On May 23rd we sent out a one question survey asking folks what type of mobile phone they use. The intention of the survey was to see what business men and woman were using for their mobile device. Thank you to everyone who responded. There were some interesting results which we will get to in a second. Ninety-two people responded to the survey which provided a pretty good sampling size.

The Surprises

What was the most surprising result of all? 13% of respondents do not have smartphones. In this age of constant communication it is significant to know that a portion of the workforce is possibly ‘out of the loop’ when out of the office, at least as far as electronic communications are concerned (email, document access, etc.). The other tidbit was that only two people reported having separate phones for business and personal use. For a business owner this means that control of your internal digital communications is not stored on devices you control. What happens to your confidential business communications (e.g. email) when a personal mobile device goes missing? For an employee, you may not realize that when connecting your phone to your company’s email system you may also be granting your employer permission to remotely lock and/or wipe clean your phone (bye bye personal photos). These are issues for a future article.

[quote]For an employee, you may not realize that when connecting your phone to your company’s email system you may also be granting your employer permission to remotely lock and/or wipe clean your phone. [/quote]

The Winners

Not surprising, the top two phone types were the Apple iPhone (45) and Google Android base phones (27). This backs up up recent market share studies which show Apple controlling between 36-59% of the US mobile phone market (depending on which statistic you read). Android devices also control a large chunk of the mobile arena. Unlike the Apple iPhone various manufactures release Android based devices with different feature sets. Some better than the current iPhone (4S) and some worse.

The Losers

The results of our little survey also were consistent with what is happening in the marketplace. Both Blackberry and Nokia show dramatic little usage. Only 8% of respondents use a Blackberry and none reported phones made by Nokia. These once mighty companies have been left behind as they could not keep up with the technology advancements by other companies. As contracts expire we are seeing businesses dump Blackberries en mass.There was also only one reported Microsoft Windows phone. Microsoft is getting back into the mobile market but expect to see a bigger push when they release their new mobile software at the end of the year (about the same time Windows 8 is released for PCs and tablets)

Conclusion

While the sampling size was small is is interesting to see how employee owned devices are now the new normal for businesses. While the current market share numbers were really no surprise it will be interested to see once the next generation of the Apple phone (iPhone 5, Sept/Oct 2012 release) and Android top level phones( Samsung Galaxy III / HTC One X) go head to head if these numbers will change.

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