Yesterday’s devices weren’t made for today’s demands. The E-commerce world is booming, and warehouses need the most updated, efficient technology to keep up with the expectations of their customers. Since 2010, enterprises have bought more than 15 million mobile units; 99% with a Windows-embedded operating system. By 2020/21, Microsoft will be ending its extended support of Windows Mobile. Switching from outdated Windows technology to Android mobile technology presents a large yet necessary project. Outdated Windows technology is not structured to help warehouses keep pace with current market demands. 
Here are some reasons why outdated Windows operating systems cannot keep pace with current market demands:
- Rising consumer expectations around product availability and delivery times. Delivery times shrinking at a rapid pace, and consumers expect to get what they want, when they want it.
- Significant growth in E-commerce. E-commerce is expected to amass $4.5 trillion in global sales by 2021.
- Recruiting, training, and retaining workers. Warehouses face high turnover, labor shortages, and heavy reliance on temporary workers, translating to the consistent need to train employees.
The smartest decision a warehouse can make is to modernize its mobile technology to keep up with today’s demands.
The Top 6 Reasons to Modernize Your Warehouse With Android Devices
1. Improved UX (User Experience)
- Android mobile devices are ATTE (All-touch terminal emulation).
- Modern UI (User Interface) experience drives business gains: 60% lower error rates, 39% higher typing speeds, and a gain of 15%-20% in productivity.
- Leveraging gestures.
- Larger screens: friendly rendering.
- Portrait/landscape capabilities.
2. Applications & Solutions 
- Increased management and security.
- Cross-platform, OS agnostics app frameworks.
- Incorporation of business analytics.
3. Compatibility & Support
- Android is well-supported in a Microsoft infrastructure.
- Android is the largest developer/application ecosystem in both the consumer and enterprise, mobile O/S space.
- 74% of developers choose Android.
4. Security
- Highly Secure Government & Public Safety Android Adoption.
- Enterprise: Android is the operating system meeting regulatory security certifications in multiple verticals.
- Demonstrated history of incremental security enhancements.
5. Productivity
- Improved training time and adoption.
- Skip retraining by running existing terminal emulation apps right out of the box with ATTE.
- Increased item-level picking: visual, intuitive instructions offered.
- Lightening the load: all-day comfort with ergonomic devices.
6. Users Not Happy with Current Mobile Platforms (Windows)
- Windows mobile platforms reaching end-of-life by 2020/21.
- Cost of supporting and maintaining legacy solutions and applications is increasing.
- Inability to leverage advances in modern mobile devices.
- Tighter alignment of applications with business processes.
- Changing expectations of the incoming workforce.
All-in-all, the safest and smartest choice for a warehouse is to modernize with Android technology. A warehouse can go from sluggish performance, Wi-Fi issues, slow training, security breaches, and discontinued parts to modern technology offering a competitive edge, better recruitment and retention, rapid training, faster workflows, tighter security, and much more.
As a warehouse, you need to keep up with the growing demands of E-commerce because market pressures are escalating. Change is inevitable, and the sooner you modernize your warehouse with Android, the sooner you will capitalize on the advantages.