Mobile Technologies In Use

Adoption of wireless local-area networking (WLAN) technology is widespread and seems on the road to ubiquity; more than half of SMBs already use it, though that's still far short of cellular's 85% penetration. WiMax wide area networking, now in use at less than 10% of smaller companies, also holds promise. One lesser-known reason is that WiMax offers business continuity in the event of a failure on the part of standard Internet services. Although smaller companies typically do not create custom “mobile “ applications, increasingly, more packaged applications – and information services – will be pushed out to mobile devices. In the meantime, integration with desktop operating systems is helping to drive interest in Windows as a mobile operating system. The leading mobile operating systems in use are Windows at 80%, followed by Blackberry at 66%, and Palm OS at 37%.

Given the prevalence of cell phones in America, it's easy to assume that nearly every organization uses them. Odds are that many employees of almost any company use them at work on a regular basis. However, the design point of this study is whether the organization itself deploys mobile devices such as cell phones - not whether individuals use their own devices in the course of their work day. Even with that more-restrictive measure, cell phones are deployed by nearly four out of five SMBs. That edges out the three-quarters of smaller companies that deploy wireless laptops. More than two-thirds of companies use Smartphones equipped with voice and data capabilities.
Wireless laptops and Smartphones also top the list of most useful mobile devices. PDAs without voice capabilities, on the other hand, are moving down the list of usage and are cited as a mobile device SMB companies love to hate. A year from now, we expect to see wider deployment of handsets that use wireless Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology. SMBs may initially adopt VoIP phones mostly for wireless campus deployments. The fact that wireless-enabled laptops top Smartphones in perceived usefulness by SMBs is further evidence that neither basic productivity applications nor custom business applications are yet commonly available on Smartphones. The value of PDAs has steadily declined because their functionality has become an intrinsic part of Smartphones, which add the ability to communicate in real-time with voice and data. Eventually, PDAs will go the way of the Day-Timer, as they will be unable to match Smartphones' ability to synchronize calendars in real-time with co-workers or customers, for instance.