Mobile device adoption in the workplace is not yet mature, states a recent survey from Gartner. Although 80 percent of workers surveyed received one or more corporate-issued devices, desktops are still the most popular corporate device among businesses, with more than half of workers receiving corporate-issued desktop PCs.
The study also reveals that 36 percent of workers received laptops, including convertible laptops. Adoption of convertible laptops as a corporate issued device is still very low, but has been gradually increasing. In contrast to the high numbers of corporate issued PCs in the workplace, relatively few workers receive mobile devices.
“The low adoption of corporate issued mobile devices underlines the fact that large numbers of personally owned mobile devices are used in the workplace. In fact, more than half of employees who used smartphones at work rely solely on their personally owned smartphones,” said Mikako Kitagawa, Principal Research Analyst at Gartner.
The usage rate of personally owned tablets lags behind that of personally owned smartphones. Only 21 percent of employees use tablets — regardless of whether they are corporate issued or personally owned.
“In the era of mobility, it comes as something of a surprise that corporate usage of smartphones and tablets is not as high as PCs, even when the use of personally owned devices is taken into account. While it’s true that the cost of providing mobile devices can quickly escalate, proper usage of mobile devices can increase productivity, which can easily justify the extra costs,” added Ms Kitagawa.
Usage of personally owned devices in the workplace is nothing new, but the survey results confirm that this trend has become a new workplace standard. “Two-thirds of survey respondents said that they use a personally owned device or devices for work. Smartphones and phablets are the most popular personally owned devices used for work, with 39 percent of employees using them, compared with just 10 percent who are only using corporate-issued smartphones and phablets,” said Ms Kitagawa.
The survey findings were based on the 2016 Gartner Personal Technologies Study, which was conducted from June to August 2016 among 9,592 respondents.
