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iPass Mobile Workforce Report Finds Strong Adoption of Tablets, Especially iPads, in the Enterprise

Executive Summary

After a year of surveying enterprise workers, we continue to shed light on mobility trends. This quarter’s survey found that smartphones — and now tablets — are playing an increasingly important role in the lives of mobile workers, yet the majority of mobile workers see themselves moving to one über mobile device in the next five years. We also found that mobile workers view carrier networks as slow and are increasingly using Wi-Fi to meet their connectivity needs.

Highlights of this quarter’s study include:

If mobile employees could select only one mobile device, 49 percent selected the smartphone as their device of choice (down from 63 percent in 2010) compared to 27 percent who preferred a laptop (down from 37 percent). But the surprise latecomer was the tablet, with 20 percent of mobile workers selecting a tablet as their one device of choice.
The tablet market is also experiencing phenomenal growth, especially among mobile employees. 65 percent of mobile workers reported that they used a tablet, while 27 percent of those used their tablets for work.
Only 57 percent of mobile workers were satisfied with their mobile operator’s network coverage and just 46 percent were satisfied with their network speed. As a result, 59 percent of mobile workers used Wi-Fi on their smartphones at least one hour per day.
If mobile operators raised prices for data access, 71 percent of mobile workers would choose to go on a data diet. 48 percent would be more selective and 22 percent would limit use to only critical access.
94 percent of mobile workers indicated they would troubleshoot a problem themselves, while 13 percent would not contact their IT help desk at all if they had a technical problem.
There is a generation gap in mobile users, but it is not what you would think. Those 35 and older felt more productive working outside of the office, while those 34 and under felt most productive working in the office.

Download Mobile Workforce Report pdf – March 2011

In this Report

Methodology

This quarter’s iPass Mobile Workforce Report is based on information from two sources:

More than 3,500 responses to an iPass survey of mobile enterprise employees at more than 1,100 enterprises worldwide. The survey was conducted between January 15 and February 4, 2011, and represented employees
across multiple age groups and geographies. The survey respondents were asked about their mobile productivity, work habits, and related experiences.
This quarter’s iPass Mobile Workforce Report also included enterprise mobile broadband usage data collected by iPass across its user base of 625,000 monthly monetized users employed at 3,500 enterprises from October 1 through December 31, 2010.

Figure 1: Location breakdown of iPass survey respondents.

Figure 2: Age breakdown of iPass survey respondents.

iPass Mobile Employee Definition: Any worker using any mobile device (including laptop, netbook, smartphone, cellphone, or tablet) who accesses networks (other than the corporate LAN or WLAN) for work purposes.

Mobilocracy Definition: 1) the mobilocracy is a powerful class of worker who relies on mobile devices for greater productivity; 2) the common worker, esp. as a mobile workforce. Within corporations, the mobilocracy increasingly plays a larger role in IT decisions and directions.