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Research: Mobile working on the increase

Rhetorik ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 25 Sep 2007 09:59 BST

Use of mobile devices by business function
Senior managers are clearly the main users of mobile devices, with nearly 80 percent of the research base reporting deployment at this level. This usage reflects the variety of needs and mobility requirements for the senior management function, as well as the prestige factor of having the "latest technology".

Other key users are the core mobile functions of sales and service engineers. Often "road warriers", these users require good communications capability to increase their effectiveness away from the office.

Logistics and delivery personnel also have a strong mobile need, but also important are a variety of other functional users in different types of organisation.

Figure 6: Use of mobile devices by key business function

Q5 What key business functions/departments are users of these mobile devices (excluding users of mobile phones with no further capability)? (multiple response)
Base: All respondents; Total: 371
Source: Rhetorik 2007

Some user perceptions of mobile devices
When presented with a number of statements regarding the use of mobile devices, and asked to rate their agreement, there was a strong consensus from respondents on a number of issues:

The functionality on handheld mobile devices is not yet up to that of a laptop
Battery life is perceived as an issue for both handheld devices and laptops
Cost of airtime is a limiting factor in the use of mobile handheld multifunction devices

Less significant were limits to the use of multifunction handheld devices due to lack of available bandwidth. This is perhaps due to the increasing availability of higher bandwidth network technologies today. Costs of airtime were seen as more of an issue for small organisations, where almost half were in strong agreement on it limiting handheld use.

Figure 7: Mobile devices — some perceptions in use

Q9 How far would you agree with each of the following statements? Please rate each statement on a scale of one to five, where one is "strongly agree" and five is "strongly disagree".
Base: All respondents; Total: 371
Source: Rhetorik 2007

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