Survey finds smartphones preferred to laptops as enterprise mobility platform

Workers who use internet-enabled mobile devices from the road tend to prefer smartphones to laptop PCs, according to the results of a survey published today by iPass.

The company says that 63 percent of the 695 mobile employees that responded to the survey said they would rather use a smartphone than a laptop as a primary mobile device. And while 32 percent of respondents said that their mobile device of choice was a BlackBerry, more than half of BlackBerry users would switch to an iPhone if their company’s servers and connections supported the device.

The survey also found that most mobile workers were ignorant of the real telecom cost allocation necessitated by their wireless internet use. A little more than a third of those surveyed knew how much their wireless service cost, according to iPass.

While those in charge of telecom cost allocation are undoubtedly more knowledgeable about the bills than the workers, the survey’s findings nevertheless demonstrate the knowledge gap created by the widespread introduction of smartphones into the enterprise.