Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2026. Read them in this 18th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
By DJ Oreb, President of Managed Services at DMI
The past year has been full of headlines about artificial intelligence, automation, and even quantum computing.
Those technologies will shape the future, but for most organizations, the biggest day-to-day impact will come from something far more immediate: the mobile and edge devices your people rely on every shift. Phones, tablets, rugged handhelds, wearables, sensors, and headsets now sit at the center of how work gets done.
That’s why 2026 is shaping up to be a pivotal year for enterprise mobility and managed mobility services (MMS). Mobile is becoming the backbone of the modern workplace and a core part of the customer experience.
Here are four key shifts that will define 2026 and what they mean for your mobile strategy.
“Mobile” expands to the edge (and beyond)
For years, enterprise mobility programs focused on familiar endpoints: smartphones, tablets, and laptops. In 2026, that narrow perimeter will be gone.
Mobile now includes a fast-growing universe of edge and IoT devices that sit directly in the flow of operations.
- Rugged handhelds on loading docks.
- Sensors monitoring temperature, fleet status, and equipment health.
- Clinical devices tracking vitals across hospital floors and remote care settings.
This expansion brings real value and new risk. Every device adds an access point for cyber threats, a compliance consideration, and a potential failure that can disrupt work at the worst moment. That’s why leading organizations are pulling edge and IoT devices into a single, intentional mobility strategy rather than managing them off to the side.
A unified approach includes standardized provisioning, continuous monitoring, and clear lifecycle management. In practice, it means every connected device joins the same management foundation and follows the same process from deployment through retirement.
The bigger shift is strategic. Enterprise mobility is evolving into the operating system for everything that connects at the edge. If a device touches your network, your data, or your customers, it belongs inside your mobility program.
AR and VR move from training to guided work
Most organizations today use AR and VR for training simulations, onboarding, and occasional demonstrations. In 2026, AR and mixed reality will begin moving into everyday workflows.
Technicians will see step-by-step overlays while inspecting equipment. Specialists in major hospitals will guide procedures in rural facilities through shared AR views. These guided work scenarios improve accuracy, shorten time on task, and expand access to expertise.
We’re heading toward targeted, repeatable use cases that solve real problems in the field. And that changes how organizations think about AR devices. Headsets can’t live outside the mobility program as novelty hardware. They need to be enrolled, configured, patched, governed, and retired like any other endpoint. Policies around recording, data capture, bandwidth, and access also become part of normal operations.
The organizations that succeed with AR will be the ones with a managed mobility foundation that makes AR scalable, secure, and trustworthy.
Wearables become standard for frontline work
Wearables have been trapped in pilot mode for years. In 2026, they will start becoming standard issue in hospitals, warehouses, airports, and field service. When people need to focus on the task in front of them, hands-free devices are a natural fit.
Drivers will confirm deliveries and receive updates without juggling multiple devices. Flight attendants will see real-time alerts on wrist devices instead of shared terminals. Paramedics will receive critical updates in chaotic environments.
The worker experience should be as simple as unboxing a new phone. But that only happens when organizations treat wearables as first-class endpoints. MMS plays an essential role by reconciling inventory across all devices, monitoring health and compliance, applying policies, and automating fixes. When issues require human attention, MMS routes them to the right place without delay.
Organizations that succeed with wearables will fold new devices into a disciplined mobility framework that keeps them secure, supportable, and always ready for the next shift.
AI becomes the engine of mobile operations
With more mobile and edge devices in play, AI will become the quiet engine that keeps everything running. Companies will embed it into support, security, and device health.
In 2026, AI will move from early pilot to baseline expectation. Self-healing workflows will resolve common issues automatically. Predictive alerts will flag devices likely to fail or drop offline. Intelligent routing will determine when automation can handle an issue and when human support is required.
For service desks and MMS teams, AI will change the scorecard. It will expand to include how much work automation handled and how much time the business got back. As user experience becomes the deciding factor for device adoption, AI will become the difference between innovation that sticks and stalls.
Turning mobility into a managed service
Mobile and edge devices now shape how businesses operate and what customers expect. That means mobility investments can’t be one-off projects. They need to sit on top of a deliberate strategy that treats mobility as a managed service.
A strong MMS model delivers real advantages.
- It creates cost transparency by providing a single view of inventory and eliminating unused devices.
- It improves worker and customer experience through faster onboarding and fewer disruptions.
- It strengthens security and compliance by applying consistent policies across all device types.
- It increases flexibility by making it easier to introduce new device categories without rebuilding processes.
For organizations with distributed teams and frontline workers, MMS turns mobile complexity into a dependable service the business can trust.
As you look ahead to 2026, it’s worth asking a few questions.
- Does your current mobility strategy account for edge devices, wearables, AR, and AI-driven operations?
- Do you have a single MMS framework that can support future growth?
- Are you measuring tickets or measuring time and value returned to the people doing the work?
If the answer is “not yet,” that’s your opportunity. In 2026, the organizations that move with confidence won’t be the ones chasing every new trend. They’ll be the ones with a strong, AI-enabled mobility foundation that everything else can grow on.
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