Personal Smartphones, Tablets Increasingly Popular in the Workplace

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It’s not a secret that the workplace is increasingly adopting mobile devices as productivity tools. But while IT departments used to dictate the device that workers use, companies are now allowing employees to buy their own.

Mobile devices are a boon to the workplace. Employees are connected even while mobile. And these can also be used for collaboration among colleagues. But IT departments used to dictate the type of device and service that users can get, and hence platforms like the BlackBerry became popular. These days, however, businesses are letting users chose their device, and the workplace has become platform agnostic.

Some companies are even diverting their IT funds toward stipends — IT departments are foregoing big-ticket purchases of smartphones, computers and tablets, and are instead giving the money to subsidize employee purchases. In a survey across 1,700 employees 41% say their companies subsidized their equipment purchases. 9% say the cost was shared between employee and employer. “Bring your own device” policies are gaining inroads in the corporate world, but there is a related expense.

Forrester Research says this new trend is empowering employees, because they get to have a choice. However, this tends to hurt vendors and channel providers. While companies like HP, Dell, Lenovo and others used to find big customers in IT departments, these now have to heavily market their products and services to the consumers.

Furthermore, because individual consumers don’t have the power to dictate their price — or at least negotiate for volume discounts — the equipment prices are higher per unit than if it were the company that bought the devices. Still, choice is a good thing, and companies will need to work out their subsidy and discount plans with both employees and equipment dealers. At least companies and employees are not stuck with devices they don’t like using, and software developers are forced to make their collaboration tools cross-platform in order to have a bigger market.