Mobile device adoption in the workplace is not yet mature, found a recent survey from Gartner. Although 80 per cent 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 survey findings are based on the 2016 Gartner Personal Technologies Study, which was conducted from June to August 2016 among 9,592 respondents in the US, UK and Australia.
Thirty-six percent of workers received laptops, including convertible laptops. Adding desktops and laptops (including convertible laptops) together, 75 percent of workers will receive at least one PC-type device in mature countries.
In contrast to the high numbers of corporate issued PCs in the workplace, relatively few workers receive mobile devices. The majority of smartphones used in the workplace are personally owned devices - only 23 percent of employees surveyed are given corporate-issued smartphones.
"The low adoption of corporate issued mobile devices underlines the fact that large numbers of personally owned mobile devices are used in the workplace," said Mikako Kitagawa, principal research analyst at Gartner. "In fact, more than half of employees who used smartphones at work rely solely on their personally owned smartphones."
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," said Kitagawa. "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."ate-issued smartphones and phablets."