5 Technology Trends for Warehouse Mobile Devices in 2026 Enabling Mobile Devices to Work Better Every Day.

As Zebra rolls out its refreshed brand, I realize how privileged our role is as Independent Software Vendors in applying this new messaging around mobile devices. Traditionally, mobile devices are adopted in the warehouse to access and capture business information on the floor of operations. However, most innovations are left to the warehouse management system (WMS) vendor to recommend.

This habit conditions the adoption of newer technologies to the time when upgrading to a newer version of the WMS becomes viable, either financially or technically. Not anymore. We are now ready for a new mindset, one that encourages enterprises to look at mobile devices as tools for continuous improvement.

Equipped with the right software, mobile devices can embrace best practices and new technologies without waiting for upgrades in the WMS. What follows is a small sample of how mobile devices drive continuous improvement initiatives around five technologies trending in the warehouse today, throughout 2026 and beyond.

RFID

RFID is booming across all industries as tag prices become more accessible. Zebra goes one step further by providing technical resources that take care of all the heavy lifting around the handling of RFID data sets and the configuration of the readers. Case in point is DataWedge 15.0, an application that obtains and filters the RFID data from mobile readers like the MC33XR or the recently launched TC22R. By combining DataWedge 15.0 with an intelligent browser or terminal emulator, enterprises can feed RFID data sets into their existing applications, such as cycle counting, without writing one single line of code. Georgia SoftWorks, a Zebra ISV partner, produces one such intelligent client, called GSW ConnectBot. Through a combination of screen recognition and injection of predefined JavaScript code, GSW ConnectBot eliminates the time and cost barriers of adopting RFID technology with mobile readers.

GS1 Barcodes

GS1 Standards provide a common language to identify, capture, and share information the same way all over the world. The adoption of GS1 barcodes is an irreversible trend that impacts the identification of products across all industries, from manufacturing to retail, from healthcare to food processing. GS1 barcodes help identify a product with loads of data regarding physical properties, dates, places of origin and destination, shipment, manufacturing, and more.

Capturing GS1 barcodes will allow businesses to comply with regulatory and industry traceability requirements, while at the same time, significantly reducing the lapse of data capturing and eliminating manual data entry errors. Mobile applications do not need any modification other than to be run on an intelligent browser or telnet client, to start capturing all available information in GS1 barcodes.

To see an example, fire up your Zebra Designer app and create any GS1 barcode. Then, point your Zebra device to this GS1 demo page and follow the instructions there. The GS1 data will appear in front of you.

Voice Recognition

Adding voice recognition to a mobile device allows for eyes-up, hands-free operations, which in turn means a larger volume of goods processed per worker, and a safer environment for everyone walking and driving around the warehouse. Many voice solutions claim to run on Android devices. However, the trend for 2026 is adopting a voice solution that enhances the existing WMS workflows, not separate ones disconnected from the rest of the operation.

AccuSpeechMobile, a Zebra ISV partner, accomplishes this goal by integrating its voice recognition technology into Georgia SoftWorks’ universal Android client. This device-based approach enables very interesting multi-modal data capture use cases. Think, for example, of an all-touch device, such as the TC53 mobile computer, mounted on the arm of a worker, scanner facing forward. Our example’s workflow is completely voice-enabled, meaning that the worker is guided by voice to each location, instructed by voice to pick X quantities, and so on.

However, capturing GS1 data is better accomplished by scanner than by voice. So, when necessary, the worker lifts his arm, points to the barcode, and says “scan”. The voice command turns on the integrated scanner and captures the barcode data, allowing the worker to execute the task hands-free from end-to-end, never unmounting the device from the arm, without requiring a ring scanner. Voice recognition enables non-stop productivity unattainable through any other means.

Cloud Applications

Another irreversible trend, as WMS vendors continue to move their applications to the Cloud, is the migration of the mobile device interface away from telnet and SSH into Web. As enterprises add mobile devices during this transition, they will need a telnet interface to access the on-premises WMS while, at the same time, they will need a web browser to test the WMS on the Cloud.

Rather than having – and paying for – two separate clients to connect to each environment, partners can recommend Georgia SoftWorks’ universal Android client, which supports all necessary protocols in one single perpetual license. A universal client eliminates duplicate costs, and it also facilitates user training and device provisioning.

Provisioning leads me to the subject of Mobile Device Management (MDM) platforms. Starting with Android 11, MDM platforms no longer have access to applications’ private storage, which limits their ability to deploy configuration changes to most applications out there. Georgia SoftWorks solved this problem by allowing the configuration of GSW ConnectBot through a shared storage folder.

HTML

For all those WMS systems out there still running on legacy green screens, HyperText Markup Language (HTML) provides an unexpected modernization engine filled with enhancements. The enhancements do not come from cosmetic changes. The magic of an HTML-friendly telnet client lies in its ability to inject JavaScrpit code in the backplane of a WMS session. Before HTML, telnet clients were shut off from the outside world. Yet, there are plenty of situations in the warehouse where data is still captuured outside the WMS realm, forcing the workers to transcribe the information in time-consuming and error-prone processes.

An HTML-ready terminal emulator, such as GSW ConnectBot, can retrieve data from an outside source and feed it into the appropriate fields to a WMS application, or vice versa. Because GSW ConnectBot integrates  both web and ssh/telnet session in the same client, data can even be passed back and forth between different sessions, regardless of the protocol used to connect each one. Of course, graphical elements can also be added to a green screen for productivity reasons, not cosmetical. Think of a screen where the input values are always some few constant options. With HTML it’s easy to add a scroll-down menu with such predefined input options. Entering data by tapping on a scroll-down menu is a lot faster than typing repetitive text each time the worker navigates though this screen.

Conclusion

Warehouse modernization does not require heavy investments. As most companies base their warehouse operations on mobile devices, it makes sense to prioritize technological initiatives that enhance the operation of existing infrastructure, in incremental steps, in the least intrusive fashion possible.

In this blog post, I have described initiatives that can be gradually implemented by intelligent connectivity software in the mobile devices, without imposing any changes whatsoever to the existing WMS application. Examples of such initiatives are picture-taking in the receiving process, feeding RFID data directly into WMS systems, capturing GS1 barcodes, and operating devices by voice. Deploying Georgia SoftWorks universal connectivity client in the Zebra devices enables all these enhancements in both telnet and web connections in one single perpetual license.

To see live demos of all these initiatives, visit Mobilis in the Zebra’s Sales Kick Off and Channel Partner Summit, taking place in January 2026 in Orlando, Florida, or visit the Zebra’s ISV Partner Locator.