Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2011/11/16/ipass_mobile_stats/

IPhone overtakes BlackBerry in the corporate world

Mobile workers would be 'distraught' without handsets

By Bill Ray

Posted in On-Prem, 16th November 2011 14:23 GMT

Mobile workers are giving up almost an hour every working day in sleep and exercise time, thanks to being able to work on the mobile devices which almost half of them had to pay for.

The figures come from iPass, provider of single-log-on services for remote workers, which gathered the data by surveying 2,300 of its customers about their mobile device use. iPass discovered that, for the first time, iPhones outnumber BlackBerrys in the enterprise, if only 'cos employees are bringing them into the office themselves, but mobile workers would never give up their smartphones despite the health risks.

Forty-two per cent of mobile employees are now providing their own kit, to be integrated and managed by the company but supplied by the employee. It's those self-purchased devices which are pushing up the iPhone stats, allowing Apple's baby to claim 45 per cent of the smartphones used at work are running iOS.

That pushes BlackBerry into second place with only 32 per cent, while Android devices can only claim 21 per cent between them.

All those mobile devices enable workers to contribute an additional 240 hours of productive labour annually, and (by their own admission) waste only 28 minutes a day on technically driven distractions. Those distractions include "work email", and "social networking", but not Angry Birds or Fruit Ninja, so we're assuming that underplays the issue slightly.

That additional time comes at the cost of a good night's sleep, with a third of the mobile workers questioned admitting that being constantly connected to the office is cutting into their pillow time. Sixty per cent also said that work was the thing biggest thing preventing them taking enough exercise, but we'd wager that laziness is a significant (and underreported) factor too.

Just 13 per cent reckoned working all the time was hitting their health, and not just 'cos of the lack of sleep and exercise, but despite all that 40 per cent said they would be "disoriented" without their mobile while 34 per cent would ramp that up to "distraught", but most worrying is the 10 per cent who said losing the mobile would make them feel "lonely".

iPass has loads more statistics, and pretty charts, in the report (PDF, initially interesting but one's mind starts to wander as the statistics stack up). ®