Tableau Your Data!, 2nd Edition

Chapter 9 Designing for Mobile

Just as the personal computer replaced the mainframe and the laptop replaced the personal computer, even more mobile devices will eventually replace the laptop. This trend toward smaller and more powerful devices means more dashboards and visualizations will be consumed on mobile devices.

Leading technology research firms Gartner and International Data Corporation have reported on an explosion of growth in mobile devices—cell phones, and more recently tablet devices. In November 2012, Gartner reported that “821 million smart devices will be purchased worldwide in 2012; sales to rise to 1.2 billion in 2013.”¹

Gartner also forecasts tablet purchases by businesses will more than triple from 13 million units in 2012 to over 53 million units in 2016. And they think tools such as Tableau will play an increasing role in the production of mobile applications: “By 2018 more than half of all B2E mobile apps will be create by enterprise business analysts using codeless tools.”²

Clearly business use of tablets is expanding rapidly; analysts and analytical tools will be a large component of that adoption.

This trend is echoed in the Business Information (BI) world with increasing numbers of people using mobile devices (tablets and smartphones) to consume data. Mobile deployment has become a key component of most successful Tableau implementations. The next section describes the physics of mobile data consumption, security considerations, usage patterns, and ...