TELECOMS & MOBILE
Irish mobile working on the rise: survey
03-08-2004
by Ralph Averbuch
A new Nokia Ireland survey shows that more than half of Irish office workers now access e-mail outside the office, using a mobile phone, PDA or other method.
The survey, which gathered the opinions of businesspeople in the Republic of Ireland through an on-line survey conducted by ElectricNews.Net, showed that 61 percent of office workers are now spending more than one hour away from their office PC. Around 17 percent access e-mail through PDAs and 28 percent through mobile phones, with 6 percent saying they use an alternative method like Wi-Fi at the airport or Internet kiosk.
The main reason stated for e-mailing via mobile was convenience (63 percent), with just one in every 10 people saying they were unaware that e-mail can be sent from a mobile.
The survey also revealed that mobile phone penetration with Irish office workers stands at 95 percent, which brings into sharp relief the question of how the networks will get today's customers to upgrade to new services and handsets. More interesting was the fact that 51 percent of respondents have their calls paid by their employer, although around a third of business users said they have no say in the handset they are given.
Only 15 percent of respondents stated that they use different phones for business and personal use, suggesting that, given the choice, users do not want to carry around more than one mobile device.
Some telling responses focused on obstacles to the increased use of mobiles in business. Respondents cited set-up costs (43 percent) and service and reliability issues (42 percent) as the top obstacles, indicating that providers still have issues to overcome in the supply of business-level service agreements.
Another important insight from the survey revealed the handset features that mean most to business users. 79 percent said battery life was the most important feature, followed by contact lists at 51 percent.
Just six percent of survey respondents said that the inclusion of a camera was important, in sharp contrast to tastes in the consumer market.
Jackie Brannigan, Marketing Manager, Customer & Market Operations, Nokia Ireland, said, "This survey shows us that more and more business people today are relying on their mobile phone to gain access to corporate information and resources. With e-mail having become the communications tool of choice, the Nokia mobile phone has evolved, offering mobile e-mail solutions for anywhere, anytime access on a range of devices that can be matched to best suit the diverse needs within a company."
Sheila Averbuch, editor of ElectricNews.Net, said the results showed business people have a clear desire for mobile phones which are an easy-to-use extension of the office environment. "With the increasing efforts of both the networks and the manufacturers, this is a desire which we can expect to see filled," she said. "But, as consumer research indicates, people will use these devices for a specific purpose. It's debatable, for instance, whether there's any value added by placing cameras in business phones."
The Nokia Ireland survey was conducted on-line at ElectricNews.Net during April 2004 and gathered responses from 476 participants.
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