Mobile Workforce: Cross-Generational Technology Gap Is A Myth

The cross-generational tech chasm in the workplace is a myth as overall mobile worker preferences and behavioral characteristics across age groups and geographies are similar, a mobile workforce report finds. In fact, the median age of a mobile employee is somewhere around 46.

The report, which drew from the experiences of more than 1,100 mobile employees, found that personal smartphone liability played a much bigger factor on device usage than age.

The mobile employee survey also uncovered:

--  iPhone and Android will lead the smartphone market by 2012 among the mobile workforce.
--  Globally, smartphone penetration among mobile employees outpaced the consumer market, with 69 percent now using those devices for work.
--  The laptop is becoming the new desktop as the smartphone and tablet replace the old laptop. Over a third of mobile employees (37 percent) believe that a mobile device will usurp the laptop for general business purposes in 2011, and 27 percent believe it will be an iPad or other tablet.
--  34 percent of mobile employees do not use their smartphones for work if they are footing the bill -- having a direct and negative impact on their productivity.
--  22 percent of mobile employees breach corporate policy using an unmanaged smartphone for work when their companies have a stricter smartphone policy in place.

Comment from JP Finnell, enterprise analyst at GigaOM Pro: The iPass research findings confirm the demand to connect personally-owned Apple IOS and Android devices to the corporate network is not limited to a specific age group. The MWC data surfaces that the underlying security risks are still a threat and need to be mitigated. This presents an opportunity for corporate IT to jointly develop enterprise mobility policies that leverage enterprise functionality in recent releases of IOS and Android with the capabilities of third-party enterprise mobility service providers.

Comment from Steven Wastie, senior vice president marketing and product management at iPass: Today nearly a third of people use an unmanaged smartphone for work. Unmanaged smartphones are a significant risk to enterprises. Twenty percent of these mobile employees have experienced a relevant security issue with their smartphone containing business data lost, stolen, infected or hacked.

About the report: The iPass Mobile Workforce Report is published quarterly and based on two sources, more than 1,100 survey responses from mobile enterprise employees between October 10 and October 31, 2010 (48 percent from North  America, 37 percent from Europe and 12 percent from Asia Pac); enterprise mobile broadband usage data collected by iPass across its user base from July 1 through August 30, 2010.

Contact: http://www.iPass.com