This will go hand-in-hand with an expanding mobile workforce, which will go up from 1.45 billion in 2016 to 1.87 billion in 2022.

“Mobile access to applications is becoming more critical in regions such as Asia Pacific, with large and growing mobile workforces”, said Andrew Brown, executive director of enterprise research at Strategy Analytics.

The expansion of 4G and the near ubiquity of WiFi networks has helped make access to business apps easier, the study said, as have enterprise mobile app stores. What’s more, companies are rolling out new business apps to help deal with the changing expectations of consumers and employers.

New opportunities for app development and deployments are also growing, thanks to cloud services and the emergence of data-as-a-service.

As for which app categories are doing well, collaboration/productivity ones such as corporate email, messaging and conferencing have the highest mobile use overall among mobile workers.

The customer relationship management category has the second highest use overall among mobile workers, especially those focused on sales and field service activities.

However, enterprise resource planning apps have the lowest use, because they are primarily relevant to only those workers who are centered in corporate headquarters and other fixed locations, Strategy Analytics said.

A Juniper Research study from September revealed that revenue from enterprise augmented reality apps will reach $5.7 billion by 2021, increasing tenfold from around $515 million in 2016.

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