Steven Sinofsky predicts tablet resurgence, big enterprise challenges in 2015; sees 4K, beacons, payments, and more as technologies to watch
Forecast: Workplace Trends, Choices and Technologies for 2015 — What's in store for 2015 when it comes to technology advances in the workplace?
Context & Ripple Effects
Steven Sinofsky, writing from his post-Microsoft perch, framed 2015 around two calls: that tablets would resurge and that enterprise IT faced its biggest challenges ahead — with 4K, beacons, and payments flagged as the technologies to watch. The forecast landed just before CES 2015 coverage centered on wearables and Intel Broadwell devices, the hardware wave vendors would use to make those pitches.
The scorecard arrived mid-year: Forrester found tablet sales had plateaued but saw a future specifically in business — effectively splitting Sinofsky's call into a miss on consumer volumes and a partial hit on the workplace thesis he emphasized. By 2018, Microsoft's hardware event showed a coherent PC-and-tablet lineup as Apple stumbled, suggesting the form factor survived by folding into the PC rather than displacing it.
First-order effects
- Enterprise IT buyers got a credible ex-Windows-chief endorsement for treating tablets as workplace infrastructure, not consumer toys — the exact framing Forrester's business-focused findings later reinforced.
Second-order effects
- The plateau-yes-but-business-future split forced device makers to reposition tablets toward enterprise deployments and detachable designs, a shift visible in Microsoft's later hardware positioning.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, workplace-device forecasts get judged on enterprise adoption curves rather than consumer unit sales — pushing analysts and vendors alike to treat tablets as part of a converging PC-tablet continuum.
The trend: Annual workplace-tech forecasts increasingly live or die on enterprise adoption rather than consumer hype cycles, with tablets surviving as business tools after their consumer boom flattened.