neilthompson.onMobility
The weblog of Neil Thompson, CTO of mobility specialist AppSwing.
Are you an addict?
Some interesting surveys into attitudes to mobile devices and working this week have shown that 60% of small businesses have already implemented some form of mobile working while 10% of users would be "devastated" if their BlackBerry was taken away. Meanwhile a further survey shows that the number of workers now considered to be mobile has topped 40%.
What does this all mean? Well digging a little deeper into these surveys shows that what is considered to be mobile working is still predominately mobile email and not mobile applications. Push email from the likes of BlackBerry is still very much a white-collar solution whereas there is still a huge untapped market in the blue-collar arena for genuine productivity improving applications.
I have had push email via BlackBerry for a couple of years now and can only think of one time when it has been essential to have it. This was when we were completing the legals on an investment into the business and quick responses were required. At all other times the emails could have waited until I returned to the office without too much of a problem. I certainly wouldn't be "devastated" although my wife may disagree.
I've no doubt that there are some groups of individuals that do require push email but for the majority it is just a nice to have. To reinforce this point it is interesting to see who it is that actually gets the first BlackBerrys or push email devices within any organisation. From experience of working with other companies I know that it tends to be the executive level, the CxO's of the enterprise. Do they really need this service or is it just to keep up with the others on the golf course?
In fact many users who do have a device simply for push email quickly wonder what more can be done with the device. I would suggest that actually much greater gains can be made and a better return on investment achieved when email is ignored and the true mobile workers of an organisation are given access to their day-to-day systems. To be fair RIM have recognised this and in order to facilitate it have released MDS 4.1 to allow applications to be developed for deployment on the BlackBerry. Also there is no longer a requirement for a mobile BlackBerry user to have their email pushed to the device as was the case previously. Both changes will help to accelerate mobile working to those who can genuinely gain from it and shift the emphasis from email to applications.
2006 is set to be the year that mobile working really takes off and email becomes only secondary.
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