devices. Vendors that offer customers robust life-cycle management services have competitive advantages over vendors that do not.
• Device support, maintenance, and downtime: Rugged devices are more often than not business- or mission-critical devices. Downtime due to outages, damage, or technical issues translates directly to lost productivity, reduced ROI and, in some cases, a safety risk. It is imperative that vendors in this market have accessible and reliable customer service and support solutions to assist their customers, and this level of customer service and support must be able to match the scale of a given deployment (regional versus global).
• Software, security, and operating system (OS) stability: The ability to maintain a consistent and secure operating environment for users on rugged devices is key. Mission- and business-critical devices must receive timely security updates and OS support over their deployment life cycles. In addition, IT organizations should be given control over when their fleet of rugged devices is updated to ensure application compatibility and workflow continuity. In some cases, rugged devices that update automatically or without the express authorization of the IT organization have the potential to disrupt or break critical business operations.
• Fleet management: The ability for customers to efficiently deploy and manage a fleet of rugged devices and rugged end users is paramount to the success of the deployment. Most rugged tablets and PCs are dedicated corporate-liable devices, and therefore, the ease of management of those assets must be a priority for vendors.

Methodology